Entrepreneurialism

Willingness to take a risk to make money is what being an entrepreneur is all about. There is more to it, of course, but for the most part, the profit motive is the primary spur to going into business for ones self.

Sustaining the business so it produces reliable streams of profit is another thing entirely. For the entrepreneur, however, this is a challenge happily engaged. In fact the challenges are the daily fuel an entrepreneur feeds on to keep him – or her – going!

An aside: women comprise the majority of entrepreneurs. Be it retail, manufacturing, services or professional services, women by far outnumber men in starting businesses and saving them, too!

Back to the focus of this posting: entrepreneurs are the glue that hold the American economy together. They are the starters of new businesses. They are the innovators of new products and services that small businesses excel at. Let’s face it, if a new product or business trend looks promising and has lasted for a while, larger firms either buy out the smaller firms providing these goods and services, or they compete on a larger basis to smother the small guys. The big companies could do the innovating themselves but often they are so bureaucratic they stifle creativity and motive among their staff.

No; it is the small firm that most likely re-energizes old industries and creates new markets, new products and new services.

Entrepreneurs create something else. They identify capabilities within people. They encourage the capability to emerge, to be tested and perfected. If the creative spirit is located in a person without personal confidence to pursue the new creation, friends and colleagues may do it for him. Together they form an entrepreneurial team that runs with the idea and makes it happen.

The spirit to renew the self, the business, the mind – whatever, resides within each and every one of us. Not all are able to actuate the necessary parts to make a new business take form and function successfully. Thankfully there are a lot of people willing to support such business formations. Successful societies do this, make these things happen.

Successful societies make sure these things happen. Such is true in America today. Oh, the ebb and flow changes throughout time, but creative urges are almost always present in the USA. We were built on individual initiative and creativity. Besides we have whole industries that thrive on helping the entrepreneur exist and thrive.

Such industries are: banking, educational institutions, libraries, central governments, regional governments and charitable foundations.

The federal government has the Department of Commerce and the US Treasury. Both support the promise of new businesses. The Commerce Department, however, is home to the Small Business Administration. There they support early funding of new businesses, provide loan guarantees to banking institutions to make loans of promise to new businesses, and generally promote and educate entrepreneurs to take a chance on themselves and the nation to produce new jobs and new industries.

A helping hand to the SBA is SCORE – Service Corps of Retired Executives. SCORE has over 11,000 mentors nationwide providing free mentoring to people hoping to form their own businesses. SCORE also works with small businesses that already exist but dream of advancing their operations to a larger plane and market. All SCORE mentors are volunteers.

Each SCORE mentor brings a lifetime career to bear in helping the entrepreneur find his footing to start his business. Each mentor also has at his or her fingertips the experience and expertise of all the other mentors to help his client succeed. Together SCORE mentors help each other support and nurture the new firm to a successful start.

Once that’s done, SCORE mentors help the small business succeed, grow and expand to support yet more business success.

It is not done overnight. A lot of face to face meetings, workshops, late night phone calls and shared cups of coffee go into the mentoring process. Slowly but surely, though, the creative entrepreneur is supported in forming a business that will fulfill dreams of many people in the coming years.

Today, March 31, 2015, The Fox Valley SCORE Chapter (Illinois) is conducting a Small Business Forum from 1 to 5 pm at the Northern Illinois University Naperville Campus on Diehl Road. Panel discussions, workshops, individual mentoring and a plenary session will be available for anyone desiring help in thinking through their small business idea.

Although not free the afternoon is cheap: $30 preregistration and $45 at the door. Many lifetimes of experience and career expertise are there for the asking. Not just this  afternoon but long into the future. Come today and stay with SCORE for the life of your business. Our work is free.

Why? Because we care. Besides, it is in all of our interests that these new businesses get their start and succeed. It is the American way. We care and we build. And we do it as volunteers. How’s that for low overhead?

March 31, 2015