Entrepreneurship

The term entrepreneur is often used as a complete synonym for the one asbusinessman. It is a key figure that does business. An entrepreneur is a person engaged in an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurs are people who establish new business with the desire to meet market demands for goods or services. This person attracts funds for the organization of business and takes the entrepreneurial risks. Studies have shown that only about 8% of the population can be entrepreneurs. Some experts believe that these people are a colour of each nation, its gold reserves, and the business potential of the country. It allows leading a society to economic prosperity. On the one hand, this person has expertise and knowledge in the field of economics, psychology, politics, and law. On the other hand, an entrepreneur is able to organize the effective interaction of specialists from various professional fields and productively cooperate with scientists to develop new ideas, as well as with owners of the capital and marketing specialists. This individual is responsible for everything. Such person should be able to determine the most appropriate sphere of activity with the most profitable investment, rent the relevant premises, examine the state of the market of goods or services, and set the best price for the products. It allows obtaining the necessary income to compete with other producers. To achieve this, it is necessary to have certain personal qualities that will help the person create the successful business.

To study the relationship between the individual entrepreneur and business established, I have interviewed the entrepreneur being successful in managing the business. It is a businesswoman who is engaged in a training sphere. Her name is Helen Black. Her professional training centre has operated in the market of business education for more than 10 years. The main area of the centre activity is the conduction of workshops, seminars, training programs, as well as management consultation and diagnostics of the company’s staff. At the beginning of the business creation, only Helen, her husband, and a partner were working in the company. However, these days, the centre includes ten trainers. It has its sales department and conducts trainings in different cities.

Helen Black was born in 1980 in Blackpool city. It is a tourist location. Thus, Helen’s parents were also engaged in the tourism business. They were the owners of a small hotel. In summer, the city is always full of tourists. In such a way, the hotel has always prospered. As it was small, there were not many people who had worked there. Helen’s parents did most of the work themselves. Since childhood, Helen was interested in parents’ business. She helped them cleaning the rooms and was engaged in the decor of the hotel. With some time, Helen started to delve into the parents’ business even deeper. She knew that to have a personal affair was a heavy task that required her constant attention and hard work. In such a way, since the early childhood, Helen has known the subtleties of doing business. She states that her parents’ hotel is an excellent starting point to become acquainted with entrepreneurship.

Though she had worked as an accountant, Helen understood that she wanted to start her own business. Nevertheless, she did not want to be engaged in the hotel area, as it was extremely competitive. She wanted to create such a company to be new in a business sphere. At that time, Helen’s hobby was to conduct trainings telling friends and different people about the ways to starting their business based on the experience of her parents. The creation of the personal training company is an instance when a hobby becomes the major work. Helen started to gather groups for trainings at the beginning of the new century when the demand for training services had been only forming.

Gradually, she realized that the interest in training went beyond the usual hobby. It had taken more time. The number of her clients was growing. At some point, Helen Black realized that the income from training already allowed her to leave her old job and completely switch to this type of activity. As a result,  her husband, she, and their common friend registered their training firm. All of them have been engaged in its development for the past 13 years. The main task of their centre is to help people grow, move forward, and achieve the intended goals more effectively in different fields either personal or professional.

Helen has noted that the transition from the accountant profession to entrepreneurship was quite smooth. It was without any abrupt follow up from the hired job to personal business. By the moment of the creation of business, Helen already had an experience in training and a certain circle of clients. At the initial stage, they had to do everything without any assistance. Helen was combining the functions of an administrator, a coach, and a manager. In addition, it was necessary to spend a considerable amount of time on understanding the bureaucracy intricacies, i.e. the preparation of documents, payment of taxes, and getting financial statements ready.

Helen Black states that, these days, the competition in this business has extremely increased. Nowadays, there are many companies in England that are also involved in training. On the basis of the training centre, they have created a professional organization, which contributes to the development of training services and allows sharing experiences, communicating, and helping each other solve professional problems. As the business grows the entrepreneur needs to change and adapt. In such a way, an entrepreneur needs to be creative. Helen claims that they constantly try to improve the work of the training centre. It may also be applied to the development of new training programs, the expansion of the coaching staff, and the organization of new partnership projects. It includes such as, for example, the project for top managers, which they are leading in partnership with the leaders of large companies of the city. It is obvious that there are some difficulties in every business. Helen Black states that her company is not an exception. With the emergence of the financial crisis, the training centre has started experiencing certain issues. Helen understood that the more rapid the growth of the business is, the more difficult it is to manage it. In such a way, it is possible to compare Helen’s business with the Greiner’s model. He has described managerial changes, which the head of the company experiences during the five stages of the business development. According to him, every phase of its growth is accompanied by the changes in such way the manager controls the firm. The author Paul Burns states that, If the crisis cannot be overcome, then it is possible that the business might fail. However, Helen Black was able to overcome the crisis; and the business managed to survive.

