Tips To Become An Online Entrepreneur

Introduction

Wh0 is an entrepreneur?

According to Investopedia.com, an entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business. Everybody can become an Entrepreneur. Click HERE to read more. On the one hand, this person will bear most of the risks, and on the other hand, he/she will enjoy most of the rewards or profits. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as someone who can come up with new ideas which can bring about new products and/or services.

Who then is an online entrepreneur

We draw inspiration and knowledge from one of the world’s top online entrepreneurship platforms called Wealthy Affiliate University. Anyone who has the ability to create a new business online, virtually or digitally, anywhere in the world, using just the internet and a computer, is an online entrepreneur.

With knowledge and content from the platform, gathered from their free online entrepreneur course (Read more about the course below), anyone can become an Online Entrepreneur.

02 Types Of Entrepreneurial Concepts Today:

Online Entrepreneur Replacing Traditional Entrepreneur?

Long before covid-19, the world was already fast becoming a digital and online world. Covid-19 simply came and fast-tracked the norm. It helped push everyone to rethink the way they used to do business. Any traditional entrepreneur who was still resisting doing business online has given up their resistance. Today, people find themselves asking questions about how to easily and successfully move their business online. 

Anyone Can Accomplish Success Online. According to Wealthy Affiliate University, there are now in 2021, over 4.75 BILLION people using the Internet. Regardless of the direction that you head online, there is a very large number of people online. You can connect with them if you want to create any business online.

Gone are the days when people fear buying or selling something online. Like riding a bike, it is normal to feel overwhelmed and even “fall” a few times when getting rolling. Don’t worry, you will quickly get the hang of things! If you have experience buying and selling online, that is great. If not, don’t worry again. That is why you are here.

Can anyone become an Online Entrepreneur?

In today’s digital world, to become an online entrepreneur, all you need is your phone or your tablet or your laptop with an internet connection. Online entrepreneurs play a key role in any economy today. They use the skills and initiative necessary, to anticipate needs and bring good new ideas to the digital market

Online entrepreneurship that proves to be successful (by taking on the risks of the digital world, online scams, online privacy and security issues as well as protection of personal information) will create a digital startup. They will be rewarded with profits, fame, and continued growth opportunities in return.

Is Online entrepreneurship a get-rich-quick business?

If you start up a small business in your backyard or garage, maybe a pizza business, a laptop repairs, buying and selling of used items etc, would you anticipate it to make cash for you within days or weeks or even months? Let’s say you only open your business a few days a week or a few hours a day, would you anticipate profit trickling in sooner or later?

What if you didn’t take or follow some sort of training, coaching or mentoring for your business? It becomes a child’s play, right?

Both traditional and online entrepreneurship is the same. Success requires commitment.

• “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.” -Peter F. Drucker
• “You need to make a commitment, and once you make it, then life will give you some answers.” -Les Brown
  
• “There are only two options regarding commitment. You’re either in or out. There’s no such thing as a life in-between.” -Pat Riley

Online entrepreneurship is not a get-rich-quick scheme. I am constantly amazed at how many people assume that cash will by hook or by crook magically be downloaded from the internet without work, without plans, or without an earnest commitment. All these factors MUST be present.

The reality is that anything that is profitable in life, requires effort and commitment. Can you imagine anyone just becoming anything they desire to become, without any commitment? You want that car, that house, that degree, that business, or even that pregnancy, and bam! you just have it without any effort and commitment.

Skills, Aptitudes, Personality and Values of Online Entrepreneurial Behaviours

Career Tests, General Personality Tests and Aptitude Tests

• Personality tests – Personality tests and other psychological tests measure your personal characteristics, your emotional makeup and your stability. They are often used by trained career counsellors as a tool in the self-assessment part of the career planning process.

Some of these tests can be personally interpreted online; others need a counsellor to interpret them. They can be used to simply assess what type of person you are or, more specifically, to determine your aptitude for a certain type of occupation or career.

Personality tests range from a five-minute Colour Quiz, which is supposed to determine your personality type by the colours you select, to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which is one of the top-rated personality tests that help assess your personality type and helps to explore career options

It’s important to note that none of these tests will provide you with a definite answer on what you should do with your life. Rather, you should use them as a tool to generate informed guesses and see them as one part of your overall career planning.

• Aptitude Tests – Aptitude tests measure your ability to acquire a skill or do a particular type of work. These are the type of tests employers typically use to screen candidates for employment. Self-Assessment and Aptitude Tests are available online and, in many cases, are free.

