How To Become A Successful Entrepreneur in 2023

A lot of people prefer entrepreneurship over a job, but clearly, it’s not easy. Many of them seek answers to this one question “How to Become a Successful Entrepreneur”, Here’s something to guide you through

Welcome to the herd of humans in the same zone of dreaming to do something of your own but lack the idea of how exactly to start building on that dream.

Well, entrepreneurship may be the right term for you. But before that let’s try to understand what entrepreneurship is and what it takes to be a successful/good entrepreneur.

What Do Entrepreneurs Mean?

The term entrepreneur traces its origin from the French term “entreprendre” which means to undertake. Hence an entrepreneur is likely to undertake business for-profit motive.

Although most of us know the basic meaning of entrepreneurship, most of us give up building on it because of all the wrong questions we ask ourselves, like – Have I earned enough capital that I need for this?

Is my idea really good enough to actually move ahead? Do I have the right kind of knowledge or expertise needed for this?

Let me stop you right there and tell you that these questions do matter but not as much as knowing how to plan your entrepreneurship. Let’s go over step by step and you just keep reading.

What Characteristics You Should Have to Begin as a Successful Entrepreneur.

These may be some of the traits:

Solution finder– Are you one who inherently tries to find a solution to problems rather than ignoring them, regardless of how small or trivial the problem is? Let’s say you want to work out but lack the time and money to go to the gym, plus let’s admit it, no one likes the gym.

So, you took an old bike, pulled out the wheels, and set it up as a home spinning device. Bingo! You’re someone who can make your way in the world with minimal resources.

Passionate– This is something we’ve been hearing time and again from all successful people and will keep hearing till eternity. You have to be passionately passionate about your idea. If you are not able to pursue your passion in the current settings, you might attempt to gauge an ideal situation and will probably be back to your starting point.

As Steve Jobs once said –“People say you’ve to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing and it’s totally true, the reason is that it is so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up.

Hard-working– This comes hand in hand with Passion. Mere passion for what you do is not going to suffice to succeed. Working on your passion day and night with all your Alma is what will give the push towards the journey and will take you forward. So, tighten your screws to work hard.

Risk-taker– The most burning question when you dream about your start-up is “When should I let go of my cozy job and settled life and leap?” – Well, that’s the risk. Unless you take it, you can never begin. And not just in the beginning, the risk is something you will have to keep undertaking throughout the journey if you want to see your dream.

Don’t worry if you feel overwhelmed with the moral characteristics listed above, it will all sink in. So, read along.

Also Read: 10 Must-Have Skills of an Entrepreneur

How to Generate the Idea?

Once you identified that you have it in you it’s time to EXPLORE for your ideas. Honestly, there are too many sectors to list out but if we take the most popular ones, some of the sectors to look for ideas of entrepreneurship may be categorized as below:

1. Consulting – This is the most common and probably the easiest of all. If you’re in a job and you know you’re good at it, why not start your business around that. People always need experts to consult on various matters and if you’ve been in a similar role in your job, it’s time to know your value.
2. Tutorials – Almost similar to the above idea but in this case you should be passionate about teaching and mentoring. Pick up a subject you know you love and know precisely and start building your course. Online is today’s way to go, but if you like to see actual reactions when you teach you can plan for physical classes too.
3. Health and fitness – A hot cake in today’s world. While a massive fraction of the society becomes aware of the benefits of staying fit, considerable research and innovation are being done to serve it to them in new and exciting ways, some of them effective too. So, if this is your niche, starting researching around it and build your career. Again, online is a good option but if you can get some actual personal clients and work with them, to begin with, it’ll help with the experience as well as with the reviews. And the plus side to this idea, you get to stay in shape forever and so does your family. Now, who doesn’t like that?
4. Food – This is a world in itself. Very few are actually good at handling flavors and even fewer who can create an aura of magic with those flavors. If you think you’re one of them, you’re doing a grave sin by continuing your mundane job. Pick up a cuisine, pick up a type, and get creative around it. Home delivery of home-cooked meals, baking for special occasions, creative cocktail/mocktail/ coffee, and other beverage ideas, or as the above ones you can host online classes to build your flavored entrepreneurship.
5. Organic Farming– With the advent of the fitness industry, there has been a surge in looking for healthy diet plans and hence the sudden shift towards organic food as an option. And we all have been hearing or reading stories of people who left their job and started organic farming and are now rich and happy. Who knows, you might be next.
6. Content Writing – the Internet is the world now, searches for every knick and knack online is something we all are familiar with and how interested we get when we get to read or see something we search for. This is usually confused with Blogging, which by the way is a type of content writing. Content writing is more generic concerning creating a copy of the content for any kind of business. So pick up your niche and start writing around it.

