Entrepreneurship and Marketing: Traits, Strategies, and Challenges

This essay delves into the multifaceted world of entrepreneurship and marketing. It begins by defining entrepreneurship and exploring the core characteristics of an entrepreneur, contrasting the perspectives of nature versus nurture. The essay argues that while certain traits are innate, tr...Read More

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ENTREPRENUERSHIP AND MARKETING
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Introduction
This we can get a clearer meaning of entrepreneurship by first asking ourselves who an
entrepreneur is, because the name entrepreneurship has originated from entrepreneur. An
entrepreneur is a person who has a creative and unique idea on his mind, goes against the norm
despite the difficulties and tough conditions and implements the idea. An entrepreneur is a
person who is always willing to take various risk, fail as much as possible to see the birth of his
idea become a reality. An entrepreneur is a person not willing to be employed by someone else
or be reporting to someone else, but someone who enjoys being the one in charge, so he will be
the one employing other people instead. Now we can define entrepreneurship as the setting up of
a business enterprise from a nothing at all. This is basically being the route an entrepreneur will
take to set up and run his business from nothing to the something. Most entrepreneurship at the
beginning never have no resources such as capital, human resources and office resources, but the
idea they have on their minds is what they normally bank on.
Definition of marketing
Marketing is a process of identifying customer’s needs by collecting information from
customers, anticipating about customer needs also by being alert on any changes in the
environment and market and satisfying consumer needs by providing solutions to the market and
consumers, which is going to fulfil a certain need and gap, but all these will be done with an
intention of making profit in the end (Phillips et al., 2015: 430).

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Are entrepreneurs generally born with this trait of entrepreneurship in their genes or this
is not magic and it all about proper planning, focus, training and experience with ability to
learn from mistake. This is the question we are going to discuss.
This is one of the most conflicting questions people will normally ask about
entrepreneurs. Are these entrepreneurs generally born with this entrepreneurship traits in their
genes, is it a family inherited thing or entrepreneurship can be trained if you are well focused and
determined and discipline and having the correct attitude towards entrepreneurship (Roberts,
Murray and Kim, 2019: 1). From my real life experience and as a result of interacting with
various entrepreneurs on almost daily basis, I can confidently say that not everyone is cut out for
entrepreneurship, and it’s so unlikely that it can be learned, because the traits of an entrepreneur
is normally exhibited early in someone’s life may be a s a young person in high school or at the
university. Majority of Entrepreneurs are people who are born with some unique characteristics.
Entrepreneurs mostly exhibit these characteristics in their early stages of life. One can observe
the way a young person is behaving and one can determine that young person is not cut out for
normal employment but for entrepreneurship, a good practical example that was done by Forbes
on the Mad Billionaire behind Go Pro Nick Woodman. Nick was the youngest of four children in
his family, and always exhibited tendencies of being a schemer at an early age and was never
afraid to challenge those who were in position of authority; he was always very happy and
forever planning something. Nick Woodman discovered while at college that he was not cut out
for normal employment and while on holiday he made the decision to be an entrepreneur. In
case one is not cut out for entrepreneurship but forces himself or herself into this field, the so
many frustrations in this field will make one run away and look for normal employment, hence
the reason why I will still support my argument that entrepreneurs are natural born, the training

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is just to impact them with more knowledge on how to manage their business (Schaltegger,
Lüdeke-Freund and Hansen, G., 2016: 265).
As much as entrepreneurship is being encouraged everywhere for self-employment and
self-reliance, it has got its dark side,
When one ventures into entrepreneurship, the idea of becoming own boss, reporting to no
one, doing the work at your own time is always an exciting experience and a very satisfying
feeling. You go through historical experiences of other entrepreneurs, their overnight success,
how much they are now worth as entrepreneurs compared to when they were salaried employees
talking about how they found happiness and were satisfied by being entrepreneurs, how much
impact and money they have made and one fills he or she has made the correct decision and you
will also attain the same level of success overnight, not knowing that this success will be a tough
journey that might make one be depressed.
While the best of entrepreneurship are very true, anything good has got also some
element of dark side. All those overnight success, are the product of very stressing situations,
rejections and embarrassment. So before one is so excited with this notion that this is the best
way to go, know that this journey of entrepreneurship is not a bed of roses.
1. You won’t have money the first time even for several months, actually no money in the
business, bust but a must for money to go out. Normally the most stressing situation for an
entrepreneur is normally funding. Here we are talking about one person with an innovative idea,
but when this person seeks funding from financial institutions they normally get disappointed.
Even if they get the funding, for most entrepreneurship the first year will be more of setting up

