Another year dawns - as always, 2014 gives us the opportunity to look at the world with fresh perspectives. It will offer many new challenges along with new opportunities but just how will you make use of those opportunities? Are you ready to finally give life to that great idea you have been nurturing – are you confident enough to make the final plunge?





Entrepreneurs’ prime motives
The road from a steady job to a gradual, entrepreneurial job is never easy – but the final result is worth it. Ask any would-be entrepreneur. It is not only the flexibility and the joy of working for yourself but also the fact that you are doing something you have always wanted to, on your own terms. And that feels good.
For every successful and hardworking entrepreneur, 10 others would hold back and fold up their idea for a sunnier day. There will never be that perfect day on the horizon – the time for every great idea is now. As the new year takes shape, so can your big idea. Just remember to do your homework before hand so that you can be sure of what you are getting into.

A busy Singaporean businessman who realized one day that his back-to-back busy lifestyle has resulted in his two-year-old son being alienated from him, chucked up his career in favour of a workable entrepreneurial venture – the franchise for a gym that targets children. He says although the venture was risky at the beginning, he was enjoying the time he was putting in because it allowed him to spend time with his family.

Entrepreneurs have various reasons to do what they do and not all of them are cantered on making money. If you study the various learning curves some of the world’s best-known entrepreneurs have taken, you will notice that monetary concerns were not always their prime motives.  




What Michael Dell did
Take the case of Michael Dell, the man who single-handedly turned the business he founded in his dorm room into a global powerhouse. He could have left Dell in the hands of the team that was handling it and walked out with the money he had already made into early retirement. After all, he had seen and done a lot more than others, built a name for his company and himself.

But Dell wasn’t done. Ever the entrepreneur, Michael Dell never forgot why he started Dell in the first place - he took his company from a public one to private, raising billions from a private equity firm and throwing in his own millions. He cared for Dell and its people – he wasn’t ready yet to watch investment ‘vultures’ take Dell Inc. apart and approach it as a buy and sell venture, with zero regard for it as a company with a culture, a respectable history and staff.

People like Michael Dell are not in business for the money. For them, their business is their life. Entrepreneurs who treat their businesses as their child, something very close to their hearts, find it impossible to sit back and watch it being gradually destroyed. Especially when you have built it from scratch and have watched it grow. It’s almost like family but sometimes there are drawbacks too. You just cannot let yourself go.

So maybe 2014 is your year. Maybe your idea will be successfully turned into a venture that will work for you. There will be many people who will seek out new services and products. There will be opportunities that can be best utilized when you choose to start somewhere. A start up need not be the biggest and the best. Start small so that you can sustain the growth and expand in the correct manner.





Short-lived cupcake mania
There are drawbacks in choosing to start your own business as well. Sometimes, you can get carried away with an idea that unfortunately many others have also had. The cupcake mania that saw businesses sprout everywhere is a good example – not many lasted because there were simply too many. And not everyone was ready to take the business from the start up to the next stage.

And now I see a rise in baking businesses with every other bubbly entrepreneur engaged in a baking business. Well and good but just how many baking businesses can make it safely into the black? There are also the young and the restless, who want to ride on the techno wave or the event management wave.
Again, not very good, when there are so many doing the same things. The pitfalls in entrepreneurship is when someone else can either successfully copy your idea or could easily start what you have started. And some people do like to pinch ideas from others.

The time-tested aspects of a good start up is always a unique need being fulfilled and consistent levels of service. Unless and until you have perfected the delivery of both, the business is likely to collapse, even though the idea may be perfect. The world is full of MBA-worthy stories of businesses that started well but somewhere along the way the product service mix did not stay consistent and eventually, customer interest dwindled.

So, all the best to you, if you are the entrepreneur of 2014. Just remember to get the whole package together and do your homework.

(Nayomini Weerasooriya, a senior journalist, writer and a PR professional, can be contacted at [email protected])