What Does It Mean To Be An Entrepreneur?

The road to entrepreneurship is often a treacherous one filled with unexpected detours, roadblocks and dead ends. There are lots of sleepless nights, plans that don’t work out, funding that doesn’t come through and customers that never materialize. It can be so challenging to launch a business that it may make you wonder why anyone willingly sets out on such a path.

Despite all of these hardships, every year, thousands of entrepreneurs embark on this journey determined to bring their vision to fruition and fill a need they see in society. They open brick-and-mortar businesses, launch tech startups or bring a new product or service into the marketplace.

An entrepreneur identifies a need that no existing businesses addresses and determines a solution for that need. Entrepreneurial activity includes developing and launching new businesses and marketing them, often with the end goal of selling the business to turn a profit.

An entrepreneur who regularly launches new businesses, sells them and then starts new businesses is a serial entrepreneur. Additionally, although the term “entrepreneur” is often associated with startups and small businesses, any founder of a successful household-name business began as an entrepreneur. Read more at getentrepreneurial.com.

60 Reasons Why Entrepreneurship Is Amazing

Every entrepreneur has a different story about why he or she decided to start a business. Some have known from day one that they wanted to work for themselves and others come up with ideas while working for someone else and decide to take the entrepreneurial leap. 

Most business owners will agree on one thing — being an entrepreneur is great. There are endless reasons for this, and every entrepreneur will have his or her own personal reasons as well. Here are 60 reasons, in no particular order, why I think entrepreneurship is amazing. 

You have full control over your destiny. You call the shots and make the decisions that ultimately determine the success or failure of your business. Nobody will get in the way of your vision.

Entrepreneurs are innovators. Think of all the new technology and ideas that have come to life over the past few years. Those were all once just an idea — but amazing entrepreneurs brought those ideas to life. Read 58 more reasons why entrepreneurship is amazing at entrepreneur.com.

How To Be A Successful Entrepreneur — No Matter Your Personality Type

Entrepreneurship is more about the journey than the destination. It takes a certain kind of spirit to succeed in the startup world, and while many different types of people make good founders, the best ones tend to share a few key qualities.

There’s no such thing as the “right” personality type to start and run a business, but the entrepreneurial spirit is real. Those who don’t come by those beneficial traits naturally can still cultivate them — they just have to work a little harder than the rest. Fortunately, entrepreneurs aren’t strangers to hard work.

That doesn’t mean introverts have to transform into extroverts to schmooze their way to the top. According to a recent survey by Creditloan.com on personality and working at a side hustle, extroverts are more likely to work more hours, but they don’t earn more. Read more at forbes.com.

If I Started Over as an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship has taught me more about life than I could have ever imagined. How to build relationships, frugality, dealing with stress, being able to sell, finding time to relax, and many more lessons.

Being an entrepreneur is incredibly exciting since every day is different and I constantly have to tackle problems and find solutions — while being underfunded and understaffed. On the contrary, it can be lonely but every moment and adventure entrepreneurship has taken me, has absolutely been worth it.

After college, I dove right into entrepreneurship despite $100k in student loans. Incredibly risky but the threat of time and scarcity are causing me to work much harder.

There is no job in the world I would rather have. Read more at medium.com.

Black Women Are More Likely to Start a Business than White Men

In the United States, an astounding 17% of Black women are in the process of starting or running new businesses. That’s compared to just 10% of white women, and 15% of white men.

Yet despite this early lead, only 3% of Black women are running mature businesses. To understand why this steep drop off occurs, and how to combat it, we analyzed data from interviews with more than 12,000 people, nearly 1,700 of whom identified as entrepreneurs and nearly 1,200 of whom own established businesses.

The research was part of our work with the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, an annual comprehensive survey of entrepreneurship rates and attributes, conducted in more than 120 economies since 1999. The large-scale survey is administered by academic research teams in each economy; we represent the U.S. team. Read more at hbr.org.

The Big Role Older Entrepreneurs Play in Business Innovations

Entrepreneurs over 55 are among the most active new business owners in America, starting companies at rates that exceed their younger peers. In fact, 80% of small business owners are over 45, according to the New York Federal Reserve.

Even coming out of the pandemic, older entrepreneurs are better positioned than their younger counterparts to succeed.

