1.0 INTRODUCTION
According to Hirsrich and Peter (2002) they define that entrepreneurship is making something new. Value and effort is needed and assume that financial, physic and social risk and receive the award in form of money would gain personal satisfied and freedom. To be a successful entrepreneur, each of them needs to have a few characteristic and profile to a great leader in business.
Entrepreneur plays role in adding the national income. New products are created according to developing technologies, create new wealth to country. By this, the national income increased. Besides, entrepreneur can be role model to the society and students. Many good characteristics can enhance and motivate them to become future entrepreneurs.
Conclusion, people can no longer expects jobs for life, but creates them. Moreover, in today’s world young people need to be talented and learn to be enterprising and set up new business in future. This not only will fulfil their dreams but also will give benefits to the society and world.
2.0 Entrepreneur Traits
There are nine entrepreneur traits will be discussed which are information seeking, persuasion, high-level initiative, work commitment, efficiency oriented, problem solving, tolerance for failure, and self-confidence
2.1 Information Seeking
Information seeking is a behaviour that refers to the way individuals search for and use information. The individuals like entrepreneur must put the effort by them self for seeking information to achieve goals and to find a way how to solve the problem in their business (Tunde, 2012). They can get a customer service helper or ask them about that product they use or make your own investigation. The entrepreneur that has this characteristic is Faiza Bawumi Sayed Ahmad.
She is the company owners of rice wholesalers Syarikat Faiza Sdn. Bhd, since 1964. She is from Mesir was migrate to Malaysia because follow her husband. Although she was 60 years old, she has seven children and 32 grandchildren still actively planning a strategy how to strengthen her company business level. She wants her company to be on the right way and achieve high profits throughout the year. Since young, she had been working as a cashier at a shop which owns by her father. She was born in the family that engaged in the field of business. The experience that she had madeher involved more active in the business.
Puan Faiza started beneficial activities with sewing embroidery with only RM4 as capital and sold various types of kitchen utensils. She also bought fabrics and made clothes for her little neighbours. Then she produced a set of pillowcases. The beautiful and neat pillowcase was first sold to her friends and her relatives. Through a small business that she does, she manages to save some money for her business capital in future.
She was interested in producing spices and from that, she buys various spices such as coriander, halba, chili and others to produce meat and fish curry under the brand of Bunga Raya. She formulated the spices by traditional heritage home-made spice recipes.
A few years later, she bought a blender machine and open retail stores. From there she got that wholesaler are mostly supplied by other races. She took the effort of studying different kind of rice to start up her new business. Retailer license has been applied by Mrs. Faiza to sells various kinds of rice including ponni, basmati, rice and fragrant rice Siam. She was going from one store to another store to get a positive feedback on whether they would buy the rice she sells or not.
In the beginning, she was quite a dead-end view of the trailer truck full about rice is set in front of her home however she took an alternative way by wrapping it using brand Bunga Raya and sent to the shops around Johor. Her business is well accepted despite intense competition. In the beginning 90's, the company has capitalized on the sensitivity of society in how to manufacture and food content. They started to introduce a similar category of good condition rice from India. That rice has many varieties of ponni. The quality and nutritious of this product has been suitable for diabetes patient. Syarikat FaizaSdn. Bhd introduced this rice to the whole state in Malaysia (Nasri, 2010).
From here we can see her continuous learning in developing her business skills have proven that she is an information seeker. She gain and collect all the business strategy which will be helpful for her product marketing. Moreover, Mrs. Faiza had discovered much knowledge about building all her new business from childhood till now. By seeking information about business as brought her to be someone successful in society.
2.2 Persuasion
Persuasion generally means the ability to persuade, encourage and convince others. Moreover, persuade and convince others to provide investment and loans also to undertake of a work. Persuasion can also be used to convince customers to purchase products or services of a company (Wikipedia). For characterize of “persuasion” entrepreneur, I have chosen Dato ' Aliff Shukri.
His real name is Aliff Shukri Kamarzaman. He is the youngest Muslim and Malay millionaire in Malaysia. He was born on 3 April 1987 at FeldaKechau, Kuala Lipis, Pahang. He achieve the title of ‘Dato' at the age of 23 years old. His passion towards business starts when he was young. He opened the company D'Herbs Healthy Marketing in September 2010. He had produced cosmetic product which dominated by women with the tagline ‘terlajaklaris'.
