Becoming an entrepreneur is a liberating experience. Entrepreneurship exemplifies an individual’s ability to become an independent economic force in the marketplace, especially in the assisted living industry.
A variety of factors contribute to an entrepreneur’s success in achieving specific goals to thrive in business. Specific internal and external factors relative to entrepreneurs have proven over time to be reliable indicators of personal optimization.
Additionally, there are internal and external factors that are regarded over time to be reliable factors as well. When an entrepreneur’s personal factors align positively with the business’s factors something magical happens – this is a secret ingredient to success.
Motivation plays a major role in identifying an entrepreneur’s strengths and weaknesses, relative to leadership capabilities. Motivation also ignites an individual’s natural strengths that foster goal attainment in spite of business and industry challenges.
When strong leadership capabilities are aligned with focused strategy and execution, goal attainment is achieved and once again, success is realized.
Business-Minded Questions Leaders Should Ask Themselves:
- So, how does one become a successful self-actualized entrepreneur?
- What are the specific factors, both internal and external to the entrepreneur and their respective businesses, that create a winning combination?
- Where does motivation derive from? How does an individual become motivated? Is it innate? How does an entrepreneur motivate others?
These questions are meaningful to the investor, owner and operator of an assisted living home.
So often, entrepreneurship is regarded as a mysterious experience, when in fact, it is not. Entrepreneurship, especially in residential assisted living is not a luck of the draw, as many might suggest. Anyone dedicated and compassionate person can learn the skills needed to succeed in this industry.
Internal Factors of a Successful Entrepreneur
Internal factors are qualities that are personal to the entrepreneur. The aspiring assisted living homeowner is more than a hopeful businessperson.
A successful entrepreneur is an individual with a collective experience that shapes their outlook on home, community, and the world. This outlook determines where, how, and when you will take the risk of becoming an entrepreneur.
Specifically, there are 5 factors that evolve from the inner psyche of a budding entrepreneur?
1. Need for Self-Actualization
It turns out Abraham Maslow was correct about a human’s need for self-actualization. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs first published in 1943 places self-actualization at the very top of the hierarchy. Maslow found the need for freedom and self-fulfillment to be the ultimate attainment of the human. It makes the human more than a beast of the field or a bird of the air. Furthermore, it is suggested that self-actualization is the strongest internal factor driving a person to become a powerful and influential leader or entrepreneur.
2. Optimism
In order to “do good and do well” in assisted living, optimism is a must in residential assisted living. The ability to maintain a positive mindset regardless of circumstances is at the core of optimism. Powerful entrepreneurs and leaders are able to have optimism as a constant, that is an internal attitude. Optimism ensures the entrepreneur misses no opportunity and the leader does not become overwhelmed with negativity that affects the organization.
3. Commitment
The foundation of success in business seems to be commitment. Commitment is the evidence of one resisting the unstable emotional incentive to jump ship or quit. Commitment is connected to the goal, not the individual. Successful entrepreneurs hold fast to the business’ goal and will partner with whomever is qualified to make it happen to completion.
4. Education
Do I need a college degree? No. The entrepreneur or leader’s education is an ongoing process and most often is enriched by personal and professional experience. However, formal collegiate education does not hurt. Collegiate education should not be undermined. It teaches you how to learn, research, dissect, analyze, and utilize information. Traditional and self-education are essential to the entrepreneur.
5. Background
Who are you? It matters. Your collective background is the richest soil in your life. Regardless of hardships, your family, cultural, occupational and religious backgrounds shape you. Do not disregard them because they define who you are? Entrepreneurs, especially those seeking to own an assisted living home, must know themselves – it usually defines your “big why”. It is the way you connect and relate to others – people want to know who you really are. They want and respect the authentic you. In the words of Polonius from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “to thine own self be true”.
While the business is an inanimate object, it is nonetheless an organism. As an organism, a business is the association and organizing of an idea into a functional model.
As a result, a business is called an organization. As an organization, a business takes on characteristics created by the people involved with the business or associated to it.
Therefore, businesses have at least 4 have internal factors that demand our attention:
- Vision
Whether you ascribe to this belief system or not, without a clear vision the business will die. Business must have an outlook for the future, which mandates present-day existence. Do not think what is good for today will work tomorrow. It’s quite the opposite. What’s good for today is for today. Tomorrow we need to anticipate and organize for that time. - Mission
Where the vision directs and explains where the business is and is going, the mission tells us how. How are we operating? How will we operate? These questions are answered in the mission. A mission statement, quite popular among businesses, tends to be a static statement. This should not be. Mission statements adjust and morph into the vision’s outlook. - Key Assets
Equipment, furniture, real estate, software, hardware – examples of assets. However, these are not the most important assets of a business. The key assets are ideas, processes, experience, and people. Businesses who cherish the key assets will be in existence for quite a long time. - Governing Principles
As an organization, businesses, inanimate living organisms, must not simply operate. It’s really about how we operate. Governing principles align all people around a common set of core values. People with common values accomplish much.
Defining External Factors of Entrepreneurship
External factors are those traits that oftentime impact the entrepreneur – this impact should have an external effect not cause businessowners to become infected. To be infected is negative.
It is when entrepreneurs are influenced or intoxicated by external factors. What are these factors?
External Factors that Impact Entrepreneurship
- Influence
Obtaining or being known as influential is a driving force for many entrepreneurs. However, to be influenced is another matter altogether. Family members, friends, and societal associations can affect the manner of an entrepreneur. A change in manner or demeanor may improve the business, but most often it negatively affects it. Successful entrepreneurs can garner their minds and hearts against unnecessary or negative influence for the sake of themselves and their respective businesses. - Availability of Resources
Resource availability is a prevalent challenge for many budding entrepreneurs. At times resources can be scarce, while at others too expensive. Resources such as:
- Land
- Labor
- Finances
- Machinery
- Intellectual
Intellectual capital can be difficult to obtain or retain. These resources are external factors that affect the entrepreneur but should not consume him/her. Source the organization thoroughly and you might very well find a surplus of intellectual resources hidden within the people.
