Five things you should know before becoming an entrepreneur

Whenever entrepreneurship is mentioned the likes of Steve Jobs of Apple Inc, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic, Jack Ma of Alibaba, John Bezos of Amazon and Aliko Dangote of Dangote cement ring the mind. These are only but a few individuals who were fearless and started small while dreaming big.

Being an entrepreneur is a lonely road of setbacks, discouragement, failure after failure, brokenness only few can survive the journey, but with perseverance and persistence, anyone can reap big.

Entrepreneurship is always compared with athletics; where you spend hours in the gym and in the track trying to beat the best time, you can do it, but you don’t beat the best time the first day you compete in the track. The more time you spend in the gym and in the track not only do you grow muscle but also you come closer to beat the best time.

Almost every entrepreneur started with small resources or no resources at all. This is the reason most renowned entrepreneurs at one time either became bankrupt, kicked out from their own companies they built from scratch but still found their way up the food chain.

In most instances, masses are advised to tap on their passion either in sports, fitness, food, public speaking, music, yet it is not the only way. In the world of entrepreneurship, imitation is well served if you can imitate a product that is best for you. This is demonstrated well in the phone making industry.

Apple’s iPhone and iPad products have been imitated by a number of competitors, such as HTC and Samsung and competitors in China have taken imitation to extreme levels, with fake iPods, iPhones, and iPads. The better you are at imitation, the better you can be an entrepreneur.

The entrepreneurs of this generation know that every failure is a lesson that gets you close to success. Mark Cuban an American businessman and investor, owner of the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks and a main investor in the Shark Tank television series once quoted “I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how many times you failed. You only have to be right once. I tried to sell powdered milk. I was an idiot lots of times, and I learned from them all.”

The only way to start a business is to start right away. Entrepreneurs are people who have balls, balls to try and fail and try again till they get it right. So, go out and launch a product or start a service, and the world will appreciate why you never started earlier.