The universal advice for anyone who is planning to start a personal business is hard work and good leading qualities. Helen states that if a person has some interest in the field of training services, he/she will definitely find an opportunity to work in this sphere. To a large extent, in the area of training, there are two ways to start any business. If a person wants to be a practicing coach, he/she needs to develop the skills of the trainer. However, there is also another way. The individual can become a provider of training services without having any serious training skills. The one can sell trainings of different trainers. In this way, the knowledge of the market is also necessary to ensure the quality of services to clients. However, in this case, the person needs the basic skills of a seller, and not a coach.

Helen Black states that the personality of an entrepreneur plays a crucial role in the development of the personal business. One of the undoubted positive personality traits of entrepreneurship is leadership qualities. A leader can be defined as the most authoritative personality in a social community, who plays a central role in the organization of joint activities and the regulation of relations in the group. The entrepreneur is obliged to be a leader, as he/she must unite people and inspire them to achieve a high goal.

The person will succeed in business only if he/she can convince the employees in the ability to achieve the level of performance of tasks that previously seemed to be  not accessible to them. This capacity of leadership is closely linked with such qualities as the ability to create optimistic plans, strengthen the hopes of success, explain the essence of innovation, organize the team in crisis situations, and many others. According to Anil Kumar, a leader is a person that is able to satisfy the personal selfishness and introduce it to the public interest. By developing his/her activities, the person distributes material benefits and employs people. At the same time, a leader stimulates the progress in the society and makes a recovery in the economy. It gives the impetus to the evolution of the community.

Another important quality is independence. In general, it can be defined as the human desire to determine life, as well as choose goals and the means to achieve them. The presence of these traits is one of the most important conditions for success in entrepreneurship. To succeed, entrepreneurs need to have a clear vision of what they want to achieve. Primarily, entrepreneurs are those people, who are not satisfied with their role of a simple employee and who do not have enough independence in the hired job. If to recall the concept of Maslow, it can be mentioned that these are individuals with extremely severe needs for their self-realization.

Helen Black states that ambitiousness is also an important quality that helps a starting entrepreneur overcome any obstacles on the path to success. It is interesting to note that the attitude of people to this personal quality is significantly different in various cultures. In the United States, it is estimated as an advantage. However, in other countries, ambitiousness is rather often perceived as a disadvantage. However, such qualities as self-esteem and belief in the personal success give every person additional strength and helps cope with difficulties. Ambitiousness is the most important trait out of them for a modern entrepreneur. It gives energy to a successful leader, which is essential for the victory in today’s business. At the same time, modesty of the manager is manifested in the fact that he/she would not ascribe all the achievements of the organization to himself/herself. Otherwise, subordinates may feel that the boss just uses them.

According to Helen, another important quality is perseverance. In entrepreneurship, it is the desire to do everything possible to achieve success and the willingness to go for sacrifices. There may not be an entrepreneur without hard work. To the full extent, industriousness as a personal quality characterizes many successful people in business. They work not only because they want to earn more money but to enjoy the process of their work. Therefore, it gives them pleasure.

Doing business cannot be without a risk. In such a way, the increased tendency to a risky behaviour is a normal feature of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur accepts risks. However, the risk can be justified and unjustified. In the first case, a person is ready to make some actions under conditions of uncertainty, if he/she sees that the probability of success is high enough. If the individual cannot evaluate the probability of an adverse event or he/she starts the business with extremely low chances of success, the risk is not justified. Therefore, on the one hand, any entrepreneur must be able to take some challenges. Nevertheless, on the other hand, such person must be wise and careful enough not to risk in vain. For an entrepreneur, it is extremely important to analyse the situation in the market and not to make mistakes. According to Helen Black, qualities that are contraindicated are emotional instability, laziness, passivity, suggestibility, and excessive diligence. Another personal trait that hampers the entrepreneur’s activity is increased anxiety. If any businessman fluctuates too long during making decisions and acts too slowly, he/she will not make a good deal. The author Mark Casson states that, It is important for the entrepreneur to be reasonably proficient in all aspects of decision-making. While an entrepreneur fluctuates, time is working against him/her. Competitors provide products and capture the market at the same time. The tax office calculates taxes and fines and the owners of premises charge a rental fee.

Nowadays, entrepreneurship is an extremely widespread form of business. To be a good entrepreneur, it is necessary to have certain personal qualities that will help lead the successful affair. They include ambitiousness, independence, perseverance, and many others. Entrepreneurship is always a risk. It involves some actions under the conditions of uncertainty. In such circumstances, it is better to act and make mistakes benefiting from them than to be afraid of failures and do nothing.