The most common notion amongst us is that entrepreneurship and business ownership mean one thing. However, this is just a notion, but the fact is that entrepreneurship has many layers or levels to it.
Entrepreneurship is a five-part journey to becoming a business owner, just as there are levels in other walks of life, e.g. sports. When a person says they are a dancer or a singer, one might wonder at what level they dance or sing?
When one starts their journey as an entrepreneur, that is just the first step towards the final objective, and one merely doesn’t become rich and successful at that first level. There are many hurdles to pass to be able to move on to the next level and learn in the process to achieve the goals finally.
Research says 80% of the businesses fail in the first five years mainly because the entrepreneur hasn’t progressed from one level to the next or jumped the main learning of how the business needs to reach its optimum level to make profits!
Let’s look at these levels and understand why it is essential for every entrepreneur to have gone through each level to achieve success in their endeavour.
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Self-Employment
This is the stepping-stone for an entrepreneur. Here they learn all the basic skills crucial to any business, from production to sales and marketing, management, accounting, legal, finance and HR.
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Employer/Manager
This is a kind of transit in between the first and the third step. Here an entrepreneur learns how to hire the right kind of employees, manage and train them; although the entrepreneur himself handles most of the work himself at this level, he prepares the new employees for the next level.
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Owner/Leader
At this stage, an entrepreneur is at a very different point as they were at the level. Here is where an entrepreneur leaves quite a bit of control over day-to-day activities to their employees and plays a role of overlooking them rather than being an active part of them. This is when he becomes a business owner in the true sense. It is also when a business owner needs to pay attention to cash flow and capital and prep to go on to the next level.
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The Investor
Cash flow, investments to raise capital are crucial for a business to thrive and continue making profits. At the investor level, the entrepreneur needs to make sure of having foolproof plans in place. Also, at this level, an entrepreneur needs to learn how to make wise investments in business, real estate and the stock market.
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The Entrepreneur
This is the final level where an entrepreneur can be called one after going through all the gruelling levels and at the upper end of the learning curve.
