Marketing... The end of the road..

4th May 2013

Today officially marks the end of exams. My first semester as an aspiring entrepreneur has been completed. I have many mixed feelings about this, happy that the first long walk to freedom is officially over, however sad that this means that we are that much closer to the end of the year, meaning that very soon it will be our time to head into the big world as well equipped entrepreneurs, which is a scary thought.

Looking back on the semester i can safely say that this course on entrepreneurship is not what i expected at all. At the start of this course i thought that entrepreneurship would be an easy course as it just involved enhancing your entrepreneurial skills and learning what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. However much to my surprise there are a lot more factors involved in becoming a successful entrepreneur. As one of our lecturers taught us, entrepreneurship comes from the heart. You cannot do anything you are not passionate about as an entrepreneur. This is also seen in the lives of successful entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Richard Branson.

Being a successful entrepreneur also stems from being proactive, having a clear vision and being timely. A successful entrepreneur also looks into ways of entering the market with blue ocean strategies instead of red ocean ones, in order to add value and have a competitive advantage. The importance of thinking and acting SMART is another key feature of being a successful entrepreneur.

These are all very small items that can easily be missed or not taken seriously by any entrepreneur, however play a huge role in shaping a successful entrepreneur. As stated in an Apple advert "it the crazy people who who think that they can change the world, who actually do". This statement is true and such lessons are lessons i never thought i would walk away with at the end of the first semester of this course.

Group work and learning how to function in the most effective and smart way as a group is also something i took for granted entering this course. However thus far i can safely say i have learnt a vast amount about how to deal with  certain group dynamics, and will only learn more in the semester to come. They say most learn by doing and in the case of becoming an entrepreneur thus far, i safely say the saying is true. One can only truly learn how to be an entrepreneur through being thrown into the   deep-end  as was done to us in this course. You can only really learn how to be en entrepreneur through experience, and i am ever so grateful for the experience that this course has given me thus far, and only hope to learn more valuable life lessons as an entrepreneur in the semester to come.

Thats all from me today..

Tarisai xx