Debunking The Biggest Misconceptions About Being an Entrepreneur or CEO

Misconceptions About Being an Entrepreneur or CEO- Over time, many startups are emerging with the goal of thriving successfully, admitting the number of failed businesses out there. Being an entrepreneur and building your business from scratch isn’t a walk in the park. However, the failure rate of new startups is estimated to be 90%, and 10% of new businesses are believed to not survive the first year.

First-time start-up founders have a success rate of 18%. Meanwhile, when a business starts to skyrocket, most people don’t know the back story of what it means to dream to be an entrepreneur or CEO, start and build a business and watch it go up or down. With so many misconceptions about being an entrepreneur, this content will expose you to several of the biggest misconceptions and will change your mind.

Biggest Misconceptions about Being an Entrepreneur or CEO

Here are some misconceptions about entrepreneurship that can prevent people from pursuing their own business ideas or make them less effective.

1. Entrepreneurship is for those who have lots of money (those who are wealthy):

More like telling someone: you’re an entrepreneur now or an aspirant, and the person goes, You have lots of money. I want to own my own business, but it demands capital, and I can’t deal with the thought of that. One of the biggest misconceptions people have is that one requires lots of money to start up a business.

Sometimes, they make up a price assumption without even doing proper research and countdown for a start strategy before concluding their dream of owning their own business. While having capacity of funds is good to take care of expenses, it doesn’t exempt you from starting with what you have.

2. Entrepreneurs are born, not made:

Some people believe that being an entrepreneur has to be an innate ability, something you’re born with. While some people make claims that “they’re born with the skills,” this is not entirely the case.

There are severe skills an entrepreneur should know and have to be successful; if you base on the fact that you’re not as smart as the other founder and then fold your sleeves, you’re never going to become a successful one.

Read More: 

• The Top 10 Communication Skills to have to be a Successful-Entrepreneurs
• 7 Effective Strategies I Used to Manage My Virtual Team Successfully
• 10 Executive ways to Start your Own company While Unemployed

3. Entrepreneurs have to do everything on their own:

Talk about being a jack-of-all-trades master of tiredness. You do not have to juggling everything on your own as an Entrepreneur. Smart entrepreneurs sometimes work more and try not to do everything on their own because you can’t possibly meet up like that. An entrepreneur leverages outsourcing to grow and speed up progress in tasks and goals. You’ll get to know more as you keep reading.

Read more:

• How to conduct staff appraisal and keep everyone motivated
• 7 Effective Strategies I Used to Manage My Virtual Team Successfully
• 7 Ways to Successfully Transit Your Business to Remote Work

4. Entrepreneurs are risk takers:

True entrepreneurs are high-risk takers, but you should know that a successful entrepreneur doesn’t take reckless risks. Taking any risk could either mare or make your business, so regardless of the fact that they are risk bearers, they are not reckless gamblers. They carefully evaluate risk and make careful decisions before taking any step.

5. Predicting cash flow is a task suited for those focused on financial management:

It is dangerous as an aspiring entrepreneur to put accounting as your last concern. If you are going to start your own venture, don’t have the mindset that all the boring number stuff should be for the bean counter or financial managers. There are some important details you shouldn’t blindly leave for an accountant. It may be their job, but as the founder of that business, you need to develop your financial literacy. You should know what cash flow forecasts, profits and loss statements, and balance sheets are. It’s all about numbers in business, and you shouldn’t neglect the skill of financial literacy

6. Entrepreneurs are lucky:

The most common misconception people have about entrepreneurs is that entrepreneurs are lucky. 

It’s funny how people neglect knowing the back story of a successful business and term the entrepreneur “lucky.” One can only be “lucky” if all his hard work and smart work pass off, and he needs no one validation to enjoy his result. Some startups can blow up after 12 years of consistency; some years, it could be more or less, and it all depends on the systems he can pull and the consistency.

7. Entrepreneurs work fewer hours than employees:

Another misconception is that entrepreneurs work few hours than employees. This is hardly the case because many entrepreneurs have to dedicate time to learn and unlearn so many things in order to see their businesses move. They wear multiple hats to run their businesses. This is evident in success stories shared by some of our well-known successful men and women, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, etc.

You must be committed to hard work and smart work to build a thriving business. Your employees may not work based on your passion for your company but more likely for their paycheck. They are likely to focus only on the responsibility they were recruited to do. As the owner, you’ll have to be sure that all of the strategies are effective and that nothing has a glitch.

These are, however, the top trendy misconceptions of being an entrepreneur that sometimes want to discourage aspiring entrepreneurs from pulling through with their business ideas. Here’s what to do when you have these kinds of misconceptions

What You Need To Know About Being an Entrepreneur or CEO To Up Your Game

Entrepreneurship is not only for the wealthy. All you have to do when you don’t have enough capital and don’t have investors or loans is to leverage bootstrapping. This means starting with personal savings or existing resources instead of relying on loans. Research burning problems in the industry you want to leverage and generate creative results for those problems. Find creative ways to leverage small capacity and gain a sustainable result, which you can use to up the game and push up. 

You can employ the bootstrap method:

• By not quitting your day job
• Make an estimate and determine how much is needed to get started.
• Decide if you want to go solo or look for a co-founder with the same vision and mission.
• Additionally, build an audience first before you make your first product launch. Be sure your prospective audience is prepped to love and get ready for the product launch.
• Create an MVP (minimum viable product). This means creating the most straightforward and basic version of your value proposition that will help you validate your idea and start generating revenue.
• Offer service to build trust. This could be a way to build a relationship with your potential audience. For example, give out a free offer.
• Source for fund opportunities like grants and crowdfunding.
• It is important to always track your spending to know cash flow problems. Do not only ignore it for the bean counter.
• When you want to think of giving up, think long term. It doesn’t just blow up; think of ways to improve creatively and skyrocket.
• When you’re faced with a downcast in business, don’t think about quitting; think about pivoting. What happened to the last strategy, and what can you do to be better?
• Outsource some tasks to more hands to attain results fast and smoothly.
• Stay focused and motivated remember your strong why.

Conclusion

Having gone through this content and found out the possible misconceptions about being an entrepreneur and what you need to know, it is high time to go back to your drawing board to sketch out new plans for your business idea. If you had relaxed on starting your business because of some of these myths, try bootstrapping, rinse and pivot, and watch your business skyrocket. Give it time, put in the work, patience, and consistency, and watch how your results will unfold in the next few months or years.