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the business rather than getting money into the business (Simon, O'Sullivan and Stewart, 2016:
275).
2. Most entrepreneurs fear failure but failure is inevitable in entrepreneurship. You have to be
very strong in mind. You have had of stories of people using their last coin to support their idea
or putting everything they had to invest in implementing their idea and boom, it becomes an
instant success, this is so encouraging, but it doesn’t always work like that in the real life of
entrepreneurship, one need to prepare himself mentally, there will be a time one will put all his
energy, time and resources on an idea that will not see the light of the day, you can imagine in
the end how this will feel like.
Some of the skills majority of entrepreneurs’ exhibit are
Resiliency – This skill cannot be taught. If you are not born with resiliency as a trait in you then
there is no way you can acquire it from anywhere, you cannot be imparted with this trait trough
training, no way. There are so many crazy challenges that face entrepreneurship. For example
this is only one person, who has nothing but a crazy idea on his head that he wants to implement.
If this person tries to sell his idea to other people in order to get support in terms of funding or
other support to enable him or her implement and actualize the idea into reality, people will
laugh off his idea, and this can be so frustrating and humiliating. So if you do not have the
resilience to overcome these daily struggles and believe in yourself you will run away to save
yourself form any heartache and embarrassment (Thébaud, 2015: 61).
Passion – One must have passion about his idea and business. When you love something, even if
there are really tough times and challenges, one will stand up the one thing he really loves.
Entrepreneurship is really hard work, putting in all the hours, working very hard, sometimes not

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even sleeping. So if you do not have the passion for what you are doing then you cannot be able
to withstand the pressure and you will quit. If you love what you are doing then overworking in
it will not be stressful and then you will not give up. The love for your idea and business will
never allow you to give up (Zimmer, 2016: 3).
Tenacity – This one is a tough one. An entrepreneur is someone who has to remain very strong
despite any challenges that they might be facing. I had earlier discussed about rejection and
humiliating circumstances an entrepreneur can pass through, an entrepreneur can be rejected so
many times and might make one want to give up but with tenacity a trait an entrepreneur is not
supposed to give up, and is not supposed to lose hope. An entrepreneur never give up despite the
challenges until has attained their goal and objectives (Mrożewski and Kratzer, 2017: 1125).
Willingness to work hard – Being a salaried employee is a very comfortable thing, meaning
you have defined hours you have to work and you are assured of your salary at the end of the
month. You can call in sick and yet be paid at the end of the month and still you did not work,
but this is not the case with entrepreneurship, an entrepreneur has no luxury and has to work
really hard, for little or no pay. An entrepreneur knows well that that will be no pay until the
work has been fully being done to perfection (Modrego et al., 2015: 690). Nick woodman at first
had to work very hard, he put in 18 hours session daily on his project, the only time he got out of
the house was to pee only
Entrepreneurship and Marketing
An entrepreneur is a jerk all trade in his business. He is the accountant and he is also
everything, filling document, administrator, receiving calls, security, but the most important
function an entrepreneur will have to take is the function of marketing. Without marketing

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function then there is no way the entrepreneur is going to make it. With the marketing function
the entrepreneur can be able to uniquely identify himself with the market. The marketing
function has got various elements. The basic elements the entrepreneur; had to consider in the
marketing function will be (Bygrave, D. and Hofer, C., 2017: 13).
a. Having a well-documented vision and marketing objectives for his business. Without vision,
an entrepreneur is setting himself up for failure (Garud, Gehman and Tharchen, 2018:500).
b. Having a marketing strategy that is going to manage the following elements
1. Product/ service
2. Price
3. Place
4. Promotion
Let’s briefly go through the strategies and how an entrepreneur can employ them to make sure
his entrepreneurship is a success
a. Product/Service – The idea the entrepreneur has on his mind, he has to go out to the market
and get thorough information of what needs the product or service is going to fulfil in the market.
There is no way an entrepreneur will have a idea about the product or service then just force it to
the market, that will never work. The entrepreneur before doing anything should have thoroughly
researched and identify the need the product or service is going to fill a certain gap in the market.
Under this part, the product has also to be appealing to the eyes of the consumers. The
entrepreneur can hire the services of a qualified designer to make sure the package will be

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appealing to the eye of the customers. Mostly, consumer purchases the package and not the
contents (Shane and Venkataraman, 2014: 217).
b. Price- The pricing has to be correct. The entrepreneur has to check the need of his market,
what the product or service is going to be used for and the set the price. There are various ways
the entrepreneur can set the price for his product or service. The entrepreneur can compare the
cost in the market or similar product and then set his price either lower or higher. But for a start
if an entrepreneur is using comparable method to set the price, it’s normally recommended that
the entrepreneur should set the price below the other competitors who are already established in
the market
c. Place – This is where the customers will finally be able to access the goods or services. There
are so many factors a entrepreneur will consider here. Channels of distribution will be a big
factor to consider. How will the customer access the good from the place of manufacture? If the
entrepreneur has a nice product and the customers cannot be able to access it, then it becomes a
waste of time (Kraus, Ribeiro-Soriano and Schüssler, 2018: 15).
d. Promotion- This is the area that will now be used to bring money into the business. This is the
most important aspect of marketing for an entrepreneur. Promotion is making customers aware
of what you will be offering. An entrepreneur cannot have a nice product and then fail to make it
visible and make customers aware of its existence (Bhagavatula, Mudambi and Murmann, 2017:
210). We normally have a saying that if you are out of sight then you will be out of mind and
customers will have no idea that your product actually exist. The entrepreneur has to use various
avenues in which he can inform the customers. There will be various options in which an
entrepreneur can use to market the product, some of the promotional avenue available is

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normally expensive, but the entrepreneur can use avenues that are less costly and have maximum
reach like using internet, email marketing, Facebook to advertise his service, this method will
eventually result into word of mouth advertising (Chen, 2018:57).

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