The Relentless Journey Of Entrepreneurship

Published 6 years ago
Tech scene in Cape Town, South Africa

Entrepreneurship leads to a robust economy as it creates jobs and contributes to a country’s GDP. Entrepreneurs are brave people that influence a stable and growing economy. For this reason, it is essential to ensure that entrepreneurship is on the rise.

To promote growth, it is vital for government to provide assistance to established and emerging entrepreneurs.

To ensure that entrepreneurs are more likely to be successful, and subsequently influence job creation, it is important that they have access to the markets in which their goods and services will get the most benefit from. Currently, in South Africa, the government has a hand in the main challenges entrepreneurs face when trying to access markets – inflexible and unaccommodating taxes and bureaucracy, as well as a lack of entrepreneurship programs.

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Business owners will only thrive in an environment that recognizes the need for entrepreneurs to be supported and nurtured. In South Africa there is a desperate need to teach entrepreneurship at an early stage of education.

With this promotion, and increased knowledge, youth will view entrepreneurship as a viable option for themselves rather than getting a conventional education so that they can be an employee. Furthermore, once someone has made the decision to pursue entrepreneurship, they need to be nurtured. This will allow them to use their knowledge and hone their skills to develop a viable and structured business venture.

Another challenge faced by South African entrepreneurs is getting finance to turn their ideas into a transacting business. It is also important to note that one can curb this by offering your service or product to other businesses, which will get some money flowing in. This revenue can be used to build a reserve and grow the business.

Cultural and social norms are also a contributing factor to the unwelcoming environment that entrepreneurs find themselves in. The ability of SMEs to penetrate existing and monopolized markets is hampered by internal market burdens as well as entry regulations.

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Adding to this is the notion of established businesses that SMEs are not able to provide desirable goods and services due to the lack of experience they have. The government needs to promote the SMEs to established companies in accordance to the level of service that they are capable of providing. This will allow entrepreneurs to showcase their skills and products, which will change the perception that they are too amateurish to make an impact in business.

In our personal journey through entrepreneurship there are a few lessons that come to mind in relation to how others can thrive in South Africa today.

There is a lot to be gained from remaining focused on your goal.

Your success stems from relentlessly trying different avenues to expose your business and making the necessary sacrifices.

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Related Topics: #Entrepreneurship, #Growth, #jobs, #June 2017.