ENTREPENEURSHIP BBS204

Want to be the Next Richard Branson? Want to Learn to Find and Convert Ideas into Money?

This course will assist in developing the entrepreneur in you! Learn how to be more innovative in business. Discover how to find opportunities and develop them! This course aims to increase your chances of business success by enhancing your ability to apply entrepreneurial principles to business.

This course will develop your understanding of entrepreneurship as a crucial part of business development, and your ability apply entrepreneurial principles.

This is a course for:

People who want to be an entrepeneur
People who want to be more entrepeneurial than what they are in their existing business or job
Students of business who want to better understand entrepeneurial processes
People who are unsure of their own capacity to be an entrepeneur; who wish to better understand the possibilities and discover whether this type of career path might be right for them.

Learn How to Be an Entrepreneur

People become entrepreneurs for many reasons. Some want to leave the fast-paced corporate environment. Others want to be at home but still earn an income. Others want to pursue a personal dream. The reason you might become an entrepreneur may be completely different from these. Most people dream of running their own business. They would like to become entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship can be exciting, but running your own business is difficult. In fact, many companies started by entrepreneurs go out of business. This is often caused by poor planning, lack of business knowledge or entrepreneurial characteristics, or choosing the wrong business.

COURSE CONTENT

How to become an entrepreneur and maximise your chances of business success!

There are 10 lessons in this module as follows:

The Scope & Nature of Entrepreneurship
Is Entrepreneurship Right for You?
Assessing opportunities
Market Research & its Role
All about intellectual Property
Legal and Ethical Concerns
Running a Business
Business and Financial Plan
Marketing
Launching a Venture

Scope of Entrepeneurship

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. Some people lack the qualities needed to become successful entrepreneurs. Others lack the aptitude needed to run a business. For others, the benefits of entrepreneurship do not outweigh the disadvantages. However, if you have some of the qualities and skills required to be a successful entrepreneur, all is not lost. You can always learn new skills if you have enough determination. Skills and knowledge will also be acquired naturally as your business grows. The most important characteristics you will need to become a successful entrepreneur are: determination - you must be very determined to get your business off the ground. A lack luster approach will almost certainly be a key to failure rather than success; self-discipline - if you are to work alone, you must have a large amount of self-discipline. Often extra work will tend to be done on an evening or at weekends and as well as self-discipline, you will need time management skills; responsibility - you must be able to take full responsibility for your own actions. After all, if you are to work alone, there is no-one else to blame if things don't go to plan. Being responsible does not have to be a negative factor, it can also provide motivation and a sense of achievement; innovation - you will always need to have your wits about you. You will often be required to be pro-active and think of ways to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction if things become stagnant. You will be constantly be required to think of new ideas; enthusiasm - when this runs out, so does the business. If even you aren't enthusiastic about the service you provide, neither will your staff and customers.

Many people manage to run flourishing businesses without any qualifications or formal training, but being committed to what they do and having the above characteristics have stood them in good stead. They are also willing to dedicate long hours to ensure success.

Success as an entrepreneur requires a strong commitment to a business and a lot of energy. To be able to commit yourself fully to a business, you should choose a field that interests you and that will provide you with an experience you will enjoy.

Learn from People who Have Done it!

ACS Principal, John Mason has been developing successful businesses for over 4 decades. He has authored over 45 books with publishers ranging from Simon and Schuster to Landlinks Press; written and edited magazines for Sydney's Express Publications; operated an Event Management business that won awards twice with the Royal Melbourne Show and established ACS as an international business that now develops and licences courses to colleges around the world.

The writers and tutors in this course, are all highly qualified, successful professionals who work with John to provide a unique style of training that is effective, up to date -tried and proven over many years.

Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs

Remember all discounts are ‘costs”. They reduce the contribution of a sale in the same way as the cost of materials or labour. Ongoing discounting may not be the best long-term strategy for your organisation but could be useful to clear stocks/lines, incentive bulk purchases, or promote your organisation through ‘special offers’ partly or fully offset by negotiating special deals/buys with suppliers.
Accurate sales forecasting is essential. If you’re not prepared, success can end up a disaster. For example, exceeding sales budgets might give nasty shocks to production or distribution it they can’t keep up. Customers will be disappointed and your organisations reputation will be negatively impacted. Getting enthusiastic about new marketing/sales opportunities should be encouraged, but managed via the planning process or contingency allowances.
Participation in the budget process makes it harder for people to complain later.
The world, markets and communication media are constantly changing:
Intention does not always reflect behaviour. Discrepancies between ‘research results and actual behaviour’ often take marketers by surprise. However if you look a little closer at the research process it might easily be explained. People who participate in Focus groups for example can be influenced by others in the group i.e. what they want to be seen to be doing compared to what they might actually do. The same effect appears in personal both qualitative and quantitative questionnaires (whether the information is provided in a personal interview or not). Many even intend to behave a certain way or would like to behave in a certain way, but life, situation or circumstance means they behave in another.
The “red pen rule’ for marketing copy. Short, punchy advertising copy is more likely to get read. Many people make the mistake of believing “because I wrote it, they will read it”. You must entice people to read your copy by not asking too much of them, too early. This applies to ads, website copy, brochures, point of sale.
A common misconception about marketing is that it’s all about eye-catching ads, clever captions, quirky promotional products and creativity.
These things have a place in some marketing campaigns, but a more appropriate way of viewing marketing is as the process of strategy development that enables a business to be scalable and sustainable.
If you spend $100 on marketing you need to get back at least $100.10. Test your marketing before committing large amounts of funds to an untried marketing exercise. This then also means marketing returns should be measurable – even the advertising components.
You will lose customers, so you must continually look for new customers. It’s referred to in the industry as ‘churn’.
Once you have a customer, you should continue to build the relationship by introducing them to other products/services, provide exceptional customer service; instigate regular, meaningful communications and leverage them for referrals (either through incentive programs or positive word-of-mouth).
The idea is to grow your business so trying to do everything yourself means your business could be limited by your abilities and your time. Learn to delegate and be confident that standards will be maintained by implementing robust staff training programs and quality control systems.
An entrepreneur should never stop thinking about marketing, even if the daily responsibility is delegated to another person.
Ask for testimonials (don’t be afraid to offer suggestions for content as it often makes it easier if the writer has direction). Include testimonials in context on your website, brochures, newsletters, point of sale, tenders/proposals and general communications. There is a perceived increase in credibility as testimonials come from people who have direct experience with your product or service.
Make the most of networking opportunities but focus on quality not quantity.
- Active and relevant online professional networking sites can be a low investment, high return commitment – and can provide easily accessible global contact opportunities.