STOP CALLING EVERYONE AN ENTREPRENEUR
We have gotten a bit carried away with the “entrepreneur label” stop it. So many people in Nigeria consider themselves entrepreneur without even knowing what been an entrepreneur entails. In Nigeria, every Wale, Musa and Chidi goes about with the entrepreneur title not knowing that they are small business owners. Entrepreneurship is so much more than having a business.
Too many people confuse entrepreneurs from small business owners. A lot more people are qualified to run a grocery shop than take companies from inception, through market, funding and growth to IPO.
Now you may be asking, "who is an entrepreneur”
An entrepreneur is someone who is motivated to begin a start up. They seek to provide radical solution to huge problems with the use of breakthrough technologies that will make that solution possible. An entrepreneur has an insatiable need for more, more and more. They can’t stop. They are fearless and driven to maximize opportunity. An entrepreneur aims for improvement over what currently exist. They don’t dare to be different, they are different.
A small business owner, on the contrary, build business incrementally, bit by bit. They often solve smaller, localized problems with their business and are not looking to radically move the needle. These people are the broad base of employment in Nigeria. Everywhere you go in every street are littered with small businesses. They cover a lot of surface area but aren’t disrupting the status quo, creating entire new fields, or accelerating an entire market forward.
Small business owner seek lower risk and their goal is sustaining a living for themselves and their employees. Furthermore, their products and services often live in the realm of the known and established. They live and operate in their local community. That local tailor that has been in your street for 20 years is a business owner also that young guy that just opened a barbing salon in your area, that bet 9ja agent and that freelance web designer are all small business owners not entrepreneurs.
When we talk of entrepreneurs, we need to mention those people who discovered a new world, who aim for improvement in fields and business ideas that already exist, who provided radical solutions to problems that we never thought possible. People like Aliko Dangote who gave us a FCMG company we can be proud of, Linda Ikeji who open our eyes to what blogging is, CEO’s of Konga and Jumia who introduced the E-commerce gig to us, our very own Dangote and Mike Adenuga who without him we wouldn’t have known what per second billing is all about.
These people are true entrepreneurs. Bigger is always better for them and that’s the one facet of their business that has held lasting values with customers through the years.
10 posts in less than 24 hours?
Hello, we are glad to have you here and happy that the Nigerian community is growing on Steemit. However we noticed that :
You have no introductory post. This is usually your best shot at starting well. We advise that you go through the #introduceyourself tag for inspiration and guidance.
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Wonderful post.
I'm a small business owner... and I get what you are saying. Most of my work is doing small improvements consistently over time. The things I do help people, but they aren't really big ideas. At least in the business I currently own.
Thanks for writing this.
Thanks and thanks