Africa-Press – Eswatini. Entrepreneurship has proven to be an integral aspect of our lives.
Whether it’s street vending, a mobile money agency, or a large corporation, it all comes to one conclusion: entrepreneurship goes beyond just making profit.
True entrepreneurs understand that their existence lies in the purpose of their business. So, whether you are considering starting a new business or you are already running one, you need to understand the purpose of your business and make sure that your customers and the wider spectrum of the community understand why you exist.
Your success as an entrepreneur depends on what you are offering and why you are offering the products or services. If your purpose is to just earn a living, you will find your business failing to grow because its growth lies in the people you do business with. Purpose-driven entrepreneurship is therefore beyond making profit and beyond the owner of the business. It is about offering value and transforming people’s lives.
What Is Purpose
Whether you are starting your business because of a brilliant idea, a great opportunity, or just to make a living, having a purpose holds the key to the success of whatever you will be doing.
Purpose answers the question, “Why am I doing this?” To set up and run a successful business, purpose should be engrossed in your vision and mission. So where does purpose come from? Living itself needs to have purpose, and whatever a man does in his life needs to have purpose.
Purpose helps you create values and goals. Your purpose in starting and running a business is not something you need to go to school for, nor do you have to find it. Unlike in life in general, where many preachers of purpose-driven living tell us to find our purpose, entrepreneurial purpose is what you create yourself.
When you create purpose, you give birth to something meaningful, valuable, and tangible. Creating purpose involves working hard on what you want to offer, who you want to become, and what you want the world around you to become.
Your purpose might not be to make a profit or generate an income. It might actually be to spend money on bettering the lives of other people. There is no universal purpose for entrepreneurship. Each entrepreneur has to define his or her purpose and transform it into an enterprise supported by goals, vision, and values.
Questions such as why, what, who, how,where, and when will help you create a powerful purpose. Why do you want to start the business? What do you want to offer? Who do you want to benefit from your business? Where will your business be located, and when are you going to start it? How will you run the business? These tough questions are crucial when starting a business, even when you do not understand what purpose means.
Solution-Based Approach
Businesses that survived the turbulence caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the global economic meltdown, among other challenges, provided solutions to the prevailing crises.
A business that is started in a community with the purpose of addressing the problems faced by the community stands a great chance of growing and staying in business for longer. Starting a solution-based business is one way of creating a purpose for your existence as an entrepreneur.
Many young people have come to me asking me to help them create a business idea, and I wonder what their businesses would be established on. Many of them would state that there are no jobs, so venturing into business will help them earn a living.
While there is nothing wrong with that, and many small businesses are basically started for that very reason, a business idea should be based on solving people’s problems. Your need for employment is one of the problems that needs a solution, but the bigger problem lies with the people in the community.
While you address their social needs, which should be the prime purpose of your business, that business will in turn become a solution to your problems. Once it becomes a solution for your own problems, its survival is not guaranteed.
You may get customers as you start, but as people fail to get their needs met or fail to understand the purpose of your existence because of a lack of value, they will leave you. I have read and learnt that, and I also love to say that if you want to make a million dollars, you must provide a profitable solution to a million-dollar problem. Purpose-driven enterprises grow fast and become profitable. People will spend their hard-earned income on solutions to their problems.
Develop An Idea
I am sure by now you understand the definition of an entrepreneur. In summary, an entrepreneur is a source of business ideas and goes out to act on those ideas to deliver a solution to people’s problems while bearing all the risk with the aim of making a profit. An idea could be something that answers the question, “How?”
Having identified a problem for which you are willing to take a risk to provide a solution, you need to find a way of solving it. Your idea will then help you decide the nature of your business, define your market, develop a business plan, and decide how to meet the financial, technical, legal, and other requirements to get started. An idea will help you develop your vision and create your purpose. Without an idea of what you want to do, you will not know how to do it.
Offer Value
Your solution to people’s problems should go beyond just eliminating the problems. It should go as far as improving people’s lives.
A purpose-driven business provides profitable solutions to people’s problems and helps them improve their lives. Your business might not directly improve people’s lives, but it must help people in certain areas of their lives in a way that makes it easier for them to improve their lives.
If your business directly helps improve their lives by adding value, it is purpose-driven. People have their own purposes, and if you become an integral part of their lives as an entrepreneur, you grow with them.
Serve The People
Entrepreneurship is all about leadership. Leaders provide support, guidance, and insight and help distribute the resources necessary to solve people’s social needs and improve their lives.
If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to have people at heart and submit yourself to their service. Your character as an entrepreneur should exhibit the qualities of a leader and impact people’s lives.
You may not necessarily need to start and run a profitable business, but being a leader is a way of providing solutions to people’s needs. People need role models, social icons, and champions who influence change in their lives. That is why managers and CEOs of big companies are required to have relevant training and experience in the areas that affect their scope of work.
Leadership is their main responsibility. To be a leader means to listen to people and give them solutions and guidance.
Set An Intention
Part of creating purpose is setting an intention. When your business opens its doors to the public, it might not attract enough customers to buy its products and services if people do not understand your purpose.
People need your commitment to serving their needs, not just a fly-by-night business. When you set an intention, you communicate your vision with the community and involve them in matters that affect their lives. If you do not set a sustainable intention to solve people’s problems, people will not support your vision. In fact, failure to set an intention is a result of a lack of vision.
People need to know what you will do for them in the next couple of years, how their lives will improve, and how their children will benefit from your existence. I remember approaching one prospective client in Nhlangano with my business proposal, and before he could even ask what I was selling to him, he asked where I was coming from.
When I mentioned that I was from Manzini, he asked how he would get me when he needed me. His point was that there were people who just passed by, made money, and went. When you provide a solution to people’s problems, your intention should be clear and show that you will be there when they need you. Your services should be easily accessible.
Become Part Of The People
Purpose-driven entrepreneurs are members of the community they operate in. To better understand what people need and how they want their needs met, you need to be a part of them. Having people at heart means being a family with them.
Their problems should be your problems, and as a visionary and innovator, you provide solutions to your community.
Take the burden off people’s problems on your shoulders and develop a business that addresses those needs.
That will transform your business from just being solution-based to profit-generating.
One thing I did before opening my first business was familiarise myself with the people around me, not just the ones I wanted to do business with.
What I understood was that people had to buy me first before they could buy from my business.
For your business to drive its purpose into people’s lives, you need to be a part of those people. Have a sense of belonging, and people will develop trust in you and eventually in your business.
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