What Analysis Should a Start-up Entrepreneur Do? – LOOKING WITHIN (SELF-ANALYSIS)
Do you have what it takes to go into business? A successful entrepreneur possesses personal qualities that will help him grow and thrive his business. Extensive research by the Management Systems International reveals ten Personal Entrepreneurial Competencies (PECs) that lead to success. These are grouped into what are known as the Achievement Cluster, the Planning Cluster, and the Power Cluster.
Take a look at these competencies. Try to see if you have some of them and to what extent.
ACHIEVEMENT CLUSTER
1. Opportunity-seeking
* Perceives and acts on new business opportunities
* Seizes unusual opportunities to obtain financing, equipment, land,
workspace or assistance.
2. Persistence
*Takes repeated or different actions to overcome obstacles
* Makes sacrifices or expends extraordinary effort to complete a task
* Sticks to own judgment in the face of opposition or disappointments
3. Commitment to work contract
* Accepts full responsibility for problems encountered
* Helps own employees to get the job done
* Seeks to satisfy the customer
4. Risk-taking
* Takes calculated or studied risks
* Prefers situations involving moderate risks
* Demand for quality and efficiency
* Always strives to raise standards
* Aims for excellence
* Strives to do things better, faster, cheaper.
PLANNING CLUSTER
6. Goal-setting
* Sets clear and specific short-term objectives
* Sets clear long-term goals
7. Information-seeking
* Personally seeks information on clients, suppliers, and competitors
* Seeks experts for business or technical advice
* Uses contacts or networks to obtain information
8. Systematic planning and monitoring
* Develops logical, step-by-step plans to reach goals
* Looks into alternatives and weighs them
* Monitors progress and shifts to alternative strategies when necessary to achieve goals.
POWER CLUSTER
9. Persuasion and networking
* Employs deliberate strategies to influence or persuade others
* Uses business and personal contacts to accomplish objectives
10. Self-confidence
* Believes in self
* Expresses confidence in own ability to complete a difficult task or meet a challenge.
WHAT ELSE IS IN YOU THAT WILL ORIENT YOU TO BUSINESS?
While you are looking at yourself, consider what else is in you that will orient you towards a business. Think experience, education, hobbies and interests.
1. What previous jobs have you held that may help you succeed in business? Teachers,
for example, start tutorial services or schools. Seamstresses go into garments and soft toys manufacture. Carpenters into sash making or contract work in construction.
2. Do you have a hobby that you can expand into a business? It can be interior designing, pottery, embroidery or baking.
3. Have you had technical training on which a business can be based? Perhaps you have taken up auto repair? computer assembly? bookkeeping? or welding/forging?
4. Are you genuinely interested in getting into a potentially risky business rather than a stable 8 to 5 job?
LOOKING OUTSIDE
After looking into yourself – your personal qualities, your interests, skills, experiences and hobbies and how these would orient you towards a business of your own, you may now look around. See if the environment is a conducive one for entrepreneurship.
Here are some questions to ask about the “outside world.”
1. How adequate is the infrastructure for business in your community, province or city? Are there enough provisions for basic requisites like roads and bridges, power and water, telephone, postal and internet facilities, as well as banking services?
2. Is the environment peaceful, safe and orderly? Investing hard-earned money is already a big risk. Operating in an unsafe environment makes it even more risky.
3. What are the incentives, assistance programs and other support that the national and local governments make available to business, especially to small, start-up businesses? Ask about tax exemptions and discounts, low-interest financing, technical assistance, marketing and promotional services, training, etc.
4. How prepared is the government bureaucracy to serve the needs of businessmen? Are civil servants courteous and service-oriented? Are procedures and requirements for business registration, for example, clear and simple?
5. Study national and local market trends, business growth and market share, purchasing power of the public, confidence in the economy.
6. Study imports. What goods does the country import from abroad? What goods and services does your particular community or town “import” from Manila and other big cities? Think whether you can provide these goods and services locally. This is known as “import substitution”.
7. Think of other possibilities: subcontracting, a promising way by which small firms can start supplying parts or services for bigger companies; public sector purchasing, which small businesses might explore because government offices are required by law to purchase supplies from local producers; and franchising, dubbed as the “business with the least fears”.
Source: Bureau of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Development
Website: www.dti.gov.ph