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The overwhelming majority of the richest people of the world are involved in entrepreneurship in one way or another. It is almost impossible to reach the highest income ranks as a wage earner. An exception to that rule is individuals who are world class in some professions. For example best actors, singers, and professional athletes. In other cases you have to do some business in order to become ultimately rich.

Only a relatively small number of people deal with entrepreneurship. Although the entrepreneurial activity is different in different countries, the number of self-employed is roughly 10% of the employed in the western countries. It means that only one out of ten deals with business and the rest of people are employees. Why so few people choose entrepreneurship, when it is practically the only way of getting very rich. One reason is the fact that although some business-owners are extremely wealthy, on the average the self-employed are not much richer than employees. There are many small businessmen all over the world which have not created a decent income despite the fact that they have dealt with their businesses for several years. Some people do not earn anything form entrepreneurship, their businesses go broke and the entrepreneurs loose their investments, which in many cases come from their personal savings.

The second reason for such a low share of entrepreneurs is a widely spread belief that most people are not good in doing business their personality is not suitable for that. This can be used for explaining the fact that many businessmen are unsuccessful and cannot reach high earnings. Usually the personal traits which are required for doing business successfully are the following

• Desire for achievement and will-power. Entrepreneurship requires continuous and goal-oriented action. There will always be drawbacks and it may take some time to gain success. Doing business is suitable for those who like to commit them themselves to achieving results in longer perspective.
• Desire for independence. Entrepreneur is his own boss, in many cases his quite individualistic by his nature. Entrepreneurship is not suitable for people who like chatting with colleagues and passing time doing nothing. If there is no boss, it means that no one will give you detailed orders what you have to do, the entrepreneur has to decide it on his own.
• Self-confidence and optimism. Entrepreneurship is about making choices. What is the best price for your product? How to advertise your product? How many and what kind of employees do you need? How much you will pay them? An entrepreneur has to make such decisions every day. If you are indecisive or sceptic about future then it is difficult to be a businessman. Entrepreneur has to pursue its goals without being too much worried about the possibility of failure. Entrepreneur has to pursue profits not avoid losses.
• Risk tolerance and eagerness to act in uncertain situations. No business is completely risk-free. Although preparation, gathering information and commitment to your business will reduce the risks, there is no possibility to totally eliminate them. Entrepreneur’s income is unstable over the years, one year he may earn millions of profit, the next year he may get losses. If you like stable and fixed income, then entrepreneurship is not for you.
• Inclination to fast decisions and action. The world is changing faster and faster. Entrepreneur can not wait long with his management decisions or the competitors will be ahead of him. In doing business, there is frequently not enough time for sophisticated analysis, but you have to make a good enough decision during a short period of time.

Most of people think that those kinds of traits are inborn or at least formed in childhood or youth and therefore people, who are lacking these characteristics, think that they are not suitable for entrepreneurship. In fact, as far as they do not possess these characteristics doing business may not be successful for them. But actually it is possible to develop entrepreneurial traits even if you are grown-up. First of all it means altering your thinking. We can change our attitudes towards risk. We can develop diligence and dedication. We can train ourselves to make fast decisions. We can get used to unstable earnings. We can make a habit of acting without orders of the boss. If we think a little then we find that we can acquire all those characteristics, which were listed above. Of course, the question is that are we ready to change ourselves and do we want to work hard on that. If yes, then we can be successful entrepreneurs.

kristjan Business business skills, doing business, earnings, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, personality

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It is a well-known myth that you need money for making money. Lots of people claim that they could be running some kind of business projects, if they only had the starting capital. Many people, who have made plans of starting entrepreneurship, bring lack of capital as an excuse for not getting ahead with their plans.

But do we really need money for making money? In fact, there exist lots of examples, when huge amounts of starting capital have been unnecessary for creating a very profitable business. One of the best examples is YouTube. It was founded in February 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. It started from the search of a sensible method to share videos over the internet for personal use. In November 2006, Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion US$.

But what happens when a person with insufficient financial knowledge acquires a huge amount of money. It can be possible by winning a lottery or inheriting some funds. In many cases the equity gained by a windfall is partially or totally lost. You may think that they just spend it, but this is not the most common case. More often they lose their money by disastrous investments or bad business deals. If you suddenly have a lot of money, it does not make you an investor or a businessman. You are not smarter than before. Frequently, having a big sum of money leads to an excessively high level of self-confidence and underestimation of business risks. In many cases, those newly rich get many business offers from their friends, who are not professionals either, and so they get involved in business project with doubtful value.

Too much capital can be disastrous for a starting company, as it could lead to inefficient action. If you have lots of capital, then you are likely to start from the very beginning with relatively high office, communication, marketing, transport and other costs. You are likely to use many standard, expensive and inefficient solutions for your business processes. But, in the situation where you have a limited amount of starting capital, you are forced to work out how it is possible to run your business on low costs. It forces you to be creative and flexible and develops entrepreneurial habits.

To start a successful business you firstly need the skills. Many people think that you need to have a good business idea, but actually a good idea is useless, if you are not able to apply it. There are lots of people, who have many good business thoughts, but who will not be able to put them into practice. But if you have the necessary skills for entrepreneurship then it is always possible to apply other people’s ideas. The most important skills for entrepreneurship are:

• Creativity and flexible thinking. In order to be better then your competitors, you have to do things better than they do. The most successful businesses are based on both new ideas and new ways of applying these ideas. Why most of the businesses do not make much money? Because they follow a well-known path, their products and services are not distinguishable from their competitors’ ones and they are just copies of other businesses. They are just another hardware store, travel agency or restaurant.
• Ability to predict future. The world is changing faster and faster. Products, services, production processes, marketing and customers’ needs are constantly changing. So, in order to cope, the entrepreneur must be able to see what the future will look like, and take necessary actions.
• Ability to attract capital and labour. An entrepreneur must be able to sell his idea to employees or owners of the capital. You have to attract other people’s money to raise capital. You have to attract people to your team, who are impressed by your plans and who will enthusiastically contribute their time and effort for your success.
• Ability to take action efficiently. An entrepreneur cannot just sit, do nothing and wait for the end of the day. Business is to a great extent, putting things into practise. You have to be able to manage yourself and your time, plan your action and avoid wasting time on rubbish.

Fortunately, we can enhance all our skills, which means that we can get better and better with our business skills if we work on them. The progress is not made overnight, but if we devote our effort to constant improvement, we gradually get better every day. In the end we will be able to do everything we did not even dare to dream before.

kristjan Business business project, business skills, creativity, financial knowledge, self confidence