Today was the first day of our Entrepreneurship class. I really did not know what to expect from this class. I knew what an Entrepreneur was but I really was not quite sure how it could really be taught in a class.
Chapter 1 talked about the basics of what entrepreneurship is. We learned some of the characteristics such as being innovative, confident, risk-taker, recognizes opportunities and, probably most importantly, hard-working. I believe that these are key traits for anything that you do in life, not just in business. Thinking outside the box, taking risks and believing in yourself are traits that will help you in many situations. Most likely, the most important trait of all is being a hard worker. Like Judy said in class today, she doesn't know an entrepreneur who isn't hard working. That is 100% true. You will not be a extremely successful business if you are not hard working.
Another important thing I learned today was how to classify small businesses. Technically speaking, a small business is any business that has fewer than 500 employees or less than $5 million in revenue. If you ask me, both of those things are not characteristics of small business. If you are a company and you have 400 employees, that seems pretty big to me. I would imagine, though, that often companies reach the $5 million in sales before they reach 500 employees. In just some of my interning and working so far I have heard of companies measuring employees by how many number of 40 weeks are worked. Which sounds confusing, but for one company I worked for it was something like if you worked 80 hours one week you were like considered 2 employees worked that week. But if you worked only 20 hours, you were considered only half an employee. So, I am not totally sure how they measure 500 employees.
We also looked at some of the many benefits and costs of being an entrepreneur. I believe that in many instances the benefits far outweigh the costs. I come from a family of farmers and small-business owners and I directly see the benefits that come from being your own boss. The book states that some of the benefits are Independence, financial reward, and personal satisfaction. Some of the costs are business failure, financial insecurity, and long hours of hard work. There is much risk in owning you own business. When you start out you may have to work 50, 60, or 70+ hours a weeks while you other friends just work their nine to five job. But, in the long run, you will get more satisfaction from your job and at the end of the day. When your friends retire from their job of 40 years they will get a nice watch and a going away party. While hopefully, if you own your own business, you will get to sell or pass down your business to you children.
Another key point we looked at today was being a social entrepreneur. This is basically using entrepreneurship to help people. I do believe this is a very important subject, and is good for helping not only the economy, but also individuals. However, before you can work on using entrepreneurship to help other people grow, I think you need to work on making sure you are a successful entrepreneur first
We looked at using different techniques to help a small business. One was using a SWOT analysis. Being a business major, I have covered SWOT analysis. It stands for analyzing a companies internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats. We also talked quite a bit about the hardest problem of small businesses which is raising capital. This is also one of the major reasons small businesses fail. There is the age old phrase you have to spend money to make money, and this is often the case in small businesses. You have to spend money on advertising, on machinery, and on employees; all of which takes capital.
Finally, we wrapped up class by watching Shark Tank. I have actually seen this show a couple of times before and found it very interesting. I was not really surprised by the "sharks" reactions to the two businesses. They seemed to love the mango thing, however, with all five of them being business experts, I think they saw that there just was not a whole bunch of money for them to make there, especially investing only $75,000. However, the "sharks" all seemed to love the "breathometer", and I don't blame them. It is a very cool little gadget. Everyone has smart phones these days and driving and driving is a super hot topic. The owner seemed to know what he was doing with both the manufacture of the product and the sales, especially selling it on the internet. I believe that all the "sharks" saw that this was a great idea and knew that they could make money by investing in this so I am not really that surprised all five wanted a piece of the action.
Overall, today I learned a fair amount about entrepreneurship and this is an area that I am very interested in and I look forward to learn more about it during the next two weeks.
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