Approach of an Entrepreneur

About me: I am Hozefa Sabuwala an Indian rodinhood residing in Saudi Arabia. I have setup a business of chain of 4 stores (under the brand umbrella of TAG) in Riyadh dealing in apparels (Kids wear and Lingerie)

Approach of an Entrepreneur (Part I)

My goals and actions for TAG look great to me. I am excited to move along from past year and a half but time and again I feel something is missing. The results that I am looking require something more than just working. This something more is related to the approach apart from knowledge that is required to run the business. My concern is that I don’t know what that approach is.

I feel the need because of nervousness…………..I feel nervous to know that I don’t know the rules of this game of International business (export details, branding , customer knowledge etc.) I feel nervous to know that the big players in these businesses that are far more established then I could have thought of. I feel nervous that I shall not be able to compete with them with the current resources and all alone. I feel nervous to think how small steps can take me forward. (Getting some people to work with me, doing sourcing from India/China/Turkey etc seems to be getting lost).

I feel nervous because I know there is much more to this and the more I know that I need to know the more I feel the nervousness.

But all said and done, the strength of my dream is far more then the fear of nervousness

Entrepreneurship runs in families to a surprising degree. Children of business owners are more likely to start / purchase their own enterprise. Similarly children of business-owning parents are more likely than others to enroll in the entrepreneurship course offered by undergraduate an MBA programs. The challenges, the joys, the difficult choices and the rewards of business ownership are frequent topic of discussion around the dinner tables of business-owning families. The children learns ‘what’ and ‘how’ of enterprise ownership from these discussions and from many weekends and summers working in the family store or factory.

This was me then. I learned all this with my father in doing cassette business. My mom kept telling me that the best business is of the food business – a business that is always in demand irrespective of recession or no recession, flood or famine. Food was the necessity of people. I grew up with this thoughts and understood food, clothes, entertainment etc as necessity of life. I grew up with the thought of owning my own business. This thought (dream) kept growing and with different learning and experience of life it took shape of TAG stores in Riyadh, making me achieve my dream (of becoming an entrepreneur).

Economic history is filled with stories of great entrepreneurs like Edison and Howard Schultz, Rolling King and Herb Kellehe, Bill gates, Sam Walton etc. For every  entrepreneur recounted in the history, thousands of other goes unrecognized because they are either small or serve a limited geographical area: A chain of ten car wash facilities, a five employee company that installs and repairs home office and small business computer systems, a married couple that owns and operates two small restaurants and catering service etc etc.

These unsung entrepreneurs are no different from those great counterparts. At bottom, all of them do the same thing. They recognize a commercial opportunity and pursue it through an organization, their own managerial and technical talents and some combination of human and financial capital. In a nutshell that is what Sam Walton did. It is what Howard Schultz did – and it is what every enterprising business owner has done. And I will have to do the same if I aspire to be a successful entrepreneur.

Thus Entrepreneur to me became a “person who not only perceives an opportunity but also creates an organization to pursue it.”

Some scholars differentiates entrepreneur from what they call lifestyle enterprise. A lifestyle enterprise is a business venture with modest revenue and growth expectations. The owner is simply looking for a venture that will satisfy the financial needs of his or her family. It might be a retail store, a chicken farm or a shop that fixes home appliances. There is no expectation of creating national franchise of the business. One author has described lifestyle enterprise as ventures with 5 year revenue projection of less than $10 million. In his opinion more than 90% of all start-ups are lifestyle ventures.

I felt the nervousness because those approach/qualities are missing; those qualities that can give me the power to face this trepidation and make me take my dream to next level

Source: www.entrepreneur.com

Points to remember for me (and every aspiring entrepreneur)

The journey to entrepreneurship started with some clarity 

1. I want to start my chain of stores.
2. I need to perceive this opportunity by creating an organization. It cannot be done with my existing resources.
3. I am not a lifestyle entrepreneur or looking for only making a living concept out of this. However I shall start with this concept.
4. I don’t want to be from those fanatical entrepreneurs for whom business is life and life is business. (In fact there is noting called as work-life balance to me)
5. I need to learn and achieve many smaller goals before reaching the milestones.

I learned the approach hard way, scratching my brain, doing everything like talking to experts, reading, learning from others and understanding in practical life.

And the beginning begins…………..