by rashmi on February 14, 2009
in Business
EDIT: I’d like to introduce our readers to Rashmi Vaswani. Rashmi is a real-live successful entrepreneur. Rashmi founded and heads Rage Chocolatier, which produces some of the finest quality home made chocoloates at their “choclotory”. Rage has been nominated as one of the hottest startups of the year by the TATA-NEN hottest startups award. Her advice on startups and her intimate knowledge of the chocolate industry should make very engaging reading. She will be doing a series of posts for us over the next few months. Enjoy!
‘To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart’
Why do we work? Most would give you reasons on the lines of - to pay rent , to save up for that holiday, to pay credit card bills, to get my kid into a better school etc etc – all ideas with the underlying reason being money. Apart from our cricketers, or Willy Wonka, almost everyone works for the money.
Do you think that you have to choose between doing what you love and earning a living? Some might even think that putting a price tag on doing what you love might ruin the thing for you. I believe it’s quite the contrary. If you love what you do and do it well, the money will follow.
A good business for you would be to find your passions and build on the things you are passionate about to create a successful business.
Here are some things that one would have to keep in mind when you try to make what you love your business
The Bare Essentials
The essentials of any business, whether it is what you are passionate about or otherwise, would remain the same. You would need a to identify the opportunity & customer need, make a business plan, work out the financials and acquire the start up money, check what licenses and permits you would need in place, identify labour and location requirements amongst other things. These necessary preliminary requirements should be taken care of before you delve head first into what you love so that you don’t have to take a step back to get foundations into place. This should be a preliminary exercise on paper to work out if the business is a viable one.
Is Your Passion a Profitable One?
The next step after you know that the business is viable is to see if it would be profitable. Passion will only take you that far if it’s not lucrative. If you’re passionate about it, it will sustain you through recessions and bad times but not if the business proposition isn’t feasible in the least. So this would be a good time to do some research on the competition, market potential and growth prospects for your passion.
Are you making Rational Business Decisions?
A very important part of this is to be sure that your passions are not taking you too far. You shouldn’t get carried away with your passions and not be a calculative and rational business person.
If you build your passion into a business, you will never get tired of it. And even if you don’t get the initial rewards, you will still go on because after all, it is something you enjoy doing anyway regardless of whether you are earning money from it or not.
What we do for money and love are most often very different things — but if you can coalesce the two, so much the better. To make a living doing what you love, you need to invest financially and emotionally in the work you love, because together they are an unbeatable combination.
Does success simply mean money to you? Or does it have a broader social significance?
The goal of any entrepreneur is to be successful. The possibility of success is what drives us forward and it is a measure of our achievement. It is a difficult concept to define because it is complex. It may be measured by numbers alone, but also by softer, qualitative criteria. (Wickham, P.A. (2004) Strategic Entrepreneurship. FT Prentice Hall)
Success is something that is visible in public but also experienced at a personal level. It can be best understood in terms of four interacting aspects:
1. Performance of the Venture
2. People who have Expectations from the Venture
3. The Nature of those Expectations
4. Actual Outcomes relative to Expectations
The performance of a venture is indicated by a variety of quantitative measures. These relate to its financial performance and the place it creates for itself in the marketplace. The indicators can also be compared to the performance of competitors. Such performance measures relate to the business or company as a whole.
However, a business is made up of individual people and it is crucial for success to be also experienced by them. If you want to be successful then first your business has to be successful. The business creates the resources which interested individuals can use to improve their lives. The individuals who have an interest in the business are its stakeholders (e.g. entrepreneur, employees, customers, suppliers, investors, society, etc.). So, the success of the venture must be considered in relation to the expectations its stakeholders have for it.
The performance of the venture as a business provides the means by which individual stakeholders can fulfill their own goals. Personal goals exist at three levels:
1. Economic - monetary rewards.
2. Social - fulfilling relationship with other people.
3. Self-development - the achievement of personal intellect and spiritual satisfaction and growth.
Success experienced at a personal level is not complete. It is recognized by comparing actual outcomes to prior expectations. It is achieved if outcomes meet expectations and is ensured if expectations are exceeded. However, if expectations are not met than a sense of failure will emerge.
