Entrepreneurship is very appealing to women in leadership. You get to be your own boss and the challenges of building your own business can be exciting. Is entrepreneurship something that you have considered? Perhaps the idea of working for yourself sounds appealing, but you don’t know where to begin. Maybe you’ve worked a full-time job all of your life and are afraid of what working on your own might mean. Here are some things to consider as you think about entrepreneurship.

1) Get your spouse’s support: Starting your own business will take a lot of mental and physical stamina. You will work long hours and will likely spend many days and nights away from home networking, marketing and building your business from the ground up. Be sure to discuss what entrepreneurship will mean with your spouse and get his/her buy-in. Having your spouse’s support and partnership as you take on a new endeavor will provide you with the extra fuel that you need when the going gets tough.

2) Get your financial house in order: Entrepreneurship is rewarding, but also very risky. In fact, many small businesses spend more than they make the first year of business. Before you take the plunge, work to clear your consumer debt and create a nest-egg that you will be able to rely on. Perhaps you want to cut back on your hours at work to ensure that you still have some steady income and health benefits while you develop your small business.

3) Plan and prepare: According to the Small Business Administration, 50% of small businesses fail within the first year. One of the primary reasons they fail is lack of planning and preparation. Take the time to get advice from the Small Business Administration or local economic development corporation. You may even decide to invest in a business coach who can help you develop a solid business plan and marketing strategy.

4) Stay focused: Entrepreneurship requires self-motivation, stamina, persistence and focus. You will need to program your mind for success. In order to do so, surround yourself with other like minded individuals. Join your local Chamber of Commerce or join a mastermind group. Both will offer you the opportunity to network with other entrepreneurs who can share in your experience, provide helpful advice and even offer strategic partnership opportunities.

There is a lot to consider before becoming an entrepreneur, but if you plan and prepare it can be extremely rewarding and fulfilling.

Ellie Nieves, Esq. is a Speaker, Writer and Leadership Coach. Through 55-minute telephone coaching sessions and live seminars, she helps women develop leadership skills, set strategic goals, bolster effectiveness and create a personal brand. To learn more go to http://www.LeadershipStrategiesForWomen.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ellie_Nieves

Entrepreneurship is in full vogue in America. Small-business activities and growth is at its peak. About 2346 of small businesses are established each day! No doubt that most of it get disestablished each day, approximately 2106 every day! But this buzzing activity is keeping entrepreneurship alive. There are approximately 5.8 million firms in America, and nearly 10.1 million people working there are self employed.

Small business and industry hold a huge portion in the American economy. There is a plethora of small and medium entrepreneurs in America which constitute to major chunk of revenue and employment opportunities. The statistical data summarized and presented below in this context gives weightage to the aforesaid.

o Approximately 99% of businesses in America are small.

o The small business employs about 50% of the private sector workers.

o The small business adds about 75% per annum to the U.S. economy

o The small business represents the total strength of 99.7% employers

The dedication, innovation and initiative of small business owners make them an important part of the U.S. economy. The ample of opportunities provided by the small business makes them all the more popular. Small entrepreneurs provide means of livelihood to approximately to half of America. Indeed the job of small entrepreneurs is not easy but tough work gives them satisfying rewards. The popularity of small business is primarily because it gives freedom and flexibility to an individual. This in turn gives innovative ideas to the enterprise which encourages growth and productivity.

But the small entrepreneurs cannot run the entire show on their own. The U.S. economy plays a vital role in encouraging these players to nurture themselves into the economy. It provides affable environment and complimenting policies in order to allow them to flourish.

In order to construct workable environment, in which small businesses in the U.S. economy can prosper, President George W. Bush has tied with private-sector and nonprofit organizations to focus aptitude, skill, and other assets on facilitating economic development and enterprise all across America, and particularly in otherwise neglected areas. All these sectors have joined hands and are now educating people to lure them in entrepreneurship making it all the more popular and effective.

Entrepreneurship and Population

The trend shows that people in between the age group of 25 and 34 have strong inclination towards entrepreneurship.

Another facet to entrepreneurship in the U.S. is that in comparison to women, men are more inclined towards such opportunities. Almost 15.7 percent of the men show interest in entrepreneurship. On the other hand women count to 8.2 percent only. This indicates that in comparison to women, men exhibit almost double interest in entrepreneurship

People having specialized, professional, technical or business school degrees show greater inclination in entrepreneurship in the U.S. This was to almost 17.8 percent of the total entrepreneurial activity.