D' Herbs also has sponsored great programs such as Akademi Fantasia and Star Search aired on Astro and TV3. D' Herbs product also aired on radio-radio national and the response has been very encouraging. Although he gets comments and bad opinion from people about the way of promoting the product, he did not break his spirit to continue to promote his product and achieve his company goals. We must think positive and reject all negative impression about us if we want to be a succeed entrepreneur (Wikipedia).
Biggest strength that he had was his warm mouth, makes many people love and happy to hang out with him. He knows how to handle people just by his sweet talk. He manages to persuade his customers’ hearts by keep smile and stay calms to his buyers. Young man like him must have great persuasion, power and motivation which helps him works more effective to build trust in his products and attract more customers.
Besides that, he has to build the confident and trust in the stakeholders. This is because, they play an important role in developing the business by giving their supporting business. Other than that, entrepreneur should be confident to speak in front of people and generate the new idea even there may have people that against the idea. This could be seen in, Dato’ Aliff Syukri as the founder of D’Herbs product, where he have been doing business by knocked on the door to sell his product. Although sometimes he feels shy because customers do not want to hear his explanations given, there was the turning point to him to remain serious in business. For him, the shame is the second thing. The principle is simple, 'not because of our capital is the success, but the effort and determination is the most important'. After struggling business from house to house, he has collected savings for his capital, and then he began renting a kiosk in a shopping centre in Subang Jaya, Selangor. This shows he work hard to reach his customer in anyways.
2.3 High Level Initiative
High initiative refers to the tendency to familiarize our self with and break down the circumstance and afterward make a move proactively. It likewise implies that if the person is a self-starter, she or he can begin projects independently or maybe actively looks for solutions beyond the base criteria required (Frese, M., & Fay, D, 2001). You will dependably have a similar result in the event that we just do similar things unfailingly. To accomplish something better, we need to put more work and attempt to think in various ways. This needs a high basic speculation from business visionaries.
In order to achieve the level or standards to produce a quality service, the company have to improve the quality of the work to a better level. This characteristic has been shown by Ramly Mokhni (Ramly Burger). He is Dato' Haji Ramly Bin Mokhni. He started his business on 1984. Before that, he works as a meat cutter in a supermarket in the capital city in the early 1970s.
From his observation, he decided to produce his own beef burger manually with a capital of RM2, 000 only. It was started at Jalan Haji Husein at KampungBaru. That is because Malaysian Muslim were having a problem to identify whether the meet is ‘halal’ or ‘haram’. It was the idea and pure desire to produce halal products, clean, and quality.
Ramly was established a Makmal Mikrobiologi to control his product quality. The aim for doing this is because he wants to ensure his products are pure from a selection of raw materials to finished product and safe for consumption.
He also has applied technology expertise to ensure the productivity of products. A survey of research and product development is carried out by Ramly for the freshness, flavour, and quality of its products. Its attractive packaging also has been examined to ensure that products look attractive and can be sold to consumers.
Dato Haji Ramly successfully opened a company which is Ramly Burger that produce products that are halal for Muslims all over Malaysia. As an entrepreneur Dato Haji Ramly has high initiative value in producing halal products for Muslim. Today, Ramly Burger Processing continues to produce millions of burgers with its revenue increasing every year. The company’s annual revenue is now exceeding RM100 millions per year. The Ramly Burger brand is currently not only popular in Malaysia but in Singapore (Wikipedia).
2.4 Work Commitment
We must give priority to ensuring a task or work completed as prescribed by the company agreement. Take full responsibility in the face of problems and customer satisfaction and make efforts more than ever to solve that involve by customers. We must complete the task to ensure that work is completed satisfactorily and on customer satisfaction (Wikispaces). This characteristic most described by the entrepreneurship of Jack Ma.
Jack Ma was one of the first people who saw the Internet as a business medium opportunity yet at a time when the rest of the world didn't believe in his idea. For example, Jack Ma which is the CEO of Internet Company named Alibaba who is famous throughout the world and also the rich in China. Professional skills are highly desired by the company of Alibaba. Jack Ma will meet with all his management staff and will do a meeting quarterly and with all staff 2 years’ time Jack Ma will meet them. From that, all employees can give their own opinion. Jack is primarily known for being the founder of the e-commerce giant ‘Alibaba’.
Jack always thinks positively about the long term aim of the company. For instance, his announcement about eBay that soon it will get defeated by Alibaba item was ended up being valid. A positive work commitment was respected in an association. He teaches his subordinates to have such state of mind toward their work. They should set in their mind that nothing is impossible for them to done their task in their business. Moreover, he was the man with higher determination. Once in a meeting the proposal
2.5 Efficiency Oriented
Efficiency oriented defined as people who are believe and expect some profit when they are invest. Practically, to earn a high income or output for an amount of input invested, efficiency oriented people usually use their full efficiency. Successful entrepreneurs always find ways to maximize the output and minimize the inputs and costs. They are always wanted to apply new technique to develop the efficiency.