For me, success is relative. It is being able to achieve what I want to achieve in a given period of time, but failure is a big part it. I see failure as not the opposite of success but as one of the stages on the way to success - and I know this will help me achieve success, both in business and life.
Clearly success means different things to different people. You must be absolutely clear in your mind as to what success means to you. As the entrepreneur it is your responsibility to think of success for your business as a whole (not just for yourself!). Once you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve, you will be that much closer to achieving it.
Also read:
In today’s business world the concept of ‘the entrepreneur’ is very popular and highly misunderstood. I had studied this concept at Regent’s Business School London a few years ago and would like to share my thoughts with you.
An entrepreneur, quite simply, is an individual who owns and operates their own business, assuming the responsibility, risk and rewards therein. He/she is someone always searching for change, responding to it and exploiting it as an opportunity. Entrepreneurship is risky but if it is based on ‘purposeful innovation’ it can be managed successfully.
The first thing worth knowing is that anybody can start up his/her own business. Entrepreneurs and businessmen come from all walks of life and have different backgrounds and life experiences. People are often deterred from starting up their own business, as they think that this is a path exclusively open to those who have studied business. This is not true. If you look at the background of many successful entrepreneurs, one of the things that you will notice is that this is not the case. Business skills can be learnt.
Two elements are mentioned time and again by successful entrepreneurs as being crucial for success, namely the motivation and determination to succeed in your business venture and to make things happen. Successful entrepreneurs also have a healthy dose of self-confidence and an optimistic outlook to life. They must be prepared to take risks, but these are calculated risks. They don’t plunge blindly into new situations, instead, they are thorough and prepared, and weigh up the pros and cons of a situation before making a decision.
The ability to identify opportunities, learn quickly and apply this learning effectively are skills that are also important and need to be developed if the entrepreneur wishes to be successful.
Don’t be afraid of failure – this is one of the things that I learned. We should learn from Sir Richard Branson. He is respected both nationally and internationally for his entrepreneurial flair. It is often forgotten however that as well as his large number of extremely successful business ventures, he has had a number of projects that have failed (Virgin Cola). One of Branson’s particular strengths as an entrepreneur is his ability to know when to call it a day on a particular venture when it is not working. He is not afraid of admitting his mistakes (Richard Branson failed in business five times before becoming successful).
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Am I prepared to work hard?
- Am I determined?
- Am I motivated?
- Can I carry out the work with integrity?
- Can I accept uncertainty(risk)?
- Do I have the guts?
- Are my goals clear?
- Am I creative?
- Am I a (good) leader?
There are many more questions that you can ask yourself. There are no rules or preconditions to becoming an entrepreneur but if you’ve answered ‘Yes’ to most of the above questions then you can become an entrepreneur. If you answered ‘No’, it doesn’t mean that you can’t become an entrepreneur, it’s just that you must understand what it takes to become an entrepreneur. Becoming a successful entrepreneur – now that’s a totally different ball game!
I know many people who are happy working for someone else, where they don’t have to worry about risk etc., they do what they are told, get their salaries, bonuses and promotions and are satisfied with that. Well considering the current global economic meltdown, even these guys would be worried.
I prefer the flexibility of working for myself. But I only came to this after working for another company for some time. In my experience it is absolutely critical to work for someone else before starting up your own venture. The things I learnt on the job, from my boss, colleagues and other stakeholders, I could never have learned on my own. I ventured out on my own when I felt I was ready to do things my way and let me tell you I’m still struggling, but not for long. Trust me, the only place success comes before work, is in the dictionary. There are no shortcuts, be it for the entrepreneur or anyone else.
The question of – ‘Who/What is an Entrepreneur?’ has no one definition or answer. Agreeing with one particular definition/answer would restrict the understanding of (an Entrepreneur) the question. Many people are attracted to the fame, wealth and lifestyle associated with entrepreneurs but the truth is that there are only a handful of wealthy and famous entrepreneurs and they have struggled and worked extremely hard to get where they are, I would also like to believe that they have had their share of good luck. It is important for any wannabe entrepreneur to understand all the risks involved and remember, “all that glitters…
Update: Also read “Business Plan: The Core of Entrepreneurship”
“Who will Finance your ‘Great Idea’?”
Loading ...