What’s not as obvious is the role that older entrepreneurs play in producing innovations.

For a whole host of reasons, the narrative of innovation — especially in the tech economy — centers on younger entrepreneurs. Paul Graham, an investor in entrepreneurs and a co-founder of the famous Silicon Valley business accelerator, Y Combinator, once quipped that “the cutoff in investors’ heads is 32… After 32, they start to be a little skeptical.”

This certainly maps to how the media typically portrays startup founders. But a closer look tells a different story. Read more at nextavenue.org.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker

Jon Tilley of ZonGuru: How To Successfully Ride The Emotional Highs & Lows Of Being An Entrepreneur

Being a founder, entrepreneur, or business owner can have many exciting and thrilling moments. But it is also punctuated with periods of doubt, slump, and anxiety. So how does one successfully and healthily ride the highs and lows of Entrepreneurship? In this series, called “How To Successfully Ride The Emotional Highs & Lows Of Being An Entrepreneur” we are talking to successful entrepreneurs who can share stories from their experience. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jon Tilley.

Jon Tilley is a successful entrepreneur & Amazon thought leader. After 15 years working as an account director & strategist for some of the top global digital agencies, Jon started his Amazon journey in 2014, launching multiple successful private label brands. Soon after, he launched ZonGuru, an all-in-one software toolset for Amazon Private Label Sellers. The company continues to develop tools ahead of the market and uses data-driven techniques to help its customers create and run successful Private Label businesses on Amazon. Read the interview at medium.com.

A Message from Acceler8Success Founder, Paul Segreto

We must…

The past 14-15 months have seen many scrambling to fight off challenge after challenge. Accordingly, actions have been mostly reactive. To many, it’s been a shear, exhausting act of survival.

Well, it’s time to make a complete shift back to being proactive.

If it’s a pivot to move forward in what may be a new normal, we must accept it. If it’s a drastic change that is required, we must act on it. If it’s a new direction that is inevitable, we must move toward it.

We must get back to playing to win as opposed to playing not to lose.

Even in the face of failure, we must dust off dreams that have been cast aside. We must pursue them once again. We must do so with purpose and conviction.

We must overcome negativity with a positive mindset. We must explore possibilities. We must capitalize on opportunities.

Life as we once knew it has changed. We must realize it for what it is. We must deal with it. We must adapt. We must take action.

We must act swiftly. We must act decisively. We must do so with aggressive plans to not only survive, but to thrive. We must accelerate success.

Growth and Success of an Entrepreneur

Many entrepreneurs become successful because of consistent growth. Growth is a key part to entrepreneurship and is stated by every successful entrepreneur. Bill Gates had to grow. Steve Jobs had to grow. Elon Musk had to grow. There is no entrepreneur without growth. Have you ever wanted to become an entrepreneur? Well, that’s not easy or hard. You just have to find your interest and do your best to become successful. It sounds easy, but finding your interest is the real hard part. 

But, you can also become an entrepreneur. The first step is to trust and believe in yourself. This will give you more confidence in the decisions you make. The next important trait you should have is taking risks and reducing fear because, when you make important decisions, you will have to take small or big risks and that will come with some fear, but you have to be strong, confident, and brave. If you want to partner up with some people, that is fine, but make sure you have good, trustworthy, and hardworking partners as well. The last and most important trait is that you have to be passionate about what you are doing, so make sure you find your interests. Read more at enterprist.com.

Why Every Entrepreneur Should Take an 8-Hour Shower Each Week: The Benefits of Creative Time

When do you get your most creative ideas for your business? I suspect it’s not during your normal busy workday or in the middle of a client meeting. Most likely, it’s when you are alone, relaxed, and allow your mind to wander. 

How many amazing ideas or aha moments have you had while taking a shower? Without distractions and to-do lists, creative ideas flow when mindlessly showering. Psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, author of Wired to Create, found that 72 percent of us get our best ideas in the shower.

As an entrepreneur, I want to keep generating ideas, improvements and creative innovations. I found that my days were filled with meetings, problem-solving, and doing day-to-day tasks. In spite of my best intentions to fit in creative time, it never seemed to materialize. My best creative ideas came to me in the morning while taking a shower, but were quickly forgotten as I sat down at my desk for the first meeting. Read more at entrepreneur.com.