Personal Qualities of an Entrepreneur

Week: 4 (Four)

Topic: Personal Qualities of an Entrepreneur

Meaning of Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is someone who takes the risk to assemble the other factors of production (land, labour and capital) in order to set up a business that provides a product or service for sale. The entrepreneur recognizes business opportunity and takes a step to make use of the opportunity by organizing the factors of production to create value that will meet human needs. The business set up by the entrepreneur may be a sole proprietorship, partnership or limited liability company. Whatever, the kind of business organization set up by the entrepreneur, the risk is taken to set up the business in order to make profit.

Personal Qualities of an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is what anybody is allowed by law to do but there are certain qualities which someone who intending to be an entrepreneur must have or develop before he or she can be successful in it. Some of those qualities are;

1. Creativity and innovation: Entrepreneurship is about thinking differently to solve existing problems. It is the ability to generate new ideas or improve existing products and services.
2. Risk taking: The first rule of entrepreneurship is that the person must be willing to gather personal resources to start the business without any assurance that it will succeed. Even after the business has been set up, there will be times when the entrepreneur must take calculated risks either by borrowing more money or investing in a new machine or idea to make the business expand or grow.
3. Self-confidence: An entrepreneur is someone who believes in his or her ability to do the business and succeed. Without this firm belief in oneself, success in entrepreneurship is very difficult because most people will not believe in the business or idea when it is just starting.
4. Hard work and commitment: The beginning stages of every business is very challenging. This is why an entrepreneur needs to be hardworking and committed to the business if he or she wants the business to succeed.
5. Vision and foresight: An entrepreneur sets up a business because the individual looked at something others will call a problem and saw how that problem can be turned into a huge money-making venture. This is called vision. The entrepreneur saw that tomorrow, this thing people are calling a problem or an unwanted item will become valuable. This is called foresight. The combination of these two qualities make a good entrepreneur.
6. Leadership skills: A business organization will need more than one person to function, especially when it has grown beyond one man business. This means other people will work with the entrepreneur either as employees or business partners. In any case, the entrepreneur’s ability to successfully lead the employees will affect the success of the business to a great extent.
7. Persistence and determination: Almost all business ideas will not succeed the first time it is started. This is why the entrepreneur must be emotionally strong enough to continue working with the idea even when it looks like it is a failure believing that with the right amount of effort, one day the business will succeed. It is like the saying; quitters are not winners and winners are not quitters.
8. Adaptability and flexibility: The journey of entrepreneurship will expose the entrepreneur to different situations that may be challenging. A successful entrepreneur learns to change attitudes and character when necessary, develop and apply new skills as the need arises and does anything required of him or her as along as it is legal to make the business succeed.
9. Integrity and honesty: Every body likes honesty because it is a good value. Since entrepreneurship means dealing with people, the entrepreneur must be persistently honest and of high integrity if she or he wants to last long as a successful business owner.
10. Financial discipline: It does not matter if every body likes your product and purchases, if you are not a person that disciplines herself or himself when it comes to money, you will not succeed as an entrepreneur. Financial discipline means every naira spent in the business must be planned before spending and properly documented to give room for accountability.

Homework

Make a research on any two Nigerian entrepreneurs and answer the following questions;

1. What are their names?
2. What kind of education do they have?
3. What is the name of their company?
4. What does their company do?
5. How many employees do they have?
6. What kind of products do their companies produce or what kind of service do they offer?
7. State two qualities you noticed in their lives as you made your research about them.