There is a pervasive myth that entrepreneurship can’t be taught. If you weren’t lucky enough to be born an entrepreneur, then you’re simply out of luck. And if you are a born entrepreneur, then success presumably just falls in your lap.
Both ideas are problematic. If we agree that the definition of entrepreneurship is the activity of setting up a business and taking on financial risk in the hope of realising a profit, then it is very clearly something that can be taught. In fact, it has to be taught – there are too many technical, emotional and interpersonal skills required for success in the field for it to come naturally to anyone.
Entrepreneurship is both an art and a science; you may have the creative talent, but it still requires adherence to best practice to realise the best possible outcomes. You might be born with personality traits that are advantageous, such as being innovative, having a problem solver mindset that enables you to spot opportunities, or having a growth-based mindset. But even if you are innately predisposed to entrepreneurial activity or born with certain talents – you still have to learn the practices of good business.
Natural traits can be advantageous at certain stages of the entrepreneurial journey. But they can just as easily become hindrances. Having high confidence and belief in yourself is important in the early stages of setting up a business. You want to attract people to your team and sell them your vision. But overconfidence, and a lack of appreciation of risk management and mitigation, will quickly lead to issues when you’re trying to formalise your processes and attract more cautious capital.
Entrepreneurship requires a variety of skills that can and must be learned. In fact, if there’s a single key entrepreneurial trait, it’s being open to lifelong learning that requires constant adaptation.
Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, entrepreneurs require a host of technical skills. It doesn’t matter if you’re the world’s best entrepreneurial personality – you need good foundational knowledge in areas like product, marketing, operations, and finance. At the beginning, when your team is small, you’re going to be doing a bit of everything yourself. Eventually, as you start to grow the business, the more you know about each domain the better your recruitment choices and ability to manage people will be.
Technical skills are typically learnt from existing knowledge bases. There is an evolving set of best practice guidelines in relation to entrepreneurship that can and should be learnt. You learn more by reading, researching and speaking to experts. These skills also benefit from being tested in practice, and in concert with other people.
An additional, soft skill, which has an impact on almost every other activity you’ll perform, is communication. As an entrepreneur, you’re always communicating your product, vision, and business model to others. No one is born a great communicator – it comes from practice, building confidence and knowledge. Communication requires constant development – in business, and in every relational aspect of our lives. It also requires self-awareness to read situations and be emotionally intelligent.
The ability to honestly appraise oneself and then work on one’s weaknesses is the next facet of lifelong learning for an entrepreneur. You not only need to react to changing external, market conditions throughout your career, you also need to acknowledge your weaknesses, and constantly work to improve them. You could be an innovative hustler, but once you’ve created a business that is growing, you might lack skills to raise financing or for detail-oriented tasks, for example. At some stage you’ll need to be a strong negotiator, an empathetic communicator, a detail-focused researcher, and a technical-minded innovator.
No one is born with all these talents. The toughest challenge is realising where your personality might need to align better with the success indicators for the specific stage of entrepreneurship you’re involved in.
In our SME development programmes we often find younger people struggle with confidence, but it can be built. The emergence of entrepreneurial superstars from our community and youth entrepreneurship programmes is proof of that.
Lots of participants in our programmes are running successful businesses but are still operating within a fear-based mindset. Being a good business owner requires you to maintain an opportunity-based and positive perspective, building confidence through thorough research, and learning to take calculated risks.
Learning more about one’s personality comes about through self-reflection, working with a coach or therapist, listening to others, and, above all, being honest with yourself. This is not easy, but it is necessary.
If entrepreneurship can and must be taught, what makes a good teacher of entrepreneurs? From our extensive experience in supporting South Africa’s most promising young entrepreneurs, I can confidently say that teachers need deep personal experience as entrepreneurs themselves. They need to enhance students’ ability to be agile, understand the practical circumstances entrepreneurs face like limited resources, and avoid teaching only from a textbook perspective. For this reason, entrepreneurs have more to learn from other entrepreneurs than from corporate executives, no matter how experienced.
Effective entrepreneurship programmes that are designed and delivered specifically to aid the process of learning entrepreneurship should start with a diagnostic of the business idea but also of everyone’s level of openness to learning, or “coachability.” They can then be exposed to interventions like bootcamps, and technical training via a blend of theory and working with specialists in each domain. Throughout, mentors work on both their technical skills and personal development as an entrepreneur.
The three key areas for entrepreneurs to invest in for themselves therefore include:
- Gaining technical knowledge by reading, researching, and interacting with other entrepreneurs and thought leaders.
- Committing to personal development around mindsets that may limit growth; and finding experienced mentors to guide their learning.
- Adopting an attitude of humility and lifelong learning. This is the best way to build a capable entrepreneur who is in it for the long haul.
This multi-modal approach to entrepreneurial development has, in my experience, succeeded in developing promising and passionate individuals into well-rounded, capable entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship can be learnt – indeed, it must be.
By Heather Lowe, Head of SME Development at FNB
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Lebo Gunguluza started his entrepreneurial journey with R60 and a lot of nerve. He managed to secure a bursary, which enabled him to study a BCom degree at the University of Natal. To earn money while he studied he became an agent for Edgars on campus, then went on to work in sales for the SABC. He launched his first business and made his first million by 27 but squandered it and had to work his way back to financial wealth. He launched Corporate Fusion, and at 33 his business was turning over R14 million, but he left it to others to run while he travelled the world, and he soon found himself in R4 million worth of debt. Several years later after paying off his debt, he launched GEM (Gunguluza Enterprises & Media) Group of Companies, which has become a multimillion rand business in it\’s first two-and-a-half years. He went on to become one of the \”dragons\’ on the South African edition of Dragons\’ Den, as well as one of the \”sharks\’ on M-Net\’s Shark Tank.