Robert Kuok Hock Nien was born on 6 October 1923. He is a Malaysian Chinese who known as a famous business magnate and investor. He is the richest businessman in Malaysia. His net worth on 2016 is 10.9 billion (Wikipedia). Apart from his multinational businesses in Malaysia, he also doing business and got invest in a lot companies in other countries throughout Asia. He always find a way to get good income in every business that he invest although he know some investments have possibilities to give financial loss to him. For an example, in 1970 he has invested in sugar business when he obtains a large amount of raw sugar. Although, he has invested before the price of sugar increase but the sugar trading give high income and return to him. After that he called as “Asia sugar King” (The Rakyat Post, 2014).
2.6 Problem Solving
What is problem solving? According to Wikipedia online, the term problem-solving is used in many disciplines, sometimes with different perspectives, and often with different terminologies. Problems can also be classified into two different types (ill-defined and well-defined) from which appropriate solutions are to be made. Ill-defined problems are those that do not have clear goals, solution paths, or expected solution. Well-defined problems have specific goals, clearly defined solution paths, and clear expected solutions. The ability to understand what the goal of the problem is and what rules could be applied represents the key to solving the problem. Sometimes the problem requires some abstract thinking and coming up with a creative solution. Hence, one of the most successful entrepreneurs is Bill Gates.
Bill Gates is a successful American entrepreneur, investor and developed software for personal-computer. He is the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. Bill Gates had high responsibility toward the company’s product strategy. He has capable to solve the problem effectively.
Moreover, the first problem faced by Bill Gates is did not enough money to hire a good sales manager. Sales manager is an important person who helps to improves product development, take a better financial decision and etc. He solve this problem by hire his mother Mary Maxwell Gates as sales manager.
Then, the income of company has dropped to the lowest point because of the “piracy” which meant of illegal copying of software and the use of it without permission of the creator. Moreover, Bill Gates noticed that the copies contained some error which he wanted to reduce before the formal release of MS-Basic. In February 1976, Gates wrote an open letter to Altair users, which was published in a
newsletter. As a response, he received 300 letters for Altair users. Bill Gates solves the problem by created a protection for the software.
Bill Gates is a Cofounder for Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation. According to Forbes (2016), his net worth is around $81.2 billion. He knew as first world’s billionaires. Bill Gates became success because of his good in problem solver.
2.7 Tolerance for Failure
Practically, people success, usually is related to net income per year. However, it matter their number of failure is a main reason to succeed in their life. Richard Branson’s (founder of Virgin Group) told that “Failure and rejection are an inevitable part of business, and how you deal with them will ultimately affect your success”. Thus, tolerance for failure will be first step of success in business. This trait has been shown by Colonel Sanders the founder of Kentucky Chicken (KFC).
When he was 5 year old, Colonel Sander’s father passes away. After his father died, Colonel take care household duties. At the same time, his mother is a full-time worker in a factory. At the age 15, he lied to join the Army, where he was a Mule handler in Cuba. Then, Colonel discharged after 4 month. After returning, from Cuba he searched for job.
Finally in 1930, at the age of 40, Colonel cooked chicken and other southern dishes in a service station at Corbin. He became famous in cooking and shifted into a nearby motel and started a 142 seat restaurant (Felloni, 2015).
He spent next 9 years, to release his new form with a new blend of spices, in 1939. He used pan frying which took 30 minutes to cook the chicken. So, Colonel found a new model pressure cooker which makes the chicken cook faster and also left it with a flaker crust and juicier meat.
At the age of 65, his restaurant looks a massive hit. Then, he sold his restaurant to cover his debts. After 25 years in the restaurant business, Colonel Sander was effectively broke.
At age 65, Colonel lived in his car for 2 year and driving throughout the country to sale his chicken recipe. He was rejected 1009 times before getting even on “Yes”. Finally, Colonel found a restaurant owner who agreed to use his recipe. In 1964, Colonel sold his chicken to 600 restaurants in US and Canada and Kentucky Fried Chicken for 2 million. This is an example for the new entrepreneur to tolerance failure and takes it as choice to become a famous entrepreneur like Colonel Sanders in the world (Ashley, 2012).
