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Brian's
Introduction
By
Brian Walsh (Founder & CEO of
Entrepreneur.co.za)
Although people always refer to bad management,
inability to penetrate market and lack of
planning as common reasons for failure in
business, it is my belief that people fail in
business because they go into business for the
wrong reasons, which often leads to choosing the
wrong business.
Business should be driven by passion. You need
to do what you feel passionate about. If you
don’t, the likely scenario is that when the
going gets tough, you are going to quit. If you
are truly passionate about something, you will
never give up. You will keep persisting until
you succeed, and that is one of the keys to
being a successful entrepreneur.
Once you know what you are passionate about, you
need to consider what type of business (business
model) you want to go into. There are a number
of different business models, for example, home
based, franchise, e-commerce, service,
manufacturing and so on. Deciding on a business
model should be driven by your personal vision.
Different business types have different
requirements and financial models. Knowing what
you want to achieve personally in life,
especially with regards to free time and
financial abundance, is what will help you
decide on a business model. Also knowing what
you want to achieve by owning a business will
help. For instance, choosing a franchise may
not be a good idea if you want to be creative in
product choice and marketing. Similarly, a home
based model is not necessarily a good idea if
you want to manage teams.
The other thing to consider, is how you earn
your money. There are three primary types of
revenue:
Contract Revenue
which is predominantly selling time, for
example, an accounting/bookkeeping company, a
design company, a PR company, etc.
Manufacturing/Retail Revenue
which is buying and selling products at
marked-up prices, or manufacturing products for
retail or direct selling.
Recurring Income
which is selling products on a license fee
basis, such as subscription websites - supplying
things that people use daily and pay for on a
usage basis. Classic examples of large recurring
income companies are Telkom and cell phone
companies.
Deciding what business and revenue model suit
you best is an essential step towards choosing
the right business. So, in summary, you need to
know what you are passionate about in order to
decide what industry will best suit you. Then,
based on your personal goals and vision, you
need to decide on a business and revenue model.
From there you can look at what business you
want to choose, based on ensuring that there is
a need that you can fulfill in the market within
your chosen parameters.
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