Characteristics of an entrepreneur are always different. They are not like common people. They think differently, act innovatively, and behave optimistically. Their different mental state and acting style produce different results for them.
Before ‘New COVID 19’ world and after ‘NEW COVID 19’ world are vastly different.
So, the Characteristics of an entrepreneur have also been evolved in a new way. Who is an entrepreneur is the primary question we need to answer.
As per definition, the entrepreneur is defined as someone who has the ability and desire to establish, administer, and succeed in a startup venture along with risk entitled to it, to make profits.
The best example of entrepreneurship is the starting of a new business venture.
Entrepreneurs are often known as sources of new ideas or innovators and bring new ideas in the marketplace by replacing old with new invention.
Table of Contents
Characteristics of an entrepreneur
Characteristics of an entrepreneur
All entrepreneurs are not successful. Why? Because entrepreneurship is not only about ideas and innovations it is also about living those ideas and innovations. Entrepreneurship is not only about taking risks for bigger gains but also about withstanding and backing your decisions.
Being in the shoes of an entrepreneur requires courage and discipline.
Get a glimpse into the life of an entrepreneur here.
Characteristics of an entrepreneur – 1
They are organized and systematic
Being organized and systematic means entrepreneurs review their day to day plan, look for their engagements, study their progress, monitor their systems.
Most smart entrepreneurs apply modern techniques to keep them organized and systematic, like using the ‘Batching method’ to save time and finish work properly. Batching is collecting all of your similar tasks for the day or week and doing them all at once.
- Email: Sit down and do it all at once.
- Writing articles: Get it done in a single morning.
- Writing your business plan: Take a day and write it down.
Darren Rowse discovered this process in 2008. He has explained it in his style.
My week was a jumble of activities, which was detrimental to the standard and characteristics of an entrepreneur. I was worried to do make a way for it.
He would run from one task to another and never seemed to get anything done.
My life felt like a traffic jam,” he said, “with tasks coming from all directions.
After he learned to batch, he reports having become “10 times more productive.”
Batching has the power to remove clutter and disorganization.
Characteristics of an entrepreneur – 2
They know their market
Entrepreneurs research and analyze their market, their products, and their consumers. Clear identification of who is your buyer is very important. What is their buying pattern? Whether to eye on a small market or a big market.
After the market identification, the next point to ponder over is how you are reaching your customers, what are the entry points you have decided for your product or service. Your entry points are crucial. They must give you the most growth opportunities in your target market.
When developing your market strategy, you must understand all the potential factors that contribute to your market. These factors will help you determine how you will need to market to consumers, face your competition, and develop your overall business plan.
The characteristics of an entrepreneur are very special. You as an entrepreneur must develop your skills.
Your pricing strategy, your consumer behaviour, your marketing strategy, your services, your after-sales, all are important. You must have a thorough strategy for all these.
Characteristics of an entrepreneur – 3
Risk and reward analysis
Around 50% of small businesses fail. This is a bit dampening for the morale of entrepreneurs.
Among the major characteristics of an entrepreneur, taking a calculated risk is prominent. But why entrepreneurs do it when it is too threatening.
Let’s analyze the risk factors involved in becoming an entrepreneur.
They do not have a guaranteed paycheck amount to fall back upon. Their income also varies a lot.
Entrepreneurs need to have a financial plan in place before jumping to full time. Six months of expenses should be set aside for the business before launching into a full-time entrepreneurial endeavour.
Whatever entrepreneurs have to manage financially, that is only from their venture. So they have security issues. They have to think and manage everything out of their analysis and gut feeling.
The risks of becoming a full-time entrepreneur can be great, but so can the rewards.
Entrepreneurs love what they do. They are passionate about their ideas. They have exuding self-belief for their cause. They are their boss, they manage their own schedule. So they are extremely disciplined. They set their schedule and location. Entrepreneurs don’t see risk but rewards. They are the champions and initiators. They dare to do anything and their enthusiasm motivates them to enjoy any hardship. They are heroes for many youths.
Characteristics of an entrepreneur – 4
Creativity and consistency
Entrepreneurs have ideas. They keep on thinking about newer ways and styles. To be successful you need to have solid ideas and creations. Then you learn better ways to do things.
If you do something consistently enough then you become an expert in that field and good ideas catch you. Entrepreneurs are not satisfied with the status quo. The characteristics of an entrepreneur are that they think outside the box and look for opportunities to come up with new solutions.