2.8 Self Confidence
One of the important traits of entrepreneurs is self-confidence. They trust that their business concept is always the best. Successful entrepreneurs always brave to face any kind of problems in the future. They believe in themselves that they able to solve any kind of challenges they may meet in their business (Wikipedia). Developing self-confidence is very essential to become a successful entrepreneur.
Tan Sri Anthony Francis “tony” Fernandes, CBE is a Malaysian entrepreneur. He is the creator of Tune Air Sdn. Bhd, who launched the first budget no frills airlines, Air Asia to Malaysia with motto ‘now everyone can fly’. Tan Sri Dr Tony Fernandes has his own vision and mission in his life such as to own a low cost Airlines Company, to own a football club and to own a F1 group. Beside this, he always focus and believe in his tagline which is dream the possible, believe the unbelievable and never take “no” for an answer and should have high self confidence level to achieve vision and mission.
Firstly, Tan Sri Tony Fernandes pledged his house and used his personal saving to attain the company consist of two Boeing 737-300 jet aircraft and debts of US$11 million and transformed it into an industry player. After one year, he cleared all its debts. Fernandes’ biggest achievement was to open skies agreements with neighbouring Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore. As a result, there nation have granted landing rights to Air Asia and other discount carries. His self-confidence, assist him to achieved his mission and vision.
Moreover, Frenandes continued his efforts to Achieved his mission and vision which is to own a F1 group. In addition, Caterham Racing competes in GP2 series, which was created by Fernandes. Then on 27 April 2011 Fernandes purchased Cterham Cars.
Next, Fernandes is a big fan of English Club West Ham United and he try to buy the club but the deal with Andrew Bernhardt failed to agree on the price. Fernandes confident on him-self to owned an English football club. On 18 August 2011, Fernandes bought the Queens Park Ranger (QPR).
Finally, Tony Fernandes has high self-confidence to achieve his mission and vision even though it was difficult to achieve. As an entrepreneur they should try to get or achieve their mission and vision like Tan Sri Anthony Francis Fernandes (Slideshare.net, 2016).
3.0 WILLIAM HENRY GATES III
3.1 The Biography Of William Henry Gates III
William Henry Gates III also known as Bill Gates is world’s largest software business, Microsoft and became world’s richest man. He has born on 28 October 1955 in Seattle, Washington. Bill Gates is from upper middle class family with two sisters. At age 11 or 12, Bill’s parents starts to pay attention on his future while in his age 13, he showed his interest in computer programming at Lakeside school and pursued his passion through college. He performed well there by writing a tic-tac-toe programme in Basic Computer language. At Lakeside School Bill met his two years senior Paul Allen and spent much of their free time together on programmes and had conflict among them. At age 15, Bill Gates and Paul Allen developed ‘Traf-o-Data that monitored traffic pattern and netted $20000 for their effort. In 1973, Bill graduated from Lakeside and enrolled at Harvard College.
In 1975, Gates and Allen formed a partnership in Micro-soft, a blend of ‘micro-computer and ‘software’. They started off Microsoft on shaky footing. Both put much effort to improve Microsoft. In 1976 Gates had more relationship with Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) president. Different formats were written by Microsoft to other computer companies. By his acumen in software field, Gates placed himself as the head of Microsoft, which grossed approximately $2.5 million in 1979 when he was 23 (Forbes, 2006).
His acumen not only for software development but also business put him in leading company position. In November 1980, International Business Machines (IBM) approached Microsoft for software that allowed operate their upcoming personal computer and went through obstacles because he did not inform the software development about the IBM dealing. Around 1979 to 1981 Microsoft growth exploded. By 1983 Microsoft was going global with offices in Great Britain and Japan.
In June, 1975, Bill Gates creates a company for software development and names it Microsoft (the first version was Micro-Soft). Despite of the hard work of its employees, the company at first experienced some difficulties with distribution of any software products. The company did not have enough money to hire a good sales manager, so this function was performed by Bill Gates’ mother Mary Maxwell Gates. (Wikipedia)
3.2 Entrepreneur Traits of William Henry Gates III
Self- confidence
Bill Gates is a multi-faceted man who not only created history but the product that has revolutionized the field of personal computers – Microsoft, which dazzling the world with his charitable. His life bespeaks self-confidence and the capacity to spot an opportunity a mile away. One of the entrepreneur traits that Bill Gates had is self-confidence. Bill Gates has been dropped out of Harvard within a year, his stated reason being “There was nothing else I could learn there". His journey doesn’t stop till there, he believed in achieving his goals through hard work. He also believes that if you are intelligent and know how to use your intelligence, abilities and skills you can reach your goals and targets. His love for computer programming has made him to chase his dream to the world of computers. Then he formed Microsoft. Microsoft’s vision is “A computer on every desk and Microsoft software on every computer”. Ten years later, he was a millionaire. He was more interested in computers and electronics than in his pre-law studies, has made him a billionaire today. There was a whole lot of self-confidence going on that brings him the success business of the world largest PC software company called Microsoft. Now, Bill Gates is one of the world's wealthiest men and is the head of the software company Microsoft (Biography.com Editors).
