ARE YOU A TOTAL ENTREPRENEUR?

BY ROBIN GHOSH
( FORMER CHIEF ECONOMIST, BENGAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY)
KOLKATA, 1 AUGUST, 2022

Before we proceed to learn other important lessons for starting up a company, let us pause. Let us rethink. Let us blink. Now, you have to answer an existential question.  Are you a total entrepreneur? The first question. Are you ready to take financial risk?Do you have the capacity? If you are in a job and a family to look after do you have enough financial resources to provide say for two to three years ?If you are planning to start a business after completing your college, do you have enough elbow room in your family to take care of you and your personal and business expenses.

The second check is an introspection . Self discovery. Self analysis. A peep into your
mental model. Your emotional quotient. Major attributes of a total entrepreneur consists of having deep interest in problem hunting , finding pain points of customers and a passionate urge to solve the jinks. You have to realise that you are the leader of your startup team . Hence, you must have a deep interest and hunger in designing a product or service, shaping and polishing it so that it solves the customers problem. The product or service should delight the customers. Being an entrepreneur and leader of the startup team, your focus should be to create a magical UI or user interface and UX, user experience.

Question yourself. Do you have this X factor in you? The other X factor you need to have is an aptitude for sales. Understanding business is sales. You have to sell your product or service to customers. You have to sell your project to investors. You have to sell your persona to attract talented people. If selling is not in your gut, if selling bores you, you have to think twice whether you are fit to be an entrepreneur. The other quality of a total entrepreneur is an attitude. A mindset to fight and win the war. You have to be like a sherpa ready to climb the peak at all cost.