Entrepreneurs are creators and not copycats. They introduce the world to new ideas and beliefs. They remain consistent with what they believe in. This is their biggest strength.
If you are interested in understanding the success in business style then read this article. This is about what you need to do to start your business, your decisions about your business, your market analysis, and your required skills. This is a must-read.
SUCCESS IN BUSINESS: 7 BEST STEPS FOR AN ENTREPRENEUR
Characteristics of an entrepreneur – 5
Entrepreneurs develop word of mouth publicity
One of the major challenges in small ventures and startups’ early days is attracting attention. Their marketing and advertising budgets are meagre and that is the disadvantage they have.
Yet there is power in word of mouth, both in old-fashioned ways of people spreading the good news about a new business and more modern methods of sharing opinions online and through social media.
A study by Alignable, as reported by characteristics of an entrepreneur shows the importance of word of mouth. The survey asked, “What’s the best way to acquire local customers?” The overwhelming answer — with 85 per cent of the 7,500 small business owners surveyed — was word-of-mouth referrals.
The other answers (Google/Facebook ads, radio ads, newspaper ads, and direct mail) pale in comparison(Source: Business2community).
Characteristics of an entrepreneur – 6
Make a strong online presence of their business
In this digital age, it is essential to have an online presence in your business. Even if you don’t deal in a kind of business that does not require an online presence still your customers and potential customers search you online.
If they don’t see you there, you could be losing out on the opportunity to grow your customer base. These are not the characteristics of an entrepreneur that they don’t develop a network. Rather The characteristics of an entrepreneur are to expand their bases and resources.
The online platform gives you this opportunity to showcase your products and services. Your customer base can easily find your products and services, study them, compare them with others, know your locations, availability of the products and services, ideas, and reviews.
The characteristics of an entrepreneur are well suited to make strong and meaningful relationships with their customer base. Online presence connects them and their business to a solid customer base. Entrepreneurs are powerful communicators. They think big and act big. They take maximum advantage of online presence in expanding their business and ideas.
They believe in making their products and services as brands. Online presence helps them in realizing their target. An online presence is one of the most important investments that a business can make. The benefits are endless.
Characteristics of an entrepreneur – 7
They think smartly, act smartly, hire smartly
Smart thinking means knowing how to work out and express your main ideas. Planning your communication of ideas so that they can be clearly understood by everybody. Checking to see if you have covered all the important parts of your topic. Establishing a framework or structure in which your basic facts and evidence make sense. Presenting ideas by linking them together to actionable plans.
Since the characteristics of an entrepreneur are such that they create ideas from their mind, hence it becomes important for them to explain them to others themselves.
Once your thought process becomes clear then you have to put them into action. Entrepreneurs gain mastery in making actions. They work only for the desired results so they make more actions than others. Since they think smartly they act also.
They never go for overthinking and overanalysis. Because these make actions slower.
Smart actions are always swift and timely.
To be the best, you need to be surrounded by the best. Entrepreneurs love to be surrounded by smart people. They hire smartly. So they always pick rocking talents. They focus more on values and passions in candidates.
Characteristics of an entrepreneur – 8
Entrepreneurs maximize their profits
This is very very important to understand. That is why this is one of the most valuable characteristics of an entrepreneur.
Sigmon, the author of the book, Six steps to creating profits notes that nearly two-thirds of small businesses either don’t make a profit or fail to increase their profits from the year before.
Sigmon shares six key strategies small business owners can use to cut costs, increase profits, and improve their bottom lines.
Change Operating Procedures
You need to generate more sales while reducing expenses. To increase your sales, try cross-selling—offering new services or goods that complement your current offerings. For example, a chiropractor might also sell vitamins.
Another operational change that can increase profits is incentivizing new customers to try your product with special deals, discounts, or short-term giveaways.
Try switching to a relationship-based sales model that gets customers coming back to you by offering monthly or yearly service plans, or a bundle of visits at a discounted price—like a series of 10 gym visits.
On the flip side, to trim expenses, try auditing your administrative functions. Are there routine tasks you could afford to outsource or eliminate to save money? Would it be more cost-effective to hire part-time help instead of a full-time employee to do some of these tasks?
Stay Visible and Connected
Accreditations, licenses, and certifications for your business or individual employees can set you apart from your competition. Take your reputation online, using social media, your website, and a blog to connect with clients and make strategic alliances.
