I often try to muffle my chuckle every time I hear someone introduce himself/herself as an entrepreneur. I was guilty of that once upon a time, but here is the deal-breaker: real entrepreneurs don’t call themselves entrepreneurs; it is people who refer to them as entrepreneurs.
Many people say they want to be entrepreneurs and I always encouraged such persons because I know that Nigeria could really use more creative and enterprising brains, but I also explain that there’s a big difference between ‘being an entrepreneur’ and ‘entrepreneurship’. In most cases, these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long gruesome hours of toiling with setbacks, trials and errors. You have to love entrepreneurship, not want to be an entrepreneur. The reality is that entrepreneurship is a lonely, private and neck breaking affair. For every entrepreneur kissed by fortune, there are a thousand more whose longings are never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty.
Now that the country’s unemployment has hit the roof, many people have suddenly discovered that they want to be entrepreneurs. Newly-minted graduates who otherwise would have joined Zenith Bank or Unilever Plc. now want to enter the start-up scene. Of course I would rather have them there than on the street begging or worse, robbing. However, too often, these folks quickly join the start-up scene, brainstorm a few ideas, pick one that seems plausible, hack up a product then buy a ghana-must-go bag they can use to take their money to the bank when the cash starts rolling in. Unfortunately, they almost never need that ghana-must-go bag. Entrepreneurship is a series of painstaking tasks involving thinking, planning and execution; the best companies are not usually started by people who ‘want’ to be entrepreneurs. They are started by people who are knowledgeable about a specific problem, are driven to solve it, and then get busy building a company to bring it to life.
In contrast, those who want to get rich by ‘being an entrepreneur’ often come up with ideas lacking proprietary interests. They will launch an undifferentiated e-commerce site with few barriers to entry or simply jump on a moving trend to create a “me-too” type of product. When they hit the inevitable bumps in the road, they easily give up because they lack the drive to overcome them, or they lack proprietary insights to outsmart competitors.
Ask any real entrepreneur (even the successful ones), and they will tell you that it was never about money. The urge to fill a gap and create sustainable solutions led them on the rickety entrepreneurial path. Although I would never discourage someone who is truly interested in start-ups. For what it’s worth, entrepreneurship is the surest – albeit not the easiest – means to wealth creation, but to venture into it, you must be ready to give it all you’ve got.
About the Writer: Badejoko Adewale is the founder of The Advocate For Transformational Change and the C.E.O of Krone Africa. He is a corporate speaker, start-up consultant and a serial-entrepreneur. He is @tha_krone on twitter.