Information Seeking
To be an entrepreneur like Bill Gates, he must an information seeker to develop his computer programming at the age 13. Through his effort in technology innovation he has successful built the world’s largest software business, Microsoft. To get this pride that he gains now, he had been working hard to collect information about computer programming. His passion in this field has enable him to spent most of his time exploring, learning, and operating this system to be use by many people in the world. He spend full of ideas and imaginary visions on what changes are going to occur in future and preparing for the same. He take his willingness to try new things by developing computer software and end up building one of the fastest-growing and most profitable companies ever established, Microsoft. Gates had been introducing and maintaining his software development and also become the control global computer industry.
High Initiative Level
Without a doubt, Bill Gates is a man with high initiative level. It was vision that inspired him to pursue the creation of a graphical interface that became Microsoft software. Meanwhile, Gates is very determined of what he does; whenever he starts something to do he won't do another thing until he's done with the first thing even if it takes him a year. His spirit to create this software was founded by himself and Paul Allen who is Gates best friend. There are many challenges he faced and one of it when Microsoft first opened, Bill Gates became very successful, but then when MITS found out Bill Gates age people all over the world stopped buying them for a while which led to financial problems which meant he did not get a lot of money but then came successful again later in life. This show he can overcome the problem without stop his effort to be an entrepreneur. To be successful, one needs to believe in self-motivation, because without it, not a single person would ever start a business, invest in a new idea, or test a new product or market. The reason behind Bill Gates to be a successful leader is with his positive spirit and energy was his key quality.
Problem Solving
At the same time, Bill Gates also a problem solver. When Bill Gates and his friend Allen found out that the income of the company decreased to the lowest level, they took some actions to solve the problems. This problem occurred because of the piracy reason which was an activity of copying software and uses it illegally and the real creators of that software not know about this. Besides that, these copies had some mistakes which actually Bill Gates want reduce before start the Ms-Basic. Bill Gates was worried and sad for this problem. This is because, piracy problem prevent them and their company from earning highest profit and income. In February 1976, an open letter wrote by Bill Gates and it was published in a newsletter for Altair users. 300 letters was received by Bill Gates Foundation as a response. But, some of the letters only have a check. Bill Gates was the first person who found out and states the important of protection of the software. His drastic actions have become contribution to the computer program which is a product of creativity.
Tolerate For Failure
Bill Gates also good in tolerate with failures. Traf-O-Data was his first company. The aim of this company was ‘to read the raw data from roadway traffic counters and create reports for traffic engineers‘. The traffic has developed and it could end the road congestion by this way. The company produced a product which is Traf-O-Data 8008.That is a device which can use to read the traffic tapes and data also can processed.
They sell the processing service to the local country as a first trial. Unfortunately that trial was failed. The reason of the failure was the machine didn’t work. But Bill Gates and his friend did not give up for their failure. But, that failure made them more inside the success life. It’s preparing them to make their first successful product which is Microsoft. Finally they did. They work hard to make the Microsoft as a largest personal-computer software company in the world.
4.0 Conclusion
As conclusion of this report, we can say that entrepreneur plays an important role in the economy and society. By their creativity and innovation have a great impact in improving our standard of living. They have introduce various of idea in a way like process, machine, product, software and many more just to make our life better and easier.
The success of each entrepreneur can be described by their character and continuously effort. They eventually had faced so many obstacles that not every one of us can get through of it. It takes only the best to endure it to the end and create a success that worth for everyone. From the entire entrepreneur that we look through, they have been spending their precious time, energy and money to be a well-known entrepreneur today.
Besides that, the main key to success in their dream path is being practiced all the positive traits that we already discussed in the above report. All those traits like persuasion, self-confidence, work commitment and many more clearly make sense to us that without those traits entrepreneur will not be created or form.
So, from the discussion that has done, becoming a shine entrepreneur the spirit in them has to always be optimist and be a positive character to do well.
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