13 Top Effective Tips on How to Become an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship – that was once considered a man’s domain. But now this trend has totally shifted. According to National Association of Women Business Owners, more than 9 million U.S. organizations are now operated by women, employing approximately 8 million people and producing $1.5 trillion in sales.

What does it mean to be an entrepreneur?

If anyone enquires about its meaning, i.e. about entrepreneur meaning or entrepreneur definition, then the simplest answer would be a person who would be overseeing the whole procedure of business and coordinating between all the existing factors of production.

He or she would be the owner or the proprietor of the business and it will be up to his or her skill that would determine the success of the business. In the path of becoming an entrepreneur, one has to develop a certain set of skills. Developing those skills will give the solution to the question of how to become an entrepreneur.

How to Become an Entrepreneur?

Since the number is rising, there are a few female business owners, who find it difficult to find mentors and raise capital for their startup. Networking is the key to discovering plenty of people, men, and women who are eager to support and mentor female entrepreneurs.

To find the solution of how to be an entrepreneur, one must look into a list of entrepreneur characteristics that one must possess to get the perfect answer of how to become an entrepreneur.

The essential characteristics which help the person to progress as an entrepreneur and shine in all spheres of business are the basic entrepreneurial features, which a start-up entrepreneur must inculcate in themselves. Hence, this will catalyze to achieve great success as an entrepreneur or proprietor.

However, more and more women are embracing entrepreneurship, they often face challenges that are not usually shared by men entrepreneurs. In this blog, I’ll discuss some key challenges women entrepreneurs usually face and what are some steps that you can take to deal with them.

Characteristics of an Entrepreneur:

As mentioned above, adapting to the characteristics of an entrepreneur is the ultimate solution for how to become an entrepreneur. The basic and effective characteristics of how to become an entrepreneur are mentioned below. These are –

1. Having great communication and negotiation skill

The basic requirement for a person for being a great entrepreneur is that he or she must possess great skills in negotiations. An entrepreneur is needed to negotiate with many of the other dealers who would provide him with the factors of production, which is necessary for the smooth progress of the production process.

The negotiation skills will also help the entrepreneur in getting more customers and making business transactions more profitable. This skill of negotiation is one of the most important skills to possess for an entrepreneur.

One who does not possess the skill of negotiation may face problems in the long run as he or she will not be successful in bagging more profitable deals. A person with good negotiation skills is also preferred by employees as they feel comfortable to work with an employer who can speak and communicate with them freely.

Therefore, imbibing these skills of communication and negotiations are one of the necessary steps in the process of how to become an entrepreneur.

2. Administrative skills

Coordinating all the factors of production, for their smooth function, is also one of the skills necessary to be an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur must be a very good administrator. He or she must be highly skilled at administrating the labor force and bring out the product of their full potential.

In simpler terms, there must be maximum utilization of the resources by the entrepreneur. He or she should supervise that all the factors of production are working simultaneously.

3. Knowledge about the current market structure

To find a solution to the problem of how to become an entrepreneur, one should possess knowledge about the current market structure to be a successful startup entrepreneur. One should be aware of the demand and supply balance in the current market structure.

The person who is willing to step into the world of entrepreneurship must be enlighted about the fact that whether it is a competition or monopoly or oligopoly market of the product of which he or she is willing to start a business. The market structure is one thing that must be researched by a would-be entrepreneur.

4. Innovative ideas and thinking out of the box

We are all acquainted with the fact that if we want to achieve something we must think differently. Innovation and out of the box ideas in business are considered as entrepreneur ideas. As the key to a new business idea comes from a different but revolutionary idea.

If a business idea becomes highly successful it would come under the domain of trend, where other entrepreneurs will also follow him or her. The innovative ideas are generally taken by following the market structure. An intelligent entrepreneur would make out an innovative idea keeping in mind the current ongoing demands in the market.

For instance – If a hashtag comment becomes popular and trendy, one can use that as texted printed on their firm’s apparel products or merchandise, which will help to increase the sale enormously. Thus, creating innovative ideas gives one of the finest solutions for the problem of how to become an entrepreneur.

5. Having great foresightedness

An entrepreneur must possess great foresight which will enable him to take his firm on the road of success. An entrepreneur must plan out the sequences in which he would carry out his plan. If something like an emergency rises then he must have a backup plan in his mind.

He must even take major entrepreneurship decisions based on his skill of foresightedness. For example – If an entrepreneur has a firm that produces magazines and newspapers. They take their marketing decisions as per the demand and supply of the market.

But suddenly with the spreading of the Coronavirus in these few months, people have stopped taking newspapers and magazines. If the person is an intelligent entrepreneur, then he or she would shift to producing more of e-magazines, e-journals, e-newspapers, etc.

