I don’t know the person who wants to start the business to be an average one. Everyone wants to become a successful entrepreneur.
But, the process is not so easy as it will look at the beginning.
If you want to become a successful entrepreneur, you will need to create strong relations between you, your customers, and your possible partners.
Without these three elements of the process, you can’t expect to succeed as an entrepreneur and your small business as a company. It is important to combine them correctly so your business potential energy will be much higher.
You Need to Start With You as the Beginning of the Process
In the simplest possible form, entrepreneurship is the process that we can describe as you at the starting point that creates the company to deliver values to your customers. You have an idea that you will transform into the legal entity that will execute the idea to deliver value to your customers.
This process is presented in the following chart in the simplest possible form.
Next, There are Your Own Competencies and Resources You Possess to Become Successful Entrepreneur
But, this process is missing something essential. If this is the only process of becoming successful entrepreneurs, everyone will become an entrepreneur, and every startup will become a successful company. But, reality has shown us that this is not true. The missing element from this process is your own competence and resources that you will put to work on creating the company.
But, it is Not Enough! You Will Need to Include Partners in the Process if You Want to Become a Successful Entrepreneur
So, the first factor that creates a difference between different startup ventures is entrepreneurial competence. But, in reality, we have many examples where startup entrepreneurs don’t have all the required competence and resources to start and build a really successful business. , they compensate for their missing competence, including partners that will help them on their entrepreneurial journey. Now, we have our simple process in the following form.
The Full Process to Become a Successful Entrepreneur
Let’s see how this process will look with the concrete action steps you will need to become a successful entrepreneur.
1. As a first thing, you will need to have a strong desire and passion for starting your own business and becoming a successful entrepreneur.
I have seen many would-be entrepreneurs without a strong desire and passion for becoming an entrepreneur. They want to create a job for them. I call these types of entrepreneurs, not the entrepreneur but the craftsman.
2. Do you have competence for the entrepreneurial journey?
At the next step in the process, you will need to answer this question related to your competence. What is entrepreneurial competence? Competence is a collection of knowledge, skills, and experience to start and run a successful business. You will need knowledge related to marketing, finances, operations, and so on. But, also you will need skills as managerial skills and entrepreneurial skills.
Additionally, the experience will help you find the best possible ways to solve large and complex problems that you will have on your journey. If you think that you already have all the competence required to create and run a successful business, you can continue analyzing your competence to locate possible business opportunities. If not, then you will need to go for another decision, and it is…
3. Can you develop your entrepreneurial competence?
When you know what you have as competence and what you are still missing, you need to decide about the next side to continue with the movement through your entrepreneurial journey. If you can develop everything you need regarding competence, you can start working on that development. If not, then it is better to start working on the possible partnership in the form of co-founders and the team of people who will bring the missing competence.
4. Work on the development of your knowledge, skills, and experience.
As an entrepreneur, you will always need to work on developing your entrepreneurial competence in the form of knowledge, skills, and experience. Experience will come as time will go on in your journey. But, something that you can change starting today is your knowledge and skills.
Start learning everything related to your market, industry, and entrepreneurship principles. But, learning is not enough. If you want to develop skills and experience, you will need to implement what you have learned. So, experiment with new things, try different things, and make conclusions about your action steps to improve future action steps. That’s the only thing that will help you to become a really successful entrepreneur.
5. Find co-founders and start developing your team.
If you find yourself lacking some competence and resources important to bring your company in the life in the most suitable way, and you don’t have time to start developing this competence or find resources, then it is better to find co-founders and team members that will bring all necessary competence and resources. Maybe you have someone from your family or friends who can help you bring the required resources and competence. Why not use them as your partners. Your success will also bring success to them.
6. Analyze your competence for possible opportunities and brainstorm business ideas.
The best business ideas are ideas that are the business opportunities at the same time. What does it mean? A business idea can be an opportunity only if you can implement it and solve real customer’s problems, so they are willing to spend money. Because you have already brought enough competence and resources, this part of the process will be really simpler for you. The result will need to be a clear decision about the products and services, the customer’s value, and how you will bring customers to the company.
Related: 40 Tips to Brainstorm Business Ideas
7. Are your customers like what you are doing?
As the last thing in this process to become a successful entrepreneur, you will need to go outside your building and validate with real customers everything that you have developed thus far. The first important question is, are you solving the right problems for them? If so, are they willing to pay you, and how much are they willing to pay you for your solution? If they like what you are doing and are willing to pay you what you ask to pay you, you can go further and start your company. But, if they don’t like what you are doing, it is time to improve your ideas, hypothesis, and actions.
