THE ANATOMY OF AN ENTREPRENEUR

The fastest way to succeed is entrepreneurship. When your boss stresses you, quit and start your own business. When you become an entrepreneur, you have all the time to yourself. No one tells you what to do as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is the way to go!

This and many fallacies have perhaps been debunked by young entrepreneurs in Ghana. 'Go to school, get good grades and get a good job' was perhaps the first victim of entrepreneurship.

In a good attempt to create jobs and help solve the challenges of unemployment whiles contributing significantly to the economy, some critical young achievers purposed to shame the mantra of joining the long list of job seekers, rather be a delight for their colleagues and others by absorbing them into their entrepreneurial business'.

The landscape of entrepreneurship has however proved unfriendly for many and very importantly a lot have learnt the rudiments of the game in a rather rugged approach.

In this publication, I get to share with you the unedited post of my good friend, Jeremiah Buabeng; a business leader who runs a group of companies with the plush Enije Restaurant, located at Caprice in the heart of Accra.

In his rendition, he presents more light to bring clarity to the doubts, dilemmas and fantasies that many have on our subject matter. I consider his expose as essential building blocks of an entrepreneur.

Enjoy the read:

Entrepreneurship is dangerous. It can kill you. Or at best, give you mental health issues. It can make you depressed or even worse, take you to prison. This is no exaggeration. An entrepreneur has to wear so many hats and fight so many battles at the same time that it can wear you out. Your job hard but e no hard pass Entrepreneurship. 

An entrepreneur has to work on Sales; the job of getting customers to buy your product. That's the hardest part of a business. For every 100 people you approach to sell to, only 10 or less will show interest. Eventually, only two may buy. Sometimes, none. Then you have to start with your next 100. You can go about 5 rounds of such 100s and not even get 10 customers. You can go months without making substantial money yet you are working with staff who will be paid, you are using airtime, data, and fuel to attend several meetings, and designing and printing proposals. 

Whilst working on getting new customers, you also have to pay attention to the work being done for current customers. That's the work of Operations. They think they are the ones who do all the work. They have no idea how hard it is to get the client to give you the job. And very often they are the ones who mess up the job, get the client upset and make your business unable to get word-of-mouth referrals. They can make mistakes that can cost you thousands of cedis. And you probably took a loan to even finance the job. You also have to deal with tantrums from some customers, some who expect you to answer to their calls/msg at night, at dawn and on weekends. You are with your wife at 10pm then customer is calling. 

Then there's your biggest problem; people. The employees whom you pay salaries to help you carry your burdens will themselves become a burden. It's called Human Resource Management. You have to deal with those who are underperforming, those coming to work late or not coming at all, those with attitudes and behaviors that don't align with your vision for the business, those who cannot be taught or corrected, hiring and training new people, firing old ones, persuading good people who want to leave to stay, dealing with betrayal of those who pretended to want to stay but were planning to leave, dealing with disappointment of those you trained from scratch who are now misbehaving, etc. Some will steal your clients, steal your monies, steal your supplies and steal your joy. 

And then there's Administration, Accounting and Finance.  That stretches from ensuring proper record keeping of sales and expenses, invoicing, receipting, suppliers, inventory management and dealing with banks. There is that big demon called loan repayment. You can raise hundreds of thousands of cedis to finance a business or project yet it will turn out poorly and your loaners will be calling and threatening you. Meanwhile, you owe landlord rent. GRA is chasing you. SSNIT has sent you a letter that they are taking you to court. Municipal Assembly is chasing you to pay BOP. Employees are angry about salary delay. You, one person, fighting battles on multiple fronts. Such a dangerous undertaking. It can maim you for life! 

Written by Samuel Agyeman-Prempeh