How to confront entrepreneurship challenges

It takes great determination to do business in Nigeria today as potential and practising entrepreneurs are faced with myriad challenges. Nigeria ’s business terrain, which has always proved difficult to navigate, is becoming more and more unfriendly to entrepreneurs, especially those in the small and medium sectors. The irony in this scenario is that Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) should, ideally, hold the key to our economic greatness. But, in practice, the myriad operational challenges that daily confront than appears too daunting. Nevertheless, courageous and resilient entrepreneurs have continued to weather the storm. They believe that giving up hope and resigning to fate is not the best option. This write-up intends to review some of these daunting challenges and how best to tame them so that businesses can remain afloat. Perhaps it may be imperative here to once again define entrepreneurship and describe who qualifies as an entrepreneur.Who is an entrepreneur?Various definitions have been attempted depending on which concept one is considering. An Entrepreneur is the one who controls every stage of production. He determines the direction of the business. It is only when he shows the green light that others follow. A major function of an entrepreneur, as described in elementary economics, is risk taking. Nobody will take the risk for him. An entrepreneur is a visionary leader, manager and decision taker. He accepts responsibility for success or failure of the ventures. Successful entrepreneurs are very daring. They create the opportunities; other people only support and encourage them to make the opportunities happen. The business environment (micro and macro) would naturally be turbulent and competitive. It is the responsibility of the Entrepreneur to navigate and explore the fluid marketing environment with the aim to distil and harness the available opportunities. A born entrepreneur sees opportunity in every seeming problem or difficulty. He never sees failure; rather, he sees another way of doing the same thing.The real challenges