Are entrepreneurs born or made?

ARE ENTREPRENEURS BORN OR MADE?

This was an interesting question I was asked by one person of my audience when I was speaking on entrepreneurship to many members of VIWANGO micro-finance institution at Tanzania Bureau of standards (TBS) Saturday last week. My presentation was all about how one can develop his or her entrepreneurship conscious and start business? I also spoke on the way you can make your established business sustainable, therefore I called my presentation ENTREPRENEURSHIP CONSCIOUS DEVELOPMENT CLASS.

It was real a powerful presentation with a lot of motivating tips towards the audience this is according to my view towards their response and also the feedback I got from them after I finished my presentation, I also learnt a lot during the presentation especially the burning desire of many people to establish their own business and do it successful which is very important when you want to undergo or do anything successfully, you need to first have a burning desire which is mixed up with passion on such an activity/ business or whatever project you want to accomplish.

Briefing about the presentation I basically spoke on the following lines:

•    Understanding the meaning of entrepreneurship & business as a concept
•   Why do you need to be an entrepreneur
•  Values of entrepreneurship
•  Who is an entrepreneur
•  Behaviors of an entrepreneur
•   How to generate business idea and start a business 
•   Challenges and how to overcome them as an entrepreneur
•    How to make your business sustainable
•   Case study of a practical Tanzanian entrepreneur

I promise to post you the description of all these topics later just keep on visiting this site to learn for your personal dream fulfilling.

ARE ENTREPRENEURS BORN OR MADE?

My aim today is to let you know what was my answer to a question thrown to me by one of the participants, ARE ENTREPRENEURS BORN OR MADE?” it was real interesting question though I didn’t think it could happen, I was seated then I took off my chair and faced again the crowd of more than fifty people, I was smiling expecting them to understand me because I believed they were then believing on me that I m going to give them a right answer on that, my passion was to encourage all of them but also making them enthusiastic to start their entrepreneurship ventures.

I started by telling them “entrepreneurs are born and also made” I looked at them they were like surprised and I increased the level of their desire to listen and understand more on this. Then I continued: “each one of you here is different from another in terms of personality, each one was created and born with unique characters and abilities which cannot be resembled to anyone’s else, what I mean is everyone here is unique, I am unique I have some abilities and talents which you will never have and you are unique with talents and abilities which I will never reach you because that is how God differentiated us, the only setback most of us have is to identify and use those abilities, talents and uniqueness to win failure, a thing which 2% out of 100% people does and they become successful and entrepreneurs.

Coming back to a question in relation to those personal unique abilities there are people who have personal characters which correlate directly with entrepreneurship values and make them fast winners in a venture, for instance there are people who are good at convincing and influencing people to accept what they say the ability which enables to negotiate with customers if it is in doing any business, these kind of people as they get an opportunity to do business or get a business idea then they win as a result people start believing that they were born entrepreneurs.

There are other people whom God gave them an ability to sharply see and discover new things, they have sharp eyes and quick cognitive mind to uncover the hidden opportunities and other have natural ability to force things, persist until they realize what they intend to find then these people when enter in an entrepreneurship venture win massively. I told the audience that I categorize these kind of people as born entrepreneurs because whether we like or not they could become entrepreneurs no way out though there are people who have these natural character but still are not entrepreneurs and are poor people, for their case they must be lacking some personal motivations and may be they have been living in a de-motivating environment but mind you when they get a chance they do great.

Side two I told them that entrepreneurs are also made. Everyone has a great ability and authority to dictate anything he or she wants to achieve as long as is his/ her passion i.e. he or she loves it. You can just learn and understand it and then pursue it as a result you must win. Many big entrepreneurs in the world didn’t think that they would become the way they are now they just got an idea to do business due to different factors around them, some were just life challenges and some were friends they usually spend time with are entrepreneurs, relatives etc then when they made a decision to start their business with their burning desire it worked as they started learning about such fields or kind of business in different ways: attending workshops, to people who do a kind of their business but mainly from their mistakes during business undertaking so in a long run they were/ are making themselves entrepreneurs.

 

Entrepreneurship is a kind of behavior which is built up with different values like

•   Being visionary
• Having Integrity
• Servicing above self
• Tenacity  (confidence and believing in yourself)
• Persistence
• Be disciplined etc.

If you just practice and learn what these values mean to you and how they work when doing any profit making business then you will be consumed by entrepreneurship behavior and as you keep your momentum and become addicted with this values then your business will be sustainable as a result you will become among the 2% successful entrepreneurs in the world

You can make yourself an entrepreneur by finding a business idea of your passion, a business which you love to do then learning important skills about it and importantly start doing by whatever you have in hand and on the way you will get all which are important to have in your business.

I concluded my brief presentation, answering a question by telling the participants that ENTREPRENEURS ARE BORN BUT ALSO ARE MADE, they are born in the sense that there are people who were born with a character which directly corresponding to entrepreneurship values and behavior and for all of you who think you cannot become entrepreneurs because you were not born entrepreneurs please delete such a negative thought and attitude in your mind, nobody was really assigned to become an entrepreneur or not an entrepreneur while in a womb of your mummy it was just after you were born, it is just our personal natural character which makes some of us said to be born entrepreneurs and some made themselves entrepreneurs after some learning experience sometime later in the world. 

Think big, find your own passion to explore opportunities around you and start working on it you will win and become a great entrepreneur you have ever seen in the world, it is possible and you have such an authority to dictate.

I wish you good luck as you are thinking and becoming an entrepreneur

Erick Chrispin.