A small business entrepreneur plans, finances, opens, operates, and expands a business with expected revenues at a level that qualifies it as a small business by the government of the jurisdiction where the business is located. Entrepreneurship is a multi-disciplinary occupation. An entrepreneur wears many hats and frequently has to perform a whole range of functional tasks until the business can afford to pay for specialists, including researching, writing, forecasting, marketing, selling, accounting, employee management, fundraising, and operations.
Initially, a small business entrepreneur has an idea and develops a written plan to bring it to fruition. The plan consists of evaluating the market, assessing the competition, forecasting income and expenses, and developing a plan for marketing and capitalization. At this stage, an entrepreneur is concerned with viability and start-up. He chooses his partners, completes the legal formalities for registering a business, and aggregates the money that will provide the owner’s equity for the project. Finally, he looks for financing, either from a bank, a small business start-up program, or from private investors and venture capitalists.
The small business entrepreneur is then responsible for opening and operating the business. He will perform many different tasks, depending upon his skill set and the money he has available to pay for employees or outside help. There is always a bottom line when running a small business that makes it the owner’s responsibility to get things done, even in the absence of appropriate resources. The entrepreneur might do anything from bookkeeping to janitorial services.
Small businesses are defined differently based on the jurisdiction. Many countries, including the U.S., consider a business small if it has revenues up to $7 million US Dollars (USD). This means that a small business entrepreneur can be engaged in very sophisticated business operations that deal with financing, negotiations, product development, marketing, and multinational importing and exporting.
Perhaps the most important thing to realize is that the small business entrepreneur has the flexibility to do anything he can envision and has the desire to pursue. A new venture can be big or small, and can operate out of a person’s home or in an office building. The reach of the endeavor can be defined locally by walk-up traffic in a shopping mall or globally through sales over the Internet. A business owner can choose to be hands on, doing everything himself, or can make sure to capitalize the project so he can hire people and doesn’t have to do anything other than provide oversight.
