Anatomy Of An Entrepreneur Case Study

Anatomy Of An Entrepreneur

By Howard O 'Gollegos

Jan 20, 2011

Hard working small business owners are often called entrepreneurs tough in some case this may not be so. Though this may be a matter of definition, as a small business owner or self employed person simply replacing an income stream from an employee with one from your own business can hardly be described as entrepreneurial. This is something I have done and I suppose that is one way of looking at it. A colleague of mine would describe an entrepreneur as someone who generates large amounts of wealth whereas he would describe me a "lifestyle" business!

Whatever the successful entrepreneur is doing it s going to be risky, probably requiring high levels of innovation and market disruption. The rewards however will be high and if it all comes together they will come faster! A non entrepreneurial business owner will more than likely be operating in a less risky area, requiring less innovation probably with an existing product or service and competing on price alone.

Setting up a business may not, by definition, be entrepreneurial but it is one of the first steps. I can imagine most entrepreneurs will have gone through this process probably many times. Whether it be setting up as a sole trader, a limited company, buying a franchise or setting up a simple market stall you are following a path, beaten by many a successful entrepreneur before you.

To become successful as an entrepreneur you need to understand your own strengths, know your weaknesses and learn from your successes and mistakes. We generally view entrepreneurs, as business people who start something new (the word entrepreneur comes from the French 'entrepende ' meaning 'to begin something ') they are seen as being creative and happy to take risks. And many of these attributes could be applied to many small business