Session 18: Entrepreneurship and Starting a Small Business

1. As an entrepreneur you have to have a certain traits within yourself to help you succeed. And this time I will explain about 4 main traits of successful entrepreneurs. The first one is passion for your business. If you have passion in the business you do, then naturally you will work harder for it because you love the things that you do. And as a result you are more likely to succeed in running your business.

Then the second one is product/costumer focus. This is a very simple aspect in business but a lot of people often forget it. When making a business we have to think what the customer need and not what we like. By doing this we can give and serve the customer what they wanted.

The third one is tenacity despite failure. Failure is normal for entrepreneur because entrepreneurs always trying to create something new for the market. The most important thing to do for entrepreneur is to keep trying and learn from their mistake. And those lesson will help entrepreneur to succeed in their future endeavour.

And the last one is execution intelligence. No matter how good your business idea is , if you aren’t able to execute it then it won’t mattered at all. The way you execute your business idea into a viable business is really important and crucial to make a successful business.

2.Entrepreneurial team is a group from difference business areas that are experienced in it and combined to make a managerial team to produce a new product or service with the aim to grow and make a successful business.

Meanwhile a micropreneur is someone that is starting a business and willing to take risk that comes with it. The main difference is that micropreneur are managing a very small size business and they are content with it remains small as long it offers them a balanced lifestyle.

3. Other than entrepreneur there is also intrapreneur. Intrapreneur is defined as a creative person that is working in a company as an entrepreneur. They use the company resource to make a new product for the company. So the main difference between an entrepreneur and intrapreneur is the place where they are working. Intrapreneur work within a firm meanwhile entrepreneur run their own business. And the resource that entrepreneur use come from themselves and not from a firm like intrapreneur does.

4. A business plan is very important for an entrepreneur. Because it describes what is the business about (including target market, advantages, resource). And it is used to convince mainly investor to invest in those business. There are a lot of aspect in business plan but these are the main things that should be in it.

· Executive Summary: this include the overall outline of a business and should not be made too long.

· Business Description: in this part you elaborate more about your business ( things like the structure, product, legal form, the operation).

· How to generate profit: this part tell and describe how your business going to generate income.

· Market strategies: this describe about what the strategies that your business going to do in order to achieve your goal. It also includes market analysis.

· Team: this part describe about the people that run your business.

· Finance: this describe the amount of money that needed to start your business.

· Forecast: this part describe about the projection of your business for years to come and how much it is going to grow in the future.

5. At first when making a business generally we need a lot of money. To generate the capital needed there are a couple of source that we can find. Some of them are personal savings, angel investors, government agencies, relatives. For example in the U.S. there is SBA ( Small Business Administration) it is an agency that gives small business assistance in the form of financial advice and management training. Other than that there is also Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) which is a program where private investment companies that licensed by SBA lend small businesses money. You also can get investment through venture capitalist ( company/individual which invest in new business in exchange of ownership).

6.The reason we have to know our customer before we develop our business is that because customer is the sole reason why business exist. If you don’t know your customer then eventually the product you produced won’t be good and no one is willing to buy your product. That is why knowing your customer is really important. Things like what they needed, their preference, and reason for them to buy your product. You have to know all of these things and by knowing these things you can create product/service that your customer willing to buy which will resulted in the success of your business.

Reference:

Nickels, W.G., McHugh, J.M., & McHugh, S.M. (2018). Understanding Business (12th ed.). New York, United States of America: McGraw-Hill Education