How you can best prepare yourself for the entrepreneurial journey

Wealth, a life of pleasure, and early retirement are things that anyone dreams about when starting his/her entrepreneurial journey. But to get there, you have to work hard. All successful business owners have this in common. The first thing you need to do is invest your time into building a business plan. That means not being distracted by the little things but instead keeping your eye on the big picture.

This article meant to inspire entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to lead their teams towards success. To succeed, you must work hard and persevere, no matter what business you are doing. To help you do this, create a strategy that defines what success looks like to you and how to measure it. 

This article looks at the topic of passion and doing what you love from an entrepreneur’s perspective.

Ground Zero: Start as an amateur: the word came into English from the French amateur, which comes from the Latin word for “lover” (amator).

Those were the words of wisdom my father gave me when I announced that I started my startup. In the beginning, I felt vexed that my father doesn’t believe in my capabilities to create a professional business. But with his wisdom call explanation and throughout the years, I understood and valued my classification as an Amateur entrepreneur. 

Becoming an amateur, you will learn how to become a better entrepreneur. You won’t be afraid to try and fail. You’ll know how to focus on what’s important, and you’ll create value where others see none…

As an amateur entrepreneur, you love your journey. You don’t let anyone or anything tell you that you can’t do it. You look forward to working with the people you love and doing things that you love.

In his book “The Amateur, The Pleasures of Doing What You Love.” Andy Merrifield celebrates the revolutionary spirit of the amateur—the character who thinks outside the box, takes risks, dreams the impossible dream, seeks independence, and carves out a new world. 

Be Passionate: There is a lot of talk in the media and our society about ‘following your dreams, ‘doing what you love and ‘being passionate about what you do’. I tell you, as my dad told me, ” Be an Amateur.”

1)Start with Planning: A business plan is a roadmap to help you focus on each of your financial and lifestyle goals. It is a series of steps that logically and systematically presents your business’ mission, mission statement, strategies and tactics, and the expected outcomes you want to achieve. It is your bible that you will be preaching while you run your venture and bringing more people onboard as coworkers or investors, or customers.

2)Be Patient: The essential component for success is patience. When you have patience, you can stay focused on the big picture and not get frustrated by individual failures. There will be times when you fail, and it will look like things are falling apart. But if you keep your focus and stay patient, you will succeed!

We all have to learn to fail before we can be successful. The term “fail” here can mean the low and dark times we face, making us want to quit. However, with patience and a focus on our long-term strategy, we can be successful.

3)Empower Trust: An entrepreneur needs to build a trusting relationship with his/her team members. A trusting environment within the business can help in many ways and is essential for the company’s success.

Businesses built on trust and are based on a foundation of credibility find it easier to gain the confidence of customers and partners.

Trust is a vital aspect of a relationship, as it is a critical factor in building a successful business. For success to be attained, trust is a must. It is an excellent factor to have in your relationship. The first step to being able to trust someone is to establish trust within yourself. The next step is to decide if you can trust this person. A successful entrepreneur needs to be armed with trust and develop her/his gut feeling and involve it in decision making.

4)Define Success: Start by believing. Faith is the new currency of entrepreneurial success.  

Success is earned, not given. For your company, revenue is an obvious indicator of success. But what else? Visibility is essential too. 

True entrepreneurs are never content. They are tempted to raise the bar further and achieve new goals. Sometimes, even what seems like a small goal can be a massive success for an entrepreneur.

I would advise other entrepreneurs to define success in realistic terms. I define success as having a solid intrapreneurial team working together, creating excellent products and building a thriving user base from the ground up. With the team, I set goals for my business and celebrate every milestone as a sign that things are going well. We look back at every year and assess what we achieved.

I don’t define success as an entrepreneur by the size of my goals. Instead, I define it by the creation of what I’ve set out to build. I don’t care where I come from or how far I go. I want to make my business and sell the best products. 

Success has many definitions. Some people define success as getting rich and famous. Others may define success as doing what they love every day. Achieving success doesn’t have to be about making money. Success can be personal or universal, and it can be about meaning and action.

5) Build a Strong intrapreneurial spirit: It is a word that combines the words “intra” (meaning internal) and “entrepreneur” (meaning someone who starts or organizes a business).

 Punch up and change the culture of your organization to embrace and develop Intrapreneurs.

Those are the individuals within an organization who are willing to take risks and make changes that can improve the company. 

Intrapreneurs are not only limited to high-level executives. The term is best applied to many different types of employees.

As a Leader, You should be willing to empower intrapreneurs by providing them with the resources and support they need.

Similar to entrepreneurs, a successful intrapreneur has a vision and makes good decisions. They see where small businesses need to go. A successful small business needs at least one intrapreneur who can do more than predict future trends and meet the needs of the competition.

Intrapreneurs often show self-motivated, creative qualities and tend to be engaged, showing talent in various areas. 

The recognition of intrapreneurs within your company must be compatible with business operations and corporate culture as a whole. The entrepreneurial experience of small business owners is valuable to the intrapreneur employees of his companies, and he should make himself available to them with knowledge and awareness on goal Progress.

A good framework that helps to adapt and accelerate such a spirit is the OKR” Objectives and Key Results”.

The Objectives and Key Results is an effective way of running your business. It is an efficient way to make sure your goals aligned with your team. It is essential to set your goals and objectives at a high level, then break them down into measurable components so you can measure the progress. This process also helps to keep your team accountable for their objectives. OKRs are essential because of their efficiency and alignment.

Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is a management technique that helps align the activities and goals of an organization. It is also a way to measure the progress of an organization against its objectives. The method introduced first by Intel Corporation in the 1990s but later popularized by Google. We were lucky in 2019 to be part of the Google 6 month Indie game developer Acceleration program in Singapore, where we trained to adopt this framework. 

There is no doubt that if you can stand on your feet and be creative, you can become a successful business entrepreneur like no one else. As an entrepreneur, you are considered a risk-taker who doesn’t back down from a challenge. You are constantly on the move trying to find new ways to earn a profit and many times this means travelling. If you aren’t willing to leap of faith necessary to try something new, then you might not even get very far in your business endeavour. But if you are eager to try, the sky is the limit! As an entrepreneur, you may find it difficult to be self-motivated, but don’t let that discourage you. You need to be able to be disciplined and persistent if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur. You have to set goals, set deadlines and be able to focus long hours without losing focus. If you have a clear idea and a goal for your business, there is a good chance that you will be successful!

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