This is because the world digital marketing is expanding in the period of lockdown.  Thus these instances of foresightedness can provide a person an example of how to become an entrepreneur. 

6. Risk-taking attitude

Every business tycoon has made its business successful by opting for a great risk-taking venture before its primary success. An entrepreneur should harbor a risk-taking attitude to make it to the big league. Statistics, every successful entrepreneur has taken one or more than one risky big leaps in their entrepreneurship days. Thus one of the solutions to the question – How to become an entrepreneur? – is having a risk-taking attitude.

7. Decision-making capabilities

One of the other capabilities, about which we have discussed before, is the decision making capability of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur should hold the capabilities of making the right decisions at the right time. The future of the farm depends upon the decisions taken by the entrepreneur at a crucial moment. A slight indecisive mistake can lead to a great loss in terms of business

8. Be True to Yourself

“Be yourself and have confidence in who you are. Don’t conform yourself to a man’s idea of what a leader should look like”. –Founder and SEO Trunkettes, Women’s swimwear brand.

If you have attended networking events then you can easily count the number of females present there on one hand. In this type of scenario, women may feel as they need to adopt a stereotypically male attitude – harsh, aggressive and competitive, towards business. But there are some women business owners who believe that remaining true to yourself and reflecting your own voice are the keys to success in this fierce marketplace.

9. Raising Capital is challenging

There are many startup founders who find it difficult to search for investors to get funded. But when it comes to raising funds for women-owned companies, the pitching process could be more difficult. A study shows that less than 3% of venture-capital-funded firms had female CEOs.

There are only 6% of women owned business firms in U.S. Female startup founders looking for business investors should create trust and build confidence through a great team and effective business strategy. And you can only do this if you have professionals on your founding team that can perform the business operations well, investors will have confidence in such people.

Venture investors prefer to invest their money in firms run by people of their own industry. They usually look for firms that can grow their estimate to more than $1 billion.

Female entrepreneurs can overcome this issues by working to get more and more women investors involved in supporting each other. This way they can not only inspire and motivate women investors, but they can grow and support other women entrepreneurs through raising capital and strategic educational workshops.

10. Recognizing Your Own Accomplishments

“Recognizing the worth of your creative idea is the key. Other women should value their knowledge accordingly”. -Shilonda Downing, Founder of Virtual Work Team.

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Building some great qualities in young girls can make women unintentionally modulating their own values. Most women entrepreneurs find it hard to convey their own value as a leader.

Confidence is the key to success, especially when you need to show your worth in a boardroom full of men. Usually, female entrepreneurs’ ideas get more doubts than those from male business owners. But this won’t let them discourage from being a great business leader because they have confidence in their abilities to run their venture.

11. Building a Network of Advisers and Mentors

48% women startup founders said that a lack of advisers and mentors limit their business and career growth. With the majority of the high-level business world, it can be challenging for a woman entrepreneur to blaze her own path and make connections in the elite business networks. As most businesses believe that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And this a major factor in your ultimate business success.

Knowing the right places where you can find the right support network is the key. Go to women-focused networking events, conferences, summits, participate in online forums and groups specifically targeted business women.

12. Work and Family Life

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Work-life balance is a goal of many entrepreneurs, especially female entrepreneurs, as they have to start businesses and simultaneously run their families and their companies. Being a mom while running a business is very challenging. You need to balance their time and effectively run your business while dealing with your kids.

Mom-entrepreneurs have more responsibilities to their businesses and to their kids, and finding the right way to devote time to both is key to truly attaining that elusive work-life balance.

13. Fear of Failure

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The fear of failure is one of the top concerns of female entrepreneurs who run their businesses. There is a possibility of failure in any business, so it shouldn’t be taken as a negative. You need to have a huge failure to have huge success. You may get 100 No’s to listen 1 Yes, which can make you more successful tomorrow than you were today.

You need to get rid of your fears and insecurities.

Female entrepreneurs are advised to work through the moments of self-doubt that every startup founder faces. Because if you are successful, no one treats you differently and no one bothers your gender.

These are a few ways in which one can find the solution to how to become an entrepreneur. In addition to it, one can read books written by various international authors on this particular theme and study more on the topic of how to become an entrepreneur.

Hence, in a nutshell, we can say that a person must have all the entrepreneur characteristics to get the solution of how to be an entrepreneur. 

Wrapping Things Up…

The golden period of women entrepreneurs has finally started. Females business owners are equipped with inspiration, knowledge, skills, and funding. The number of women entrepreneurs is continuously increasing, they are enterprising as their male counterparts and making a name for themselves with their start-ups.