We may nev­er have thought about be­com­ing an en­tre­pre­neur. Or you felt that it was for in­cred­i­bly spe­cial peo­ple. They were born that way, you pon­dered. Then one day a spark hap­pened. An op­por­tu­ni­ty came to you, and you thought you could do it. It was a side hus­tle, but you liked not just the few dol­lars, but the thrill of start­ing your own.

The fol­low­ing is a fic­tion­al sce­nario. Maria thought about her­self as “an ef­fec­tive one”, not an en­tre­pre­neur. She worked in cus­tomer sup­port and of­ten helped friends clean up messy in­box­es, cal­en­dars, and client fol­low-ups. The shift hap­pened one night. A friend in sales, frus­trat­ed af­ter miss­ing two sales calls, asked Maria to “just fix the process.” Maria spent 60 min­utes cre­at­ing a sim­ple track­ing sheet, email la­bels, and a week­ly re­view check­list. Her friend tried the new sys­tem and said, “I’d pay you to do this every month.”

That state­ment made it a re­al­i­ty. Not be­cause it was dra­mat­ic, but be­cause it proved three prac­ti­cal things: Maria could solve a spe­cif­ic prob­lem; some­one val­ued the re­sult and the work could be re­peat­ed; and it showed her tal­ent.

Her next step was small. She wrote down the ex­act prob­lem, the out­come, and a sim­ple $1,000 month­ly of­fer. Then she asked three more small busi­ness own­ers if they want­ed help now. And the big bang start­ed!

Ne­ces­si­ty en­tre­pre­neur­ship

Maria did not plan to start a small free­lance busi­ness. It just hap­pened. Some­times we miss op­por­tu­ni­ties when they come our way. It is called our cog­ni­tive blind spot. We should al­ways as­sume to­day is the best time to start a busi­ness. Of­ten, we be­lieve that in ad­ver­si­ty or dif­fi­cult per­son­al times, it is bet­ter to have clar­i­ty be­fore you pro­ceed. Oth­ers al­so want a way out of their dif­fi­cult lives.

Oprah Win­frey grew up fac­ing pover­ty and sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al hard­ship be­fore build­ing a ca­reer in me­dia. Over time, she turned her com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and au­di­ence trust in­to own­er­ship by launch­ing her own pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Har­po Pro­duc­tions.

Jan Koum im­mi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States from Ukraine as a teenag­er and lived with fi­nan­cial chal­lenges, at one point re­ly­ing on food stamps. He lat­er built What­sApp around sim­ple, re­li­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion, shaped in part by his un­der­stand­ing of what it means to need af­ford­able con­nec­tion. What­sApp was sold to Face­book in 2014 for about US$19 bil­lion.

En­tre­pre­neurs no­tice prob­lems

Some peo­ple see prob­lems as ob­sta­cles or as dead ends. En­tre­pre­neurs fo­cus on peo­ple or or­gan­i­sa­tion­al prob­lems. Maria saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty for her col­leagues in sales and de­vel­oped a so­lu­tion. The world is chang­ing; we will al­ways have pains (un­re­solved is­sues). Do not think that tech­nol­o­gy will solve all our prob­lems; some­times it cre­ates oth­er is­sues.

Oprah Win­frey found a way to get peo­ple to open up about their prob­lems on air and share their ex­pe­ri­ences. Jan Koum iden­ti­fied that some­thing was miss­ing be­tween so­cial me­dia and text mes­sag­ing. We need to com­mu­ni­cate in­stant­ly and share pic­tures of our lives.

For­ev­er 21, found­ed by South Ko­re­an im­mi­grants, Do Won Chang and Jin Sook Chang, achieved suc­cess by copy­ing run­way styles and trendy clothes and sell­ing at af­ford­able prices. They used a scarci­ty mod­el to dri­ve high in­ven­to­ry turnover, a way to re­duce op­er­at­ing costs sig­nif­i­cant­ly. How­ev­er, they lat­er filed for bank­rupt­cy.

Con­fi­dence be­fore ac­tion

En­tre­pre­neur­ship re­quires mind­set changes. As your idea takes form, the chal­lenges start to eval­u­ate your be­liefs about your­self and your lev­el of com­pe­tence. Per­sis­tence and lat­er re­silience take hold. Start with the be­lief that “there is a bet­ter way”.

We all prac­tice en­tre­pre­neur­ship in many ways and do not rec­og­nize it. We are trans­lat­ing com­plex prob­lems in­to sim­ple-to-un­der­stand sys­tems. You clear up messy prob­lems in your home and of­fice. You have the tal­ent, but to do it on your own re­quires own­er­ship.

Con­fi­dence comes from do­ing and ex­per­i­ment­ing. You try a so­lu­tion, and of­ten it does not work. This act of test­ing should not stop you, and it should be viewed as a learn­ing event. When you learn to ac­cept fail­ure as such, you be­gin to un­der­stand the game and its con­se­quences.

It is about cre­at­ing val­ue

Cre­at­ing some­thing of sub­stance to solve some­one else’s prob­lem may seem sim­ple. It is a quick and easy so­lu­tion, and you think oth­ers can do it, and so why should they pay? Fre­quent­ly, knowl­edge pro­fes­sion­als, such as lec­tur­ers, doc­tors, and con­sul­tants, think the prob­lem is small. Of­ten, the client sees you solve a com­plex prob­lem in min­utes and does not want to pay. You may feel that you, as an ex­pert, should charge less. Or should you?

Ex­perts should not un­der­val­ue the years of ex­pe­ri­ence and the in­vest­ment in their cre­den­tials. One day, a friend told me he vis­it­ed a med­ical doc­tor who di­ag­nosed the prob­lem, wrote a pre­scrip­tion in 15 min­utes, and charged him $300. He thought this was a rip-off. I asked how long he (the pa­tient) had had this prob­lem, and he said a few weeks. Then I asked him how long it took for the med­ical pro­fes­sion­al to gain that ex­per­tise to solve his strug­gles. My friend got the point—it took over a decade of train­ing. It would have cost more in pain and suf­fer­ing with