Here’s a video to guide you through every little detail of content writing:

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The list is endless but these are some of the broad categories that might help you find the spheres of your interest. However, it’s best to look for what one truly enjoys doing.

However one must understand that the idea may not necessarily be revolutionary. It can be very simple yet effective. Hence it’s time to think about what ideas you need to work in a particular sector.

Zeroing in on the Idea?

A few steps can help you select a field

1. Try to think about your daily schedule and imagine one solution that could make things slightly smoother
2. Talk to your colleagues or people around you casually and try to get one problem that might be trivial but important
3. Although this keeps changing, keep yourself updated on the ongoing and upcoming trend shifts. Sometimes just going with the flow itself might be helpful
4. Even in the current settings, you may try to think about making things simpler, efficient, and more effective.

Now, pick one as your go-to idea which speaks to you more, and then use all resources at your dispense to learn all about it. Maybe visit some researches around the subject or attend some tutorials.

One of the best ways to learn is to look into some successful entrepreneurship close to the idea or maybe even try some internship at a business already built around it to learn what is at stake and what the behind-the-door efforts look like for becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Ready to move ahead?

Once you know the way you want to move ahead, it’s time to invest your time efforts, and resources in the idea. Some spots that need to be followed in this process are:

1. Identify your potential market and customers. Choose a particular sector and crowd you want to target. For instance, if you choose child care consulting as your sector you might want to write blogs, share thoughts on new parents who are both working, so probably a mega-city will be your potential market.
2. Now plan for the business as to how to go about it (most people actually ignore it). Create a small blueprint of the – How’s and What’s you can think of on your business idea and think of a possible workaround
3. Launch a website if necessary and get your company registered. This a legal step and you should get started on this as soon as you’re positive about starting your entrepreneurship. There are thousands around the globe stuck on a similar idea that you think is your own, so get a rubber stamp on it before someone else does.
4. Test the idea on a small scale. Go small or more local in the beginning. This would help you gauge the idea and its possibility to flourish as well as give an understanding of the challenges waiting for you once you plan to grow.
5. Study from a successful business near you and try to extrapolate the same situations for your case. It might be even suggestive to go work for one or two such new businesses as an internship to get an insight into being in the back-end of a business.

Lifestyle Changes

Apart from all this, you should be upgrading yourself and your thought process too to prepare yourself for the “pressures” of being an entrepreneur. One of the basic things that I think is very important is to upgrade your peer circle to include more entrepreneurs.

Well, it’s not that you should move away from your friends and colleagues, which you should never, but you should start taking some time out to hang out with successful entrepreneurs.

You can join a club that has few of them, work at a company as I said above and spend more time with the higher management guys, or simply just search for one or two of them and get 10-15 minutes out of your timeline and have a quick coffee/tea with them. The time gives you valuable insight into their thinking thread and experience.

A different kind of suggestion, which I think should always be mandatory is taking care of yourself, physically and emotionally. Remaining physically fit or active gives you immense positive energy, which is the key ingredient to a successful beginning and even the journey.

You are your first project and if you’re successful in taking care of that i.e. yourself, you can be pretty confident that you can take care of other things as well.

Keep Reading, Keep Learning

It’s always helpful to read books for entrepreneurs to learn from their experiences. Some of the popular books are:

1. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter
2. The Elements of Style by E.B. White and William Strunk Jr.
3. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
4. The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau
5. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
6. How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by John C. Maxwell

These books not only give insights into the lives of a successful entrepreneur but also provide us with the motivation necessary to tread the path as well as the mistakes that need to be avoided in the process.

However, no amount of suggestions or advice would actually be sufficient unless they are tested on the turbulent waters of the real world by the person themselves and see how to wade through them. This a small guide on how to become an entrepreneur. Although, every business is different and so is every person’s approach to them.

Amidst all this, keeping in mind the old saying always helps – “No pain, no gain”