Given the circumstances Zimbabwean citizens live in everyone and their dog is advising people to start businesses, get into entrepreneurship and become wealthy. Good advice but not so fast. Entrepreneurship isn’t exactly for everyone on the face of the earth. There are issues of temperament, fit and other viable alternatives that can be pursued to deliver you to the life of your dreams. So let’s discuss some of the reasons why entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone.

Business is tough

Business is multidisciplinary and this is a challenge for many people. You come up with a product and that’s great but you need to get the pricing right. You get your pricing right now you must worry about the packaging. As if that’s not enough someone starts telling you about brand building. Just when you think you are starting to understand those things you have someone in your ear about digital marketing. And the story goes on and on. There’s a lot to learn and more and more each day. It’s easy to be committed to your product but when you find yourself overwhelmed with managing, leading and knowing when to do which your commitment may wane.

The struggle is that business success is built on many pillars and being brilliant at one.thing is seldom enough. It takes a combination of skills put together but we are rarely told about these from outside and many only discover this in business. It comes as a rude awakening and most end up playing catch up. Disciplines like selling and understanding concepts like finance fall way down the list of things many will tell you you need to learn about business.

Business myths

Business as a discipline is hard enough. The number of misconceptions and myths about a business only make things worse for people. We’ve all seen the representations of working by the swimming pool, high power lunches with movers & shakers, networking and being your own boss. What these wonderful representations don’t show you are the teething pains in learning new things, bearing the brunt of responsibility, constantly adjusting to new realities especially in Zimbabwe and dealing with difficult customers. It’s not all glory but it is worth it.

Entering the world of entrepreneurship on the back of these representations can you leave you with a sour taste in the mouth when reality hits. As DreamHub co-founder Linda Sibanyoni puts it “entrepreneurship is experienced not taught”. The learning curve with entrepreneurship is really steep and the myths make this a lot harder to deal with. It is therefore not a stretch to say entrepreneurship, the real entrepreneurship is not for everyone.

Intrapreneurs

Intrapreneurs are people who exercise entrepreneurial effort within organisations owned by other people and tend to be rewarded with ownership stakes in the organisations. While there’s a lot of advice in the form of memes and chain messages telling us that entrepreneurship is the only way to success that simply is not true. Matter of fact, many millionaires and a few billionaires have been created in this manner. This is a viable opportunity for people to create wealth while exercising their talents and abilities. Some people are better suited to creating success in these sort of environments.

Learning in employment

Some of us just can’t be entrepreneurs right now. There are things that people need to learn before they are ready for entrepreneurship. A great many people have gone into entrepreneurship in industries that are closely related to or similar to those they were employed in. According to entrepreneur.com the average age of a successful startup founder in America is 45. This is credited to the experience that they have gone through in employment. I have argued before that employment plays a part in entrepreneurship and should not be juxtaposed to it.

I have been in a position to advise many people before to learn as much as they can while they are employed, where they are getting paid for it before stepping out into entrepreneurship where they pay the cost of learning. Also making use of the expertise of your colleagues to help you understand the elements of the business that they specifically handle and how you can use that in future. You may be in admin but the guys from sales could teach you a few things about selling that you can use in your own pursuit when you break out.

Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle. Continuous learning and the failure that comes with it are not easy to swallow. There are issues of lifestyle, temperament and psychological fit that need to be carefully considered. There are many other ways to achieve wealth and success. This is not meant to discourage anyone from pursuing but hopefully inform those.who do pursue it of what they should be ready for.