Kenya’s major socio-economic issue continues to be youth unemployment. It is so massive that it upends the foundation of the nation’s supremacy as an economic superpower. According to statistics, one in six young Kenyans are unemployed. It averages one in every twenty in Tanzania and Uganda, two nearby countries. Any young person in Kenya will tell you that they are either gainfully employed (in a job) or self-employed, which is code for “business owners,” when asked what they do for a living. They frequently try their hand at self-employment due to a lack of employment options. They start a business without the necessary expertise or enthusiasm. But are those who work for themselves really entrepreneurs? Does the distinction between entrepreneurship and self-employment exist?
It must be kept in mind that being an entrepreneur is type of a philosophy or lifestyle. An entrepreneur would recognize a problem and then assign himself the duty of solving it. His primary driving force is to meet a need and ease a pain point for people. They continue to advance toward their goal despite the obstacles they face. Consider Thomas Edison, the man credited with creating the lightbulb. He failed about 999 times, yet he never quit up. He claimed that after each failure, he learned one more strategy to avoid making the same mistake again.
Finally, his perseverance paid off. Let’s also look at Jeff Bezos, who briefly surpassed Bill Gates to claim the title of Forbes’ Richest Man Alive. His goal when he founded Amazon was to create the biggest online store in the world and act as a bridge between producers and consumers. It took the company six years to become profitable. It took Facebook, the biggest social networking site in the world, five years to report a profit. Alibaba took eight years, whereas Tesla, the highly regarded and creative automaker, has not yet achieved profitability.
Closer to home, it took three to four years for Parapet, the biggest cleaning service in the area, to stabilize and turn a profit. Company Daily also disproves the notion that in business, leadership equals huge profits. The paper is the top business journal in the nation, yet seven years after its debut, it has failed to turn a profit. Did the founders of these companies give up because they couldn’t quickly recover their investments? Without a doubt. In reality, despite the persistently unfavorable comments about their financial situations, they persisted and became inspired by the necessity to address the recognized societal gap until their companies began to turn a profit. As a result, becoming an entrepreneur is a mindset and a calling.
On the other hand, self-employed individuals who view entrepreneurship as a career anticipate financial benefits or recompense. As a result, they would start a business to show their bossiness, have some free time (or so they think), and, most importantly, to make a ton of money. Some people even launch a business in order to live a certain lifestyle. Others believe that starting a business is their express route to financial success. However, this is completely false.
The goal of entrepreneurship is to create value. The goal of business is to benefit humanity as a whole. The fulfillment of an entrepreneur’s life’s purpose comes from meeting a need in others. Therefore, it cannot be a temporary situation for “self-employed” people. Businesspeople take the long view. For instance, more than a century after its creation, Coca-Cola has outlived its creators. Nine servings were served each day in Atlanta when the business opened its doors in 1896. Two years after creating the beverage, the founder died. At the moment, the company sells an average of 1.9 billion bottles per day all over the world!
Additionally, business owners are risk-takers who are willing to invest in a venture in order to achieve their goal. They wouldn’t worry about failing. Failure is a necessary component of success. They persevere in pursuing their interest in the face of setbacks. A self-employed person is risk-averse and prefers to play it safe in order to benefit greatly from their endeavor. Failure completely demoralizes them.
The ability of an entrepreneur to adapt to local circumstances is much more intriguing. He or she recognizes that there are ongoing adjustments in the environment, and as a result, is ready to adapt to those shifts. This is the driving force behind the perseverance of those who see entrepreneurship as their vocation. Their adaptability serves them well. The rigidity of the self-employed person is to their detriment. Their rigidity leads to their failure owing to their inadaptability, much as the extinct dinosaurs.
How else can the results of a study by CB Insights, which conducted a post-mortem on 101 start-ups that had failed, be explained? According to this report, a lack of a human need accounts for up to 42% of startup failures. Only 29% of the subjects mentioned a lack of capital as the reason for their failure. This is intriguing because most business owners attribute failure to a lack of funding.
The driving force behind someone starting their own business is what matters most. That influences whether a company will succeed or fail. It is concerning that all of the aforementioned companies that have survived the test of time shared a similar trait: their founders possessed the appropriate frame of mind. They saw business as a calling and a vocation rather than a way to make a living. We could significantly benefit from the ripple effect in terms of economic growth and sustainability if we reevaluated the reasons why we want to start a business and were able to reduce the rate of business failure in our nation and region.
So, if you had to choose, would you rather be an entrepreneur or a self-employed businessperson? The best option is really clear!