- Changing Tastes and Preferences
The entrepreneur has little power over the fluctuating preferences of consumers. Therefore, it behooves the entrepreneur to really cast a promising and relevant vision. Hopefully, the vision will accommodate such fluctuations in consumer preference. Do you know what preferences are important to baby boomers entering into assisted living? If not, make the change. Change management does not begin at the organizational level, however, it begins within the entrepreneur. - Information Availability
What would life in business have been like if the pandemic was predictable? Information is not always readily available before a decision must be made. Therefore, make sure you are well learned in your respective industry, especially the assisted living home marketplace. Also, do not be confused by massive amounts of information. Learn to use what is needed now and store what may be needed in the future. The best information is that which is applicable now and lends itself to the future outlook of the business.
As it is with the entrepreneur, it is with the business. As an organization, which is an ideological organism, a business has external factors that affect it. Should it become infected, sickness or unhealthy operation ensues and may cause its failure.
- Product or service demand
It is a misnomer to think a business rejoices when high demand for its product or service is present. Actually, this can be a business’ nightmare. High demand mandates solid processes to meet it. High demand also arises because a plethora of reasons:
- Quality of the Product
- Endorsement of a Leader
- Changes in the Economy
- The Collapse of a Competitor
- Market Growth
Just as demand increases, it can also fall. Demand falls because of:
- Reduction in Product
- Service Quality
- Increase Competition
- Changes in the Economy
- Changes in Demographics
- Market Constriction
Regardless of which end of the demand curve a business may find itself, market expertise should be sufficient to negotiate and navigate the bustling waters of the economy. Residential assisted living is currently in high demand because 10,000 seniors are turning age 65 every day. A business with a strong vision and high execution of the mission will doubtlessly find success in either circumstance.
- Government policies
Ever wonder why lobbyists are so expensive? Attempting to curry favor with government officials is necessary for many industries. Policies and laws can tip the scales of industry for better or for worse. Businesses that function as a support to the government must understand operations in the public sector. These businesses must have policies that align with governmental policy and must have both vision and mission that coincide with the government. While much is outside the control of the business, certainly changes and shifts in government policy or operation should not come as a surprise. If a business is surprised by a change, the organization more than likely was not primed or structured to operate long-term in the public sector. Regardless, strong leadership can place the business on the right trajectory. The Residential Assisted Living National Association provides various insight on government policies for the assisted living industry. - Technological Advancement
Technological advancement can be both a benefit and a detriment to a business and sometimes it is both simultaneously. Technological advancement can:
- Transform ideas into products/services
- Enhance feasibility of production or service delivery
- Reduce time to delivery of product/service
- Increase efficiency in production or delivery of service
- Reduce cost in production or delivery of service
While all of the above sounds positive, the change required of an organization could be quite a feat.
The question becomes: Is the change required to take advantage of the technological advancement worth it? Will the financial and emotional toll pay-off for the long run? If yes, go for it. If not, abstain.
Even in the face of competitors adopting the technology, if your organization is unable to endure the change, find another way, market another way, do something different.
Also, be mindful, employees like new technology, but are sometimes resistant at the same time. So, if a technological change is needed, get buy-in from the key stakeholders and the most expensive asset a business has – its people.
What Is Your Motivation for Business Ownership
Entrepreneur their organization may to some be one in the same. Not so. The entrepreneur is the think tank, the creative genius, or in some cases the mad scientist, who was capable of pulling an idea into reality. The entrepreneur takes the inanimate and makes it animate.
How is this done? What drives an entrepreneur to accomplish such an incredible feat? The answer is motivation. Knowing the source of one’s motivation is like finding water in the desert. Motivation is hydration and fuel for an entrepreneur.
True entrepreneurs are not dismayed by a lack of resources. Instead, they are encouraged by knowing their vision will provide for itself. This is why so many regard entrepreneurship as mysterious. It is not.
Entrepreneurs value their thoughts, ideas, and creativity more than anything else.
When investors and monied individuals encounter men and women of such prowess, they gladly invest and support if it is something to which they relate or aspire to. The passion and novelty of an entrepreneur is music to an investor.
In other words, the entrepreneur knows the worth and value of their thoughts and operates as if it were capital – because it is.
Do you? As an aspiring assisted living homeowner, what is the source of your motivation, to do good or do well or both?
Many are driven by:
- Money
- Greed
- Apparent Need
- Community Need
- Family Need
Get the Best Training for Owning and Investing In Assisted Living
My industry is Residential Assisted Living and the premier place to see the motivation of assisted living entrepreneurs on display is Residential Assisted Living National Convention.
This industry is growing and has a long trajectory of growth due to the aging population of America. Baby Boomers are dropping yet another bomb. As they were born in large numbers, now they are aging in the same. They want and mandate a different type of senior living option and that option is assisted living homes.
Again, what is driving you to be an entrepreneur? What keeps your mind stirring at night when everyone else is asleep? What makes you daydream at work?
Whether motivated by a desire to make a difference, personal experiences, or the pursuit of innovation, your unique ‘why’ is your guiding star.
Embrace your entrepreneurial spirit, lean into your motivations, and join a community that champions growth and excellence in assisted living. Shape a future where passion and purpose meet, creating vibrant living spaces for generations to come. Take the first step towards making your entrepreneurial dream a reality—because the world needs the unique contributions only you can offer.
