What is an Entrepreneur?

What is an Entrepreneur?

by Victor Green

The best way that I can describe what an Entrepreneur is ‘Some people want it to happen. Some wish it would happen. Others make it happen’. That, to me, describes what a true Entrepreneur is.

Entrepreneurs have that special quality, the ability to reinvent something that may have been around for years but they put a new twist on it and make it different and attractive to an audience.

There are two examples that I can cite that will explain what I mean.

For many years kids grew up with a main attraction, the circus. Like many things in life it became stale and repetitive and the public starting losing interest. Then came along an entrepreneur with an idea and reinvented the circus, Cirque de Soleil, and the rest is history.

Coffee, a well-established drink in the USA but someone thought of selling coffee on every street corner, again the rest is history.

My point is that entrepreneurs think outside the box, they look at things from a different perspective. Too many people look at business in black and white, how about 50 shades of grey!

I had examples in my business life when I created businesses that were different, not necessarily new. I put a new slant on ideas and presented them in another form which was acceptable.

When I started my publishing business, the prime objective of a publisher of a trade magazine was to get a readership amongst buyers. I saw an opportunity to reach people who recommended products. This was a totally different approach to the other magazines but my idea was good as the people who made recommendations did so every day. This worked and the magazine was an instant success.

My finance company would be in competition with every bank, or organization, that offered money; a very competitive business. The idea we came up with was to target a specific audience and we choose lawyers. It may sound strange as lawyers earn good money, they do, but they are not too good a running a business.

We realized that and we designed a loan scheme specifically for them. They needed cash at certain times of year to pay their errors and omissions liability insurance and taxes. The amounts were in many cases very large, usually in the millions and had to be paid on time. We created a specific idea which addressed these problems and this took us away from the banking world. We set out to be seen as a specialist lender just for lawyers. It worked very well.

If you are, or want to be, an Entrepreneur you must think an idea through and see why you will be different and better to what is on the market. Create a new approach. The most important thing is that the idea must be good for your customers as well as yourself. To sell an idea it has to make money for those you sell to, this is the way to guarantee success.

Passion, Expertise and Authority by Christopher Tracy

As with many business stories we hear about in Success magazine, and Inc Magazine, the word “passion” is thrown around as if it’s the very foundation for business success.

“Passion” is the media darling for successful startup stories. We hear people like Seth Godin talk about it. Brian Tracy swears by it. Tim Feriss thinks it’s a bonus to have.

Imran Md Ali, who is our featured guest of the month, shares with us his understanding of the word “passion” in the context of entrepreneurship.

Imran is a co-author of Kaizen Business Principles with the legendary Brian Tracy (www.BrianTracy.com) and also author of 2 other books, The 10 Step Marketing Formula and Creating Marketing Breakthroughs, which are available at Amazon and also Barnes and Noble.

In an interview with Imran, he shares with us why passion is the core foundation for business success, and why passion alone will not be sufficient to ensure success.

There are two things which he says are needed, on top of passion alone in order to succeed. The first, is Genuine Domain Expertise.

Genuine Domain Expertise is simply being a real expert in whatever niche or industry you’re in. So if you’re in the restaurant marketing industry, the definition of an expert in Imran’s dictionary, is “someone who is in the top 5 percentile in terms of knowledge in restaurant marketing.”

It simply means that you have to keep learning, and gravitate towards the top of your class (or niche)

This, according to Imran, will give you a platform to operate from. People prefer to work with experts, and experts get paid more for less work too. The reason for this is because we are living in world where expertise is rewarded, and generality is punished with mediocre pays and prospects for jobs.

Here are 2 tips Imran gives to establish instant expertise.

1) Read up for one hour each day, about a topic in your market. At the end of the year, you’d have read about 400 hours worth of material and this should allow you to establish your expertise.

2) After reading, aim to apply your new-found knowledge for free as practise for clients. So if you’re a relationship guru, give away your advice for free in the beginning to practise what you have just read. This concretizes your new found knowledge.

Another aspect of passion would be authority.

Now, in a world where everyone claims to be an expert of some sort, you’d have to climb further, harder, and longer than the rest to establish yourself as a real authority in your marketplace.

Imran Md Ali shares some of the things you can do to establish authority

1) First, get some media coverage. Media coverage is a quick path to endorsed authority. Why? We have, as consumers, been trained to trust the media. How do you get media, you might ask?

Imran advises you to create a newsworthy angle. Get a PR expert to write up a press release, and send it out to all local news channels and magazines/papers. A reporter would inevitably find your story interesting enough to feature it.

Once you have gotten this initial exposure, snowball it by approaching other media sources and showing that you have been featured before. Keep on creating news angles that the media would love and try to be a media darling, and this would pay off in the long term.

2)Secondly, create a blog or website that showcases your past and current work. This is a site that allows you to store your bragging rights. State your achievements on this page and don’t be shy about it at all.

This way, when someone Googles for your name, your blog will appear and they can find out more about you- And the best part is, your website says only the good things about you!

That’s it then. Two things accompany passion, and those are 1) Expertise and 2) Authority

Apply what you have learnt and you will soon be on your way to dominating your industry or marketplace.

Guest Interview written by Christopher Tracy, CEO of CLT Holding and Imran’s marketing client in 2011.

MOM 2.0 Summit 2013

AN OPEN CONVERSATION BETWEEN MOMS + MARKETERS
Social Media Influencers. Industry Leaders. Leading Brands.

Meet smart people. Hear success stories. Discover what’s working. Discuss ways to create smarter creative content, impactful web-based marketing, as well as new programs, people, and platforms that engage your audience and build relationships.

May 2-4 2013

I’ll be a speaker at this event!!!

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