African- Americans contributed to the maximum TEA or Total Entrepreneurial Activity. The TEA rate of African Americans is almost 16.5 percent. Surprisingly the lowest rates are of white Americans of about 10.8 percent only, whereas the Hispanic Americans exhibit a rate of 15.2 percent.

Entrepreneurship and Financing

Financing of viable projects is an important aspect in the entrepreneurship. In the absence of sufficient investors, the ventures cannot take the shape of a working model. Mere conception of idea and jotting the same in black and white does not give wings to the project to take off. It is the life blood that supports both budding and existing entrepreneurs. The investment can be either in the form of informal or formal venture capital. America shows a high prevalence rate of informal investments. As per data 5 percent of people have contributed to the business ventures of their family or friends in their past three years. The formal venture investment accounted to only 0.2 percent of the total. Where the informal investment went to millions of companies in the United States, the formal investment contributed its presence to only 2500 companies in which the new venture very few.

Cultural and Social Norms

Entrepreneurs are a group of people who foresee a business opportunity, explore its viability and start the venture. The rate of growth of every country’s growth largely depends on the cultural and social norms prevalent in that country. American culture has been characterized as one seeking opportunities for new ideas and involving high risk taking in business. In fact, the culture supports the entrepreneurial development and the world index shows higher degree of entrepreneurial activities and opportunities in the U.S. as compared with other countries.

It has also been a consistent feature of the U.S. population that they possess strong perception of having the required skills for business, they are relatively less scared with failures and always strive towards new ventures and unexploited business ideas. Overall, the nation’s culture determines to what extent the social norms are encouraging the individuals’ intentions to conduct business in the country. The social and cultural norms are therefore vital to the growth of entrepreneurial sector of any economy.

To Sum Up

Entrepreneurship in the United States has been always on the upward trend and still continues to do so. The United States outshines the rest of the world in terms of entrepreneurial growth. It also leads in providing training and growth opportunities, to the individuals who show interest in this field. With the ever increasing popularity of internet the entrepreneurship in America has taken new dimensions and the pace of economic development has speeded up. Immigrants from all over the globe make United States their final destination to prosper in life. The large number of small business prospering in the country, employing more and more population of the country, along with its flexibility in operations and supporting laws, gives a clear indication that the future is of this sector and it will emerge as an important component in the future economic growth of the country. The supporting government rules and regulations make it a hub for future entrepreneurs. As already termed as the ‘Land of Opportunities’, America stands up to the name by providing a whole canvas to paint pictures of one’s own creativity and expertise.

For more on entrepreneurship, please go to canadiantradeenclave.ca

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jasdeep_Kaur

Generally speaking, entrepreneurship based research usually focus on either Traits or Behavior. Since the nineties, behavior underlie the vast majority of entrepreneurship’s research, the main reason for this is a limited success of scholars to reinforce the existence of common traits that characterize entrepreneurs (Smart and Conant, 1994). Gartner (1988) argues that the focus should be on “what the entrepreneur does” and not “who is the entrepreneur”. Behavior based research focus on the entrepreneurship process through the entrepreneur activities, that instead of referring to personal specific traits (Smart and Conant, 1994). Behavior based entrepreneurship’s research is usually conducted at entrepreneur level; nonetheless, scholars claim that entrepreneurship is implemented at the firm level as well (Carland et. al., 1984; Naman and Slevin, 1993; Lumpkin and Dess, 1996; Wiklund, 1999).

This article tries to establish a common base for defining firm level entrepreneurship. Naman and Slevin (1993) states that organization can be characterized and measured based on the level of entrepreneurship demonstrate by the firm’s management. According to Covin and Slevin (1986), top managers at entrepreneurship’s firm possess an entrepreneurship style of management, which affect the firm’s strategic decisions and management philosophy.

In order to establish definition for the firm level entrepreneurship, it is necessary to present the characteristics of management behavior used by scholars for that matter. Schumpeter (1934) states that innovativeness is the only entrepreneurship behavior that separates between entrepreneurship’s activities to non-entrepreneurship’s activities. Innovation relates to the pursuit after creative solutions through the development and improvement of services and products as well as administrative and technological techniques (Davis et al., 1991). Innovation reflects the firm’s tendency to support new ideas and procedures, which can end as new products or services Lumpkin and Dess (1996).

In his book “Essai sur la Nature Commerce en General”, Richard Cantillon (1755) argues that the essence of entrepreneurship is a risk-taking behavior. According to Lumpkin and Dess (1996), risk-taking can range from relatively “safe” risk as deposit money to the bank to quite risky actions like investing in untested technologies or launching new product to the market. In their research, Miller and Friesen (1982) define an entrepreneurial model of innovativeness, this model regards firm that innovate audacity and regularly while taking substantial risks in their strategy.

Third dimension, which can be added to innovation and risk-taking, is Proactive. According to Davis et al., (1991) proactive associates with an aggressive posture, relatively to competitors, while trying to achieve firm’s objectives by all rational needed means. Lumpkin and Dess (2001) mention that proactive relate to the way the firm associates to business opportunities through acquisition of initiatives in the market it’s operate in.

Although other dimensions are used to define firm level entrepreneurship, the vast majority of scholars use these three dimensions – Innovation, Risk-taking and Proactive (e.g., Miller and Friesen, 1978; Covin and Slevin, 1986, 1989; Naman and Slevin, 1993; Knight, 1993; Wiklund, 1999).

Dr. Rami Schayek combining the academic world as a researcher and a lecturer at the ben gurion university with a field work as the CEO of several small businesses coincident with coaching many other small and medium businesses. You can see more from his work at http://www.small-medium-business.blogspot.com

Terms: Articles may be reprinted provided content is not edited and links are kept live.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Rami_Schayek

Think about how the economic changes have affected your industry in general. Has your customer base changed? Have your competitors started cutting prices? What about their service offerings? Are you keeping up? Recessions cause changes, and it is important to examine all aspects of your business.

If you and your small business have been through layoffs, salary reductions or worse in order to survive the recession, there are some important things to keep in mind as things start to get better.

First, many companies are going to begin hiring again, which means you could get some new staffers after another company goes out of business. But your employees also might get a better offer too. So make sure they are satisfied, or you could lose them. Many people are looking for making more money to pay off their bills after the last year.

Also be careful about what you spend money on. Now that business is getting better. Priorities might include new computers, versus redecorating. Think about long term versus short-term debts.

Many businesses have learned how to use invoice factoring to stay afloat during the recession. And that tactic can be continued after the new year begins. It is a great way to pay down your debt, while keeping cash flow strong.

What’s more, there is a popular new factoring strategy called spot factoring. It is when one invoice at a time is factored. It is not a loan – it is the purchase of financial assets, or receivables from a factoring company. Traditional bank loans involve two parties, while factoring involves three parties. Banks base their decisions on a company’s credit worthiness, while factoring is based on the value of the receivables. With invoice factoring, there are no minimums, no maximums, and no long-term commitments.

Single invoice factoring can help your small business get back on its feet. How? Many businesses do not get paid right away for delivered products/services. This negatively impacts cash flow and can make it hard for the business to produce new orders in a timely fashion. Invoice factoring benefits businesses that do not get paid for 30, 60 or 90 days by advancing up to 90 percent of the invoice total, at the time of order fulfillment. IFG looks at the creditworthiness of the client’s customers and can provide funding within as little as 24 hours.

Kristin Gabriel is a writer who works with The Interface Financial Group (IFG), North America’s largest alternative funding source for small business. The company provides short-term financial resources including invoice factoring, serving clients in more than 30 industries in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. IFG offers expertise in factoring, accounting, finance, law, marketing and banking.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kristin_DeAnn_Gabriel

The Small Business Administration has offices in most parts of the country. Although getting face-to-face assistance has become a bit more difficult in recent years due to budget cuts ordered by the Bush administration, the Small Business Administration also has a website packed with helpful information, forms, tutorials and online courses. Small business owners can count on the Small Business Administration for accurate information on laws affecting small businesses, tax and social security information and small business statistics.

The Small Business Administration’s sister organization, the Service Corps of Retired Executives provides mentoring and in-person courses for small business owners. The Service Corps of Retired Executives was created by a group of retired executives from large corporations who wanted to continue using their business skills after retirement to mentor small business owners.

Local Chambers of Commerce are another excellent resource. Chambers of Commerce typically serve two functions: Promoting the business climate of the area to outside investors and serving as a networking hub for existing businesses. However, due to the rise in entrepreneurship, many Chambers of Commerce are beginning to offer seminars to start up business owners including marketing, bookkeeping and other topics. They may also offer special networking events geared toward new businesses just getting started.

Once you get your business started, there is no better resource for networking than your local Chamber of Commerce. The annual fee is typically modest and covers your attendance at more functions than you could possibly find the time to attend. For example, the Chamber of Commerce in West Palm Beach, Florida offers networking breakfasts, lunches, cocktail hours and dinners. They also offer special networking events targeted at certain business sectors, sponsorship of corporate events and a member directory with advertisements from their membership.

About The Author

Jonathon Hardcastle writes articles on many topics including Business, Real Estate, and Employment