Entrepreneurship — A synonym for working life skills
When people aspire to be wealthy, they envisage no problems. They feel money can answer all. For the few who get to eventually find wealth, they are soon faced with the shocker of their lives. Getting money is the easy task; not losing it is the difficult task. They soon discover that it’s easier to go from rich to poor than it is to go from poor to rich. They realize that to remain rich, your money has to keep yielding money. It’s pretty much the same with every facet of life, you have to keep reinventing yourself to stay relevant. Nothing stays the same. You have to always guard whatever you have.
The key is in the multiplication of resources, but like Steve Harris would say; how can you multiply what you’ve not yet mastered; and how can you master what you’ve not yet performed. How can you perform what you’ve not yet practiced and how do you even set about practicing what you’ve not yet discovered?
Entrepreneurship has become a “thing” especially in this digitally driven age that its importance has been lost on some. As a result, so many people feel entrepreneurship is something that the gods of wisdom has reserved for a privileged few; the smart ones, the business school and conference attendees, the rich kids, etc. Well, I’m sorry to burst your bubble. Everyone has the ability to become an entrepreneur. Every single thing we do in life is a synonym for Entrepreneurship. You don’t need some other form of sophisticated experience.
It’s time to demystify entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship simply entails having a constant focus on identifying opportunities and taking adequate actions based on information to key into those opportunities. Sounds familiar right?
Life is a business. You came into this world as a startup. The food and care your parents gave you is akin to a seed investment. Going to school is akin doing a market assessment for your business to understand the various market forces within your sector. Take some moment to think through the major incidents in your life. All those memories and experiences, that’s business intelligence.
When you borrow money from your friends to sort out a personal need and agree to pay back on a mutually agreed date; that’s entrepreneurship! It’s akin to negotiating a loan agreement with a bank to boost your business. As a matter of fact, if you’re adept at borrowing from your friends, you’d be better equipped to get a good loan deal with the banks.
Have you ever tried saving money to buy something? Notice how you keep saving little by little until your savings grow big enough to buy what you wanted? That’s entrepreneurship, you don’t need a business school to teach you how to save! You’ve been saving from infancy. It means it’d be easier for you to grow your business and have a healthy ROI.
You think so many people don’t like you? Try talking to that young up comer who investors just turned down despite his brilliant idea. If you listen to some of the best entrepreneurs around, you’d realize that most of what has made them tick wasn’t thought in business schools. The business of your life is the best way to ascertain if your business will break even or not. If as a person, you are still in debt, you haven’t made any investments, you keep making wrong personal financial decisions; chances are you will fail at business until you sort out your personal brouhaha. Virtually all the problems entrepreneurs’ face are similar to life’s generic problems.
There’s nothing you do in life that can’t be related to entrepreneurship. It’s easier for us Africans because our parents raised us up with some level of self-responsibility and independence. It means that we’ve amassed over 20 years of experience as entrepreneurs excelling at the business of life.
The keys to thriving as an entrepreneur are the same as those which with you have survived at living generally. The same combination of resilience, hard work, innovation and confidence. Entrepreneurs look to provide solutions. This is either reflected in starting up a new business or supporting the restructuring of an already existing to push new frontiers. In doing these, an entrepreneur acquires skills and knowledge that help transform lives, communities and nations by providing employment, eradicating poverty and acquiring new skills.
You need a dream to live. Entrepreneurs have several dreams — and they chase them all.
Entrepreneurs are always seeking new possibilities and cultivating new opportunities. What could be done differently than the way things are done now? How do we push the world forward in ways that create new value and make the world better? Entrepreneurs dream up crazy, often controversial ideas that challenge the status quo and improve human prosperity and well-being. This sounds familiar. You must have lost count of the number of times you sat on your bed wishing you could make the world better.
Are you scared of failure in business? Think back to that time when your rent was due, re-imagine the pressure on you, how did you pull through? Think back to that time when you lost money, did you die? How did you pull through? That’s your starter pack for launching out; if you survived these scenarios and came out better, then you can rightly apply the same principle to your business.
You can‘t show me a great man who succeeded on earth without having the spirit of an entrepreneur. Like Mohammed Yunus rightly said; every human is born an entrepreneur. There is an innate desire in every human to create something new. Why most people don’t actualize that desire is because of lack of boldness. Entrepreneurship requires boldness and courage, what better place to find them than from your personal experiences in life. Imagine a world where everyone was equipped to pursue their dreams, imagine the inventions that would have risen as a result.
Entrepreneurship creates a better life. Lives are being transformed because of someone’s bold decision to get into business and create something unique for the society. People have been employed as a result, standard of living has increased for staff of the business, etc. It’s easy to look at the big picture and forget how it all starts. One bold idea, buoyed by the desire to disrupt the status quo.
You’ve been an entrepreneur all your life. Make that one bold step today.
Miracle Roch.