Tests are available on just about every topic. There are tests to determine whether you have an aptitude for sales or for fire-fighting. You can even take a Circus Aptitude Test to find out if you should run away and join the circus!

• Career Tests – Career Tests are used to provide an indication of which jobs match your personality type and which careers you have an aptitude for. You can take a quick test online and get immediate results or take more extensive (and professional) tests to determine which careers might interest you.

All these tests will help every online entrepreneur in particular and any entrepreneur in general

The Top 07 Entrepreneurial Tests To Help Assess Your Readiness for A New Venture Business Startup

• Myers-Briggs (MBTI)

This is one of the top-rated instruments to help assess your personality type and explore career options (at a fee).

• Career Key

This is a free online career assessment tool that determines how similar you are to six different personality types. The results are linked to occupational choices.

• Keirsey Temperament Sorter

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter, another top-rated test, helps you discover what type of temperament you have and tells you if you’re an Artisan, Guardian, Rational or Idealist (free description, option to purchase full report).

• Princeton Review Career Quiz

Answer a series of questions to determine the best career choices for you. You’ll need to register (free) to get full results

• Intelligence (IQ) Tests

Intelligence tests measure your intellectual functioning, or in plain language, how smart you are. They are designed to measure an individual’s mental skills. A person’s intelligence quotient (IQ) is a measure of intelligence derived from the results of specially designed tests. The quotient is determined by dividing an individual’s mental age by his chronological age and multiplying the result by 100.

• Career Inventories

Inventories are checklists that you can use to identify factors which you relate to – and which you don’t. They measure how your interests match those of other people employed in certain occupations. Career inventories, like the Strong Interest Inventory, provide a summary of your interest areas and the occupations that match your interests.

• Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Emotional Intelligence, or EQ as opposed to IQ, can be seen as the ability to perceive and express emotions, understand and use them, and manage emotions in oneself and other people.

In a study of 515 senior executives in America, EQ was a better predictor of success than either relevant previous experience or high IQ. Identical results were found in Latin America, Germany and Japan. According to the Centre for Creative Leadership research, lack of interpersonal skill is one of two primary reasons leaders (and that includes small business owners) fail.  The other is the inability to change and adapt.

Goleman’s five Emotional Competencies for your Online Entrepreneurship Sanity

Features Of Entrepreneurship

Goleman divides emotional intelligence into the following five emotional competencies

1. The ability to identify and name one’s emotional states and to understand the link between emotions, thought and action.
2. The capacity to manage one’s emotional states — to control emotions or to shift undesirable emotional states to more adequate ones.
3. The ability to enter into emotional states (at will) is associated with a drive to achieve and be successful.
4. The capacity to read, be sensitive to and influence other people’s emotions.
5. The ability to enter and sustain satisfactory interpersonal relationships.

As online entrepreneurs, we should be striving for the following entrepreneur characteristics:

• Self-awareness i.e. understanding our own emotional state and the effect it may have on others;
• Self-regulation, i.e. the ability to control disruptive impulses and moods;
• Motivation i.e. the passion to work primarily for intrinsic rewards. Extrinsic rewards such as money or status should be secondary;
• Empathy, i.e. understanding the emotional state of other people;
• Social skills such as the ability to manage relationships and interpersonal networks.

Van Schoor (2000) argues that neither intellect in the traditional sense of the word, nor emotional intelligence alone is sufficient to cope in today’s society. We should strive to develop both, and actively transfer these skills to our online work environments and personal lives. This is called transformational intelligence and these skills are the key to coping with the demands of 21st-century online entrepreneurship

Van Schoor, A.W. (2000). Transformational intellect: The key to coping in the 21st century. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Society for Student Counsellors in Southern Africa, Durban quoted by  Deirdre Potgieter, Senior Student Counsellor: Bureau for Student Counselling and Career Development at Unisa

Online Entrepreneurship Skills, Aptitudes, Personality and Values

The importance of values to the entrepreneur

In relation to online entrepreneurship, a value is something which we esteem, hold in high regard and believe is to be very important for our business

Tony Robbins in one of his books is quoted as saying: “Values represent basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence. They contain a judgmental element in that they carry an individual’s ideas about what is right, good, or desirable.

When we rank an individual’s values in terms of their intensity, we obtain that person’s value system. All of us have a hierarchy of values that forms our value system. This system is identified by the relative importance we assign to such values as freedom, pleasure, self-respect, honesty, obedience and equality”.

