Should I Be An Entrepreneur?
With jobs in Africa seeming to be few and hard to get, the advice most people get is to “start a business” or “be an entrepreneur”. That is easy advice to give. It only takes a few seconds to say, and people do not seem to realise how much work goes into being a business owner or being an entrepreneur. In this article, we answer the question: “should I be an entrepreneur?”
When choosing a career, it’s easy to restrict yourself to a career path dictated by grades and scorecards. That might have been the way to go in the past, but as the world around us evolves and the world of work changes alongside, Africa must also evolve and its youth will drive this evolution. This evolution can only be successful if each one of us discovers why we should do what we are supposed to do.
Starting with discovering your “why” is a purpose and problem discovery technique that a lot of businesses use today. It has become popular with Simon Sinek’s Start With Why and the Root Cause Analysis (a technique where you keep asking why until you get to the root cause). As useful as it is in business, it can be even more useful and powerful when applied to personal purpose discovery.
The choice to be an entrepreneur is not just dependent on feeling unsatisfied with your current job or career path. Switching to starting a business is not the only path to financial freedom as most people would have you believe. Other paths exist to financial freedom involving passive income streams which do not require you to leave your 8–4 0 or 9–5.
As every entrepreneur or business owner will tell you, running a venture is a 24/7 job, far more intense than just an 8–4 or 9–5, 5 days a week.
In the end, it all comes down to your purpose. It might sound very obvious but not everyone is suited to be an entrepreneur. There are long days, short nights, wins and losses and so many things in between that don’t make it to the headlines. Rather than start a business, you could choose instead to upskill, become better at what you currently do and become more advanced in your current line of work. You might even become more appealing to competing firms, meaning that your value goes up in the eyes of your employer and in the eyes of your employer’s competition.
If that doesn’t work for you, then maybe you should start a business. After all, your purpose just might be to create value and be an employer of labour. Keeping track of inventory, orders and payments might give you that thrill, especially when the profits keep rising and you are smiling at your bank balance. Maybe you want to have your own account officer calling you from the bank just to say hello every once in a while and thank you for being a valued customer.
Whatever path you eventually choose, do not forget that it must tie in with your purpose. You do not want to lose motivation halfway through the journey and regret your choices. If it fits in with your purpose, then successes and failures along the way won’t distract you from your goal. Whatever happens along the way will seem like fun to you. No stress, just fun.
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