Entrepreneur
The Australian Financial Review with Business News – The Entrepreneur
The Australian Financial Review Case Studies with Business News offers
several case studies discussing the concept of entrepreneurship and the
skills of the successful entrepreneur.
Becoming an entrepreneur is about coming up with creative business ideas
(often involving risk-taking) and then finding enough resources and
opportunities to put these ideas into action. Characteristics that help
describe the entrepreneur are passion, perseverance, ability to solve
problems and a never-give-up attitude to life. It's these traits that
can help the entrepreneur create a successful future in the business
world.
Being an entrepreneur is about being an innovator that looks to create
better goods or services at every opportunity. This is a key strategy to
being a successful entrepreneur. Someone with entrepreneurship skills
will see that there is a gap in the market and filling that niche,
whether it be a new product or service, adding value to an existing
product or service, competitive pricing, or a decent level of service to
customers.
Entrepreneurs contribute significantly to the ongoing success of
Australia's economy through job creation, promoting competition and by
implementing innovative new ideas when starting a business. Many
successful entrepreneurs are people focused and able to motivate their
staff on the journey to achieving the goals set by the business. An
entrepreneur cannot just set up a business and sit back and wait for it
all to happen! Consumer tastes change and the entrepreneur needs to
generate and apply innovative ideas to ensure the business is providing
what the customer wants.
Entrepreneurs need a creative vision and should research their market to
establish if there is a need for their idea.
To achieve set goals, however, and to obtain finance and meet business
objectives, it is essential for the entrepreneur to prepare a robust
business plan. A business plan is a like a road map in that it can guide
the business in its operations and activities, both now and in the
future.
An entrepreneur has a number of considerations to keep in mind. These
include:
- Turnover: the amount of income the business expects to receive in a given period. Converting this turnover into actual profit and increased market share is vital.
- Overheads: a business needs to minimise overheads (expenses) like
rent, wages and insurance to remain competitive. Keeping overheads as
low as possible enables the business to charge more competitive prices,
which should lead to more customers and ultimately better profits.
For many entrepreneurs, staff wages represent the biggest ongoing expense and so are closely monitored. A balance between too many staff and too few staff needs to be achieved so that staffing costs are not too high and customer service levels are not too low. - Predicted profits: the ultimate aim is to have revenue (sales) exceeding expenses to make a comfortable profit. The entrepreneur needs to be realistic when predicting profits and should expect profit to build up over time as the profile of the business improves
- Location: when deciding to establish a business, one of the most important decisions that needs to be made is the selection of an appropriate location.
- Case Studies dealing with the entrepreneur include:
- ‘Crazy John’s – Turning a good idea into commercial success’
- ‘The Vetservice Group –
Turning an idea into successful reality’
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