Use advertisement sharing with complementary businesses, find ways to leverage referral selling and take advantage of affiliate marketing tools to drive new customers to your site. Eliminate stale, ineffective alliances that may be dragging you down.
Maximize Your Cash Flow
One of the best ways to achieve a stable cash flow is to offer pre-paid retainers or ongoing payment plans for your clients. For example, instead of a one-off consulting contract at $125 per hour for a full day, tweak your offering and give them a discounted 20-hour retainer plan at $100 per hour.
While your hourly rate would be less in this case, you’ll be billing for a greater total dollar amount, and locking your client into a longer-term arrangement.
At first, this may not seem as lucrative, but it establishes a relationship and keeps the door open for additional work. Maintenance contracts for service-based businesses are another way to create a new revenue stream.
Streamline Management Costs
How efficient are your employees? How many customer leads do you get? How much are you owned in accounts receivables? Questions like these need to be answered immediately, and to do so, you need to automate your business.
Create a system for employees to access and add data, keep all information updated and synchronized, and be sure to build back-office administrative time into your project fees, hourly rates, or ongoing charges.
Automation allows your business to run smoothly and will help a scaled-down workforce accomplish more back-office work.
Raise the Marketing Bar
Networking used to mean cocktails and handshakes. Now, it is all about immediacy.
Give your business an instant presence through online networks including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Set up group meetings, sales presentations, and special promotions using webinars. Offer tutorials, demos, or new certification sessions as webcasts or podcasts for immediate download. Measure all of your marketing efforts to see which ones are cost-effective.
Make Everyone a Salesperson
From telephone to email to face-to-face meetings, every employee has the opportunity to spread your company’s message and engage in potential sales-generating behaviour.
Everyone needs to pitch in to help by cutting costs, selling, networking on the web, marketing, and more.
If you can get your employees invested and motivated to sell your message by encouraging self-development through round tables, conferences, lunch meetings, and webinars you’ll be well on your way to creating an organization that is built around increasing profits.
Remember, it pays dividends to reward your employees that seek continuing education, or who make an extra effort to represent the company inside and outside of work. (Source: www.thebalancesmb.com)
The world-famous speaker & author Anthony Robbins has written a lot about it. He is written a world-famous book in the name of Business Mastery. It has written in such a way that you get a very clear idea about maximizing your profits and growing your organization.
This will revolutionize your mind. Read it here.
These are the characteristics of an entrepreneur that they read many books.
Characteristics of an entrepreneur – 9
They keep themselves updated
Why we change our mobile sets? Why we buy new laptops, spacious offices, visit wellness centres, do exercises, and read new books? Why you are reading this article?
In simple language, you want to keep yourself fit and healthy. You want to be updated and significant. You want to be the best version of yourself.
The characteristics of entrepreneurs are to take challenges and act big. They grow by solving problems, acting continuously, adjusting ideas, and updating themselves. They are great learners and achievers.
They are leaders and leaders are always good readers. They read a lot. Their mental canvas is so vast that they bring forth unique ideas for the betterment of the world.
Characteristics of an entrepreneur – 10
They maintain a work-life balance
Your family, your relationships, your health, your hobbies, interests, your prayers, and meditations, are all matters of your life. They keep your inner self happy and peaceful.
When you are peaceful within, it reflects in your outer world. It makes you energetic and enthusiastic about life. Your work quality improves. You perform better. The environment around you becomes lovely and cherished. Your connection with people becomes stronger and healthier.
Your family life improves. Your family life has a direct connection with your professional life, thus your professional life improves.
These characteristics of an entrepreneur are charismatic. They play humongous roles in making our stature higher. We need to learn and apply these characteristics in our personal and professional lives to become highly successful and inspiring.
After all, it is our moral responsibility to make this planet a better place for this generation and the coming generations.
Conclusion
This is my article on the characteristics of an entrepreneur. I will keep on adding new things and sharing new views on them. How did you find this article?
How it is helpful to you? what are the points you want to add to it? Kindly suggest and comment on the comment box. Thank you for reading the characteristics of an entrepreneur.
Very good article. I’m dealing with some of these issues as well..
Thank you very much. It is so heartening that you find the article helpful. I will keep on updating it from time to time. There are many more articles on personality and business development on our website. Maybe you find them useful as well. Again thanks for your interaction. We are looking forward to more comments from you. We value your opinion.