Entrepreneurship 101 by Stephen Teasdale: “Businesses Should Be Built With Purpose.”

Short Description

Stephen Teasdale, founder of All You Are (AYA) Real Estate Group in Bali, Indonesia, compares entrepreneurship to farming crops. Akin to planting seeds and nurturing them till they bloom for harvest, the process is quite similar to sustaining a business. Stephen discusses the essence of entrepreneurship as a growth and impact strategy, focusing on the importance of networking, innovation, investment, and expansion. Stephen expresses the need for entrepreneurs to stay committed, put in what they expect to get out of the process and understand the difficulties of starting narrow and broadening their scope eventually. Entrepreneurs must understand the various challenges of international entrepreneurship, highlighting the need for creative strategy in different markets. Thus, entrepreneurs will bear the fruits of their labor and commitment.

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Growth and Impact

In the prudent words of B.C. Forbes, “It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.” Entrepreneurship follows a similar process through its manner of building and maintaining a business from the ground up. It demonstrates the activity in which a true leader will take the necessary risks for a chance at generating profit for the business they attempt to nurture properly.

Anyone can plant seeds and hope for growth, but to truly cultivate the land and harvest these crops, especially amidst a variety of menacing natural conditions, farmers must work hard, stay committed, and exercise willful patience. It is only then that they will possibly bear the fruits of their labor and feed their families. This is the impact of entrepreneurship.

Comparable to farming, anyone can start their own business, but cultivating the foundation that has been laid down is an ongoing, tedious, and exhausting effort. In other words, one must put in what they expect to get out of the process. This means investing time, money, effort, and resources, all to potentially generate a return on investment (ROI) because it is never guaranteed. That is the risk that every entrepreneur will take and has taken.

Entrepreneurship can also present opportunities for growth to achieve desired success. To do this, entrepreneurs will not stop at anything to cultivate the growth of their company, even if it means partnering, franchising, or taking matters overseas.

Entrepreneurship 101

The foundation of any business should always be built with great intention and never blindly. This is where a fundamental growth strategy plays a significant role. Without one, how can entrepreneurs expect to hit their targets without knowing the point at which they are aiming?

To start, especially in 2024, entrepreneurs have found through various studies that technology is a commanding point of departure. In fact, statistically analyzing small businesses and their use of technology platforms should be the initial research of any promising entrepreneur. Over 90% of small businesses will utilize these platforms to take off from a small launch pad and maintain this growth over time. Take, for example, a post on Instagram that uses hashtags to gain the attention of users looking for new products and especially a good sale. Without this innovative approach to marketing on social media, many interested customers would not have found these products.

Using technology, along with other growth strategies such as innovation, investment, and expansion, will always pose risks, specifically financial ones. So, rising entrepreneurs must embrace the challenges of starting narrow and broadening their scope eventually. Much of innovation, corporately speaking, is driven by the creative process of thinking outside the box and finding solutions to problems around the world. To come up with various ideas for products that can make an impact, small businesses will require a team effort to implement a standard of innovation and development of these ideas. Ultimately, two heads are better than one, but this will require networking.

Networking must be done to build rapport with other like-minded entrepreneurs who can help to accomplish significant goals within a business. Using a qr code business card simplifies networking, ensuring seamless and professional contact exchanges in any business setting. Establishing trust among team members goes a long way as demonstrated by relying on others to do their jobs and remain productive. Team building not only sets the criteria of dependence and trustworthiness, but it prioritizes objectives as the primary focus of achieving.

Oftentimes, however, many entrepreneurs are so locked onto numbers (i.e., sales, statistics, demographics, percentages, etc.) that they forget the true intentions of their business or the overall questions as to why they want to sell their products in the first place. This embodies the notion of quality over quantity. To please a customer is to make a sale, and to make a sale is to generate revenue. But, in a classic debate of whether the chicken or the egg comes first, it is safe to say that in the corporate world, the customer comes first, and the revenue follows.

This is precisely why entrepreneurs should use their time, money, energy, and resources wisely, which all play into their investment strategy as a whole. The rule of thumb remains that the customer comes first, but in order to satisfy the customer, high-quality products entail some level of investment. This serves as a reminder that investment should equate to profit, at least in the greater scheme of things. Collaborating with global investors can provide businesses with broader financial insights and opportunities for growth, enhancing their overall investment strategy.

As far as time investment, any activity that fosters growth is worth the time and energy in the long run. This concept explores a company’s values, denoting its overall standards, qualities, and ultimately what it stands for. While interrogatives such as who? what? and how? are important to a company’s foundation, its why? or its reason for production, will serve as the ground under which the foundation exists.

