Written by: Shreya, Campus Editor – IBS Hyderabad, The CEO Insights
Entreprenuers must know what they want out of their efforts. Without a clear mission, your efffort is fragmented, lacking in purpose and direction. Without knowing your aspirations, you cannot get the support you will need for money, time and love. Without identifying your risk propensity, you cannot convince investors to put desired amount of money.
And your missions, aspirations and your risk propensity must fit together. You cannot achieve greatness without dreaming high and tolerating some level of risks.
To turn the dream into reality, entrepreneurs require more money than their friends and family have. Professional investors want extraordinary efforts and commitments. They want to know how much you are willing to share the risks in business.Investors also want to know that you have identified critical success factor (CSF) in the industry you want to enter, as well as the market and competitive environment you will encounter. It is the CSF that makes the difference between who wins the industry and who are the also-rans.
Few entrepreuners can take the business all the way from idea to achievement.To build an altogether new business is a battle cannot be fought for the sake of money only. An entreprenuer should have a greater purpose than money.An entrepreneur should have a laser like focus in one direction as they have scarce resource to try multiple things.You have to run all of your engines in one promising path. Your confidence and commitment for best path will attract investors, employees and suppliers for your cause.
Different entrepreneurs have different ambitions. Some want decent living for their family from their business or some want simply to escape from the scenario in which they work. If you want to build a great enterprise, you have to have courage to dream big. When your business grows large you have to devote more energy and time which only few people have courage and willingness to do. You have to work so hard and have so much entusiasm for your business that most of things in your life have to be sacrificed.
A person cannot possess all the skills which make their ideas alive. Many entrepreneurs have salable idea and they also have passion to pursue that but they are afraid of delegating the work. You have to hire smarter people whom expertises help you to soar high. Make the team with the people who can deliver what you yourself do not have or cannot do. Fill your teams with people who are different from you as diverse teams generally perform better.You have to find out how long you want to stay involved in your business.
It is saying that it’s not what you know; it’s who you know. An entrepreneur who surround himself with a strong network up,down and across value chain are well positioned to estimate the ever-changing market and modify their offerings, operations, organization and processes tomeet the needs of changing business climate. Good luck can help only those entreprenurial ventures who have the right connections that provide the information required to help them respond to market changes quickly and adroitly.
Entrepreneurs can be a risk manager or risk taker. Most entrepreneurs try to devolve their risk to suppliers, investors etc. But there are many obious risks involved in entrepreneurship which include money invested, months or years of your life and the opportunity cost of doing something else.
Risk and reward is friend of an entrepreneur. The thrill lies in this process is to keep climbing in spite of lots of hurdles. The more difficult is climb, more effort you have to put in but that would be more satisfying when you reach the peak. Now, all is your decision. How much risk and reward you want to choose. And finally what is life without a big dream?