Entrepreneur's Handbook
ENTREPRENEURSHIP MOTIVATIONS AND OBSTACLES
It has been stated before that entrepreneurship is not an innate set of features, and it is always an opportunity for a person who wants to become an entrepreneur. A person who wants to be an entrepreneur can be successful in this field with a disciplined work. This of course depends on both the individual's will and environmental conditions. For example, the family's support for being an entrepreneur or the presence of a successful entrepreneur in the family can be decisive for the person to become an entrepreneur. In another situation, because the individual cannot find a job, he may decide to open his own business, even if it is small. Such conditions determined by others, in other words, environmental conditions can lead the person to be an entrepreneur.
Although the environmental reasons that arise outside the will of the person are sometimes important in becoming an entrepreneur, it is necessary for the person to understand well with which motivations he wants to become an entrepreneur, what obstacles and negativities will be in the entrepreneurial adventure. Therefore, entrepreneurship motivations and obstacles are examined below.
5.1. Entrepreneurship Motivations
Entrepreneurship motivation is an explanation of why an ordinary person wants to engage in entrepreneurial activities. Therefore, it is accepted natural that these motivations differ from person to person. In practice, it is seen that every entrepreneur has different stories and decides to become an entrepreneur for different reasons. Although the studies on this subject gather people's entrepreneurship motivations under different groups, they can be evaluated in four groups (Robichaud vd, 2001);
- Motivations for safety
- Material (Extrinsic) motivations
- Individual (Intrinsic) motivations
- Motivations for independence
5.1.1. Motivations for safety
The basis of these is to secure the future of the person and his family. It is possible to see the motivations in this group as the main element of the interest towards entrepreneurship. For example, an attempt will be made to relax in retirement, to save the future of their children, or to be close to the family, as well as a person who is not concerned about finding a good job and may be interested in entrepreneurship.
5.1.2. Material (Extrinsic) motivations
It can be said that the interest in entrepreneurship is significantly related to financial factors. The prosperity that entrepreneurship can potentially bring is especially important in the increase of interest in entrepreneurship by educated people who have an alternative career opportunity other than entrepreneurship. Indeed, entrepreneurship can make a person rich when successful. For this reason, having a good standard of living and earning more money can be an important source of motivation.
5.1.3. Individual (Intrinsic) motivations
These are the reasons that meet the emotional expectations of more people. Motivations such as proving that a person can do something, providing personal development, being known in the public, and a sense of accomplishing a difficult job also increase people's interest in entrepreneurship.
5.1.4. Motivations for independence
It is one of the most important reasons that push a person to be an entrepreneur. Reasons such as the ability to make one's own decisions, protect personal freedom, be the boss of his own business and offer job security are included in this group.
A detailed list of entrepreneurship motivations is given in the document named "Can I Become an Entrepreneur?" on KOSGEB's website. In this list, you can determine what the person's own motivations are. These motivations will differ from person to person. For example, the expectations of a person who resigned and started his own business after reaching a certain level in professional life will not be the same as those of a person who did not study at university and started entrepreneurship. Similarly, entrepreneurship motivations differ according to the country and time. For example, while motivations related to security are more prominent in African countries where income and welfare levels are low, motivations for independence and autonomy in developed countries can lead individuals to become entrepreneurs more.
5.2. Obstacles in Entrepreneurship
Each choice brings with it a number of opportunities, advantages and disadvantages. There are financial, social and individual advantages as well as some disadvantages in the choice of entrepreneurship as a career. It is also useful for people who choose an entrepreneurial career to evaluate these advantages and disadvantages together and make a career plan. In general, the difficult aspects of entrepreneurship differ according to the size and type of the enterprise. Of course, the difficulties in a techno-entrepreneurship firm established with a team of two people and the difficulties experienced by the founder of a ten-year-old firm with 50 employees will not be the same. Therefore, the difficulties of entrepreneurship will be explained here, taking into account a newly established venture.
Especially the pre-establishment and establishment stages are the most difficult periods of entrepreneurship. At these stages, an entrepreneur should be dealing with problems related to team building, access to financial resources, production, quality, competition issues. For this reason, we can say that the beginning stages of entrepreneurship are in a sense a test of entrepreneurship competence. In general, we can list the difficulties encountered in entrepreneurship as follows:
5.2.1. Long working hours
Especially the beginning of entrepreneurship is the most intense and stressful period for an entrepreneur. In this period, the entrepreneur has the responsibility of bringing together and operating in harmony the people, capital, facilities and other stakeholders required to produce the product he dreams of. Of course, fulfilling this responsibility in the best way requires a long and indefinite period of time. Many entrepreneurs state that they cannot allocate enough time to their family, cannot take care of their hobbies, and their social relations are almost eliminated, especially in the beginning stages. But when things start to settle down slowly and powers are delegated to team members, working hours can get in order. Therefore, entrepreneurship is not a good alternative for those who cannot afford to work long hours.
5.2.2. Irregular Income
As Cantillon first defined entrepreneurship in the 1730s, an entrepreneur is a person who lives with an irregular income. This irregularity can be at levels that will be a source of stress, especially in the initial stages. Most initiatives state that they are having a very difficult financial time during these periods and that they do not have an income even as much as their salary. Indeed, difficulties such as employee salaries, taxes to be paid, raw materials to be purchased, payment of bank loans, machines to be purchased and delayed customer checks can confront the entrepreneur with an unpredictable income. For this reason, entrepreneurs should be aware that they make a choice to live with an irregular income.
In addition to the irregularity of the income, it should be noted that the income level of the entrepreneur is not very high, especially in the beginning stages, and the income obtained is added to the capital and spent on the needs of the enterprise. Therefore, the entrepreneur should be able to afford to live in a low standard of living, at least for a while.
5.2.3. A Stressful Life
The life of the entrepreneur is indeed full of sources of stress. In particular, it is necessary to constantly deal with financial issues. The entrepreneur must, on the one hand, make an effort to keep sales at a certain level to cover his expenses, on the other hand, he has to gain the savings to pay salaries, taxes and other payments. In addition to these, making strategic decisions for the growth of the business and implementing these decisions are among the fundamental responsibilities of the entrepreneur. Of course, all these issues are sources of stress for the entrepreneur. For example, for an entrepreneur who invested in machinery by mortgaging his house to increase the amount of production, the risk of not paying wages at the beginning of the month due to irregular sales or irregular sales increases the stress the entrepreneur faces. For this reason, it is important for a successful entrepreneur to know these sources of stress and have the skills to deal with them.