International Entrepreneurship

If all goes according to plan and the proper steps towards functional entrepreneurship have been taken, what then happens if a small business has yet to grow to its full potential? One answer could be that its most ideal markets have yet to be discovered, which presents a real challenge to businesses in need of expansion. While starting a business poses challenges in itself, cultivating one’s business in global markets requires additional time and effort because of differences in economy, demographics, culture, legislation, and currency. With respect to any activity in business, turbulence is an opportunity and can be used for change.

Weighing the Pros of International Entrepreneurship

Many opportunities unfold when expanding across the globe, specifically the untapped potential that is left unrecognized when local success has peaked. Different markets have the ability to open the eyes of up-and-coming entrepreneurs who likely feel stuck in quicksand.

For one, advancements in technology have not only revolutionized traditional business models but have also contributed to the development of other countries that would otherwise struggle without the interconnection that technology allows. Additionally, artificial intelligence (AI) now plays a part in nearly 35% of global businesses, enabling entrepreneurs to make informed decisions based on algorithms used to explore trends within certain markets overseas. This is not to mention the modernistic, android functionality of AI chatbots that can assist with customer relations and even engage them in considering relevant products and new sales.

Almost to the point of no return, technology has broken into the very landscapes of which businesses have exponentially grown in the past. What used to help companies to grow at large has now been overshadowed by digital transformation, a contemporary means for the newer model of entrepreneurship to build its businesses online and access global markets with the palms of their hands. With digital transformation, AI, and continued advancements in technology, the digital corporate world is here to stay, and technology is now the future’s history.

Social entrepreneurship will also prove its value to marginalized and underprivileged communities. Many businesses avoid association with countries in a low-income economy with lower gross domestic product (GDP) because they see limited value in terms of generating profit. With the innovative social model, other countries will be empowered by social and environmental change with less concentration on finances. This is because social enterprises draw upon the goals of developing countries to address social issues first and foremost and then improve their economies, allowing for eventual prosperity.

Embracing the Obstacles in International Entrepreneurship

Traditionally, taking out loans and utilizing a venture capitalist (VC) have allowed startups to thrive early on when investing in their businesses and building stability. In the long run, said businesses would generate profit based on their investments while also intellectualizing expenditures and employing growth strategies. However, working with a venture capital firm requires demonstrating a startup’s growth potential to secure funding, while also managing the complexities of equity dilution and maintaining control.

Nowadays, funding one’s own startup can be done through asking for financial assistance using new media. Crowdfunding, for instance, is one particular strategy that helps entrepreneurs acquire funds by making proposals to a community that would be interested in their ideas and supports the company by funding the initiative.

Another obstacle when it comes to entrepreneurship abroad is the several barriers that exist among different countries. The most obvious is the language barrier, which makes communication, an essential component of networking, a challenge to building rapport and maintaining stable relationships with other entrepreneurs. Cultural differences, along with language, also pose an obstacle because of how business is perceived, strategized, and executed. This particularly deals with legal barriers, differences in currency, foreign exchange (forex), and familiarity with potential markets.

Lastly, during an age in which technology continues to advance and anyone can start a business at their fingertips, the competition has escalated to new heights. This also means that the opportunities are limitless, and it all depends on how a starting entrepreneur perceives the challenge. Competition drives innovation, after all.

To succeed in this highly saturated atmosphere of business ownership, entrepreneurs need to gear their growth strategies toward what will differentiate them from the rest. In a corporate world of a thousand white daisies, it fares well to be a pink rose, as Matshona Dhliwayo reasons. Ultimately, this suggests the need to be ready when one’s name is called because emerging markets are always looking toward the next major breakthrough. To stand out, one’s own business will demand uniqueness, creativity, and cleverness to tap into different markets in which there is potential to grow and thrive

Buying In

In a nutshell, entrepreneurship revolves around a company’s success at getting people to buy in. To do this, entrepreneurs should possess the ability to discover ways to stand out and gain recognition by establishing an exclusive identity. The value in understanding the difficulties a growing business will face in incompatible markets is imperative, just as farmers recognize this challenge when it comes to cultivating land in more hostile climates. Whether homegrown or overseas, entrepreneurship will always require constant nurturing of its crops to eventually bear the fruits of one’s labor. Cultivation, both with purpose and commitment, will yield the finest crops in a field of a million seeds where competition meets a desire to bloom.

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Author Bio

Stephen Teasdale is an investor, entrepreneur, and Founder and Director of All You Are (AYA) in Bali, Indonesia. With expertise in real estate development and investment, he has successfully led numerous multi-million projects in the UK, developing companies that have been recognized in the “1000 Companies to Inspire Britain” list. With AYA, he aims to revolutionize urban living by creating exceptional, sustainable communities that prioritize inclusivity and environmental responsibility.