According to Tony Robbins, values are important, because they “lay the foundation for the understanding of attitudes and motivation and because they influence our perceptions, our attitudes and behaviour.”

For example, if employee values are not aligned to the prevailing culture within an online business, they can experience job dissatisfaction and lack of motivation.

According to Rokeach, Quoted by Dr Mohammed S. Chowdhury, values are enduring beliefs that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence.

Values are important because they affect how individuals behave in their businesses in terms of what is wrong or right.

Some basic values that affect the attitude and work motivation of entrepreneurs include:

• Family – The extent to which the business offers family well-being to the entrepreneur
• Recreation – The extent to which the business offers recreational opportunities to the entrepreneur
• A sense of accomplishment – The degree to which the entrepreneur feels the venture gives him/her a sense of accomplishment.
• Advancement – The degree to which the entrepreneur feels the venture will create opportunities for advancement
• Financial security – The extent to which the venture offers financial security to the entrepreneur.
• Integrity – The extent to which the running of the venture does not conflict with the entrepreneur’s core belief system.

The importance of Attitudes to the entrepreneur as a startup

Attitudes are evaluative statements- either favourable or unfavourable- about objects, people or events. They tell us how someone feels about something.

Psychologists have long known that productivity is affected by an individual’s attitude towards his/her work. Entrepreneurial performance is affected by how people feel about themselves, their employees, and their customers. Therefore, attitudes are important because they affect Entrepreneurial behaviour.

For example, if the workers in your business believe that you are conspiring to make them work harder for less money when you try to implement certain changes, then it makes sense to try to understand how these attitudes were formed, their relationship to actual business behaviour and how they can be changed.

Therefore, Entrepreneurial success depends largely on the attitude and beliefs of the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs with poor attitudes and limiting beliefs, affect customers negatively, discourage their workers from doing their best and do not perform to their own level of capability

Once the entrepreneur has determined his/her personality traits, values, attitudes, skills knowledge and aptitudes, s/he can match his/her profile to the qualities required to start and successfully run a particular venture.

Case Study – Nando’s Franchisee Profile and Evaluation

A study of Nando’s franchisee profile reveals that few applicants will usually successfully progress through the Application Process and eventually be awarded an opportunity. With this in mind, we consider a Franchisee to be a unique person. As a franchisee, you will be running your own business, yet within the parameters of Nando’s brand and business format.

In operating a Nando’s restaurant, you will have a number of responsibilities including:

• Excellence in service levels
• Creating a personalised, friendly and fun environment
• Marketing of the restaurant and the brand
• Business management
• Customer orientation and community relations
• People management

You will not only have to have the required financial resources and track record, but you will also have to possess the attributes of a business owner to successfully fulfil your role as a Nando’s franchisee

The Ideal Franchisee

Background requirements

• The franchisee should be creditworthy and have available financial resources
• The franchisee should be financially sound
• No formal qualification is required although, in some instances, this may be an advantage.

Experience required

• A franchisee with managerial experience and/or having been self-employed is ideal
• The franchisee should be computer literate
• The franchisee should be a “hands-on” person who can pro-actively market his business, selling himself, the Nando’s concept and the Nando’s experience. The franchisee must be an “owner-operator”.

Personal Attributes needed

• The franchisee needs to be an energetic self-starter with a professional approach to business.
• The franchisee must be people-orientated with excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
• He/she must have a love for working with people and must be capable of gaining and maintaining rapport with his customer base through being friendly, patient and tolerant, yet firm.
• He must be able to manage others effectively, have above-average motivational skills and create a personalised friendly and fun environment.
• The franchisee needs to share an alignment with Nando’s values. He must be able to model the characteristics of a true Nandocas.
• The franchisee should be of respectable appearance and of good physical health.
• The franchisee must demonstrate entrepreneurial skills; yet also show the ability and willingness to be a team player.
• The franchisee should be enthusiastic, dynamic and self-motivated. He/she must be a “go-getter” with a strong will to succeed.
• The franchisee must consider his/her business as a long-term investment. He/she must show commitment and have a loyal and consistent character.
• By the nature of our business and the QSR sector, the franchisee needs to have stamina and strength to commit to the hard work and long hours needed when operating a Nando’s franchise.

Become an Online Entrepreneur

Concept Of Entrepreneurship: Earn while you study:

Economics tell us that success online is very simple at its core. Wealthy Affiliate University, one of the world leaders in online affiliate marketing strategy, makes it simple. They provide a simple 4-step online entrepreneurship building process that you are going to learn in a 5phase and 50 lessons of the digital, online technology entrepreneurship course they offer. Here is a quick diagram breaking down the process to become an Online Entrepreneur. Here, you will learn more than
10 definitions of entrepreneurship

Just four simple steps and you are your very own online entrepreneur as well as the CEO of your very own online business. Let’s break down this process to become an Online Entrepreneur

First things first, Get a computer and an internet connection. Then SIGNUP FREE at Wealthy Affiliate University. Setup your account by adding your profile picture and setting up your online entrepreneur goals. Now follow the four simple steps below, as summarized by The Wealthy Affiliate University

Choose an Interest.

This can be anything at all, any interest, passion or even something you have no personal experience with. Don’t worry, even if you have no idea what you want your business to be, there is amazing software as well as a supportive community of online entrepreneurs, ready to give you a push 24/7

Build a Website.

Build your very own WordPress website that carries your product or service. Your website is your foundation and Wealthy Affiliate University has the most sophisticated and feature-rich website as well as a hosting platform to help you become a successful online entrepreneur. You can choose between a free website as well as free hosting, a free keyword search tool etc.

You can also choose to upgrade to their premium course for added features. This Premium course gives your the key to all the online business solutions

Attract Visitors.

With your free website as well as free hosting in place, it is now time to learn all about how to get traffic and visitors to your website. The first focus is a FREE traffic and there is A LOT of it out there. This is the beginning of your endless possibilities of making money online. You will agree with me that this is not a get-rich-quick scheme.

You can see the commitment you have been able to put in, to get out your ideas, your website and now traffic and visitors. This happens for any other genuine business out there. If ever it sounds too good to be true, you must run for your life.

Earn Revenue.

Once you have people and traffic on your website, you begin to earn revenue. Don’t worry, Wealthy Affiliate University again has the tools and an amazing community that will make it easy for you to have traffic flowing to your website. There are over 50 ways you can monetize traffic online, and over 550 MILLION products/services that you can promote as an affiliate if you choose to.

Just follow the simple lessons and also speak to the ever-ready supportive community of online entrepreneurs available at Wealthy Affiliate University, ready to help you succeed.

CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU HAVE JUST BECOME AN ONLINE ENTREPRENEUR

Note: As you go through the training, these four processes are going to be covered in detail. As mentioned, absolutely EVERYTHING you need in order to become a successful online entrepreneur, is available at Wealthy Affiliate University, to facilitate this process! It is a true “earn while you learn” environment.

Online Entrepreneurship Course

Training that is Simple, in Real-Time & Evolving

Putting together all your love of becoming an entrepreneur in a practical package, in the form of an online entrepreneurial training course, is a value package that can never be under-estimated. Training doesn’t just simplify processes, it makes the lessons learnt better in every single way.

You are going to unlock access to the most sophisticated training platform in the industry at Wealthy Affiliate University. For newbies and advanced marketers alike, their focus with all training is teaching you how to create a successful, long-term business within the online space.

It is a 5 Phase, 50 Lesson course that is going to be the fundamental core of your knowledge base. By the time you are finished with the training, you are going to be well equipped to succeed within ANY niche, category or vertical online. This training is updated regularly to keep you ahead of your competition and industry trends

A Website Platform We Can Grow With As Successful Entrepreneurs

Every successful online business starts with a solid foundation, a website. It is not just about websites though. As part of your online entrepreneurship course, Wealthy Affiliate University has some of the most useful and integrated tools for website analysis, management, ranking, and security included within your platform.

Features that are not offered anywhere else in the world. The website platform is ridiculously easy to use, yet very advanced. Building beautiful websites has never been this awesome

Premium WordPress Hosting, Unparalleled

Hosting your WordPress websites has never been more secure, yet powerful. The brains behind any successful hosting platform are the intricate technical process that nobody ever sees. Wealthy Affiliate University provides a hosting experience you can feel safe running your businesses on. They take care of the technology, security, and monitoring so you can focus on more important things, like growing your business!

The Ultimate Content Writing Platform

Content is one of the most important aspects of any online business. Within Wealthy Affiliate University, you are going to be more than equipped for efficiency, accuracy, content quality and beautiful content design. Their SiteContent offers a writing environment where you can create, manage, organize, and publish your content within ONE amazing platform.

The Amazing Jaaxy Keyword & Research Platform

Every successful online business stems from a proper understanding of keywords and the ability to find low competition and highly relevant keywords. Their Jaaxy research platform gives you unparalleled access to billions of keywords in a matter of seconds. A gold mine of traffic is seconds (and a search) away.

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