Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2011, when the economic crisis in Spain was pushing many people into self-employment out of necessity; its reference to “the crisis” is to that period.
A while ago we talked about how, these days, people need to start their own businesses, since sometimes it’s the only way to get by. This has given rise to new entrepreneurs, many of whom set out on the entrepreneurial path and end up crashing into a solid wall. José Javier Chamorro (winner of the Emprendedor 2011 award) said something that makes a lot of sense: entrepreneurship has become a fad, and that’s not good at all, because it will increase the risk of failure.
Being an entrepreneur is a profession like any other. It requires a minimum of knowledge about what you’re going to do, a market study, a business plan and, above all, something that sets you apart from the rest. If starting a business and succeeding were easy, I imagine everyone would have a successful career, and that’s simply not the case. Citing some statistics, we even pointed out that 8 out of 10 online business ideas tend to fail. Today we focus on the basics: the foundations a person must have, or acquire, before taking the plunge into entrepreneurship.
1. Wanting
When we talk about wanting, it’s clear that we do things because we want to, but we also go to weddings when we don’t really want to, purely out of obligation. When that happens in business, the result can be disastrous, because we set off on a path that will “burn us out” at the first difficulties.
Although we start from the premise that the need is obvious, it’s also true that we’ll need passion for what we’re going to do. We must feel that this is really what we want to do. In fact, ask yourself whether you would start that kind of business if the crisis hadn’t come along. Read: “The mindset of an entrepreneur, by Donald Trump”.
Starting a business without passion is like marrying without love. It usually ends in divorce.
2. Knowing
We may want it and feel passionate about being entrepreneurs, but if we lack the basic notions of running a business or don’t know our own product, we won’t get very far. It may sound crazy, but many entrepreneurs pour all their passion into a product without realizing that their competitors have been selling it successfully for years, and much more cheaply.
Other entrepreneurs get their capital reserves wrong, so as soon as sales are slow to arrive, they find themselves without the money to deal with the unexpected. In other cases, the entrepreneur simply knows someone in France who opened a type of business that wouldn’t work in Spain. You need to know everything about the business, the product and the market.
3. Being able
You want to start a business and you’d know how to do it, but… can you? Being positive or optimistic is a great virtue, as long as we don’t lose sight of reality. Maybe my product has to compete against a giant, and I would actually know how to beat the giant if I had the resources, but… do I have enough resources to do it? Can I get them?
Why does one entrepreneur fail while another succeeds?
However hard we try to give this question a complex answer, the truth is that it’s very simple: the entrepreneur who failed made a mistake. They may have chosen the wrong type of business, failed to surround themselves with the right people, got the business plan or the market study wrong, or simply been wrong to think they were ready to run a business when they didn’t yet know enough. The point is that there was some kind of error.
People will often say that the successful entrepreneur was lucky, when in fact luck tends to fall on whoever works harder or is better prepared than the one with bad luck. I’m sure that when the successful entrepreneur decided to start their own business, they thought: “I want to do it, I’ll know how to do it and I’ll be able to do it.”
If we accept that entrepreneurship is a profession we decide to take up at a given moment, we’ll find the same kinds of people as in any other profession.
In every profession there are the incompetent, the mediocre, the outstanding and the exceptional, and business is no different.
Further reading
- The main causes of failure in life and in business
- 15 commandments for entrepreneurs that lead to business success
- Why new businesses fail
See also: Passion in business isn’t always a good thing
Featured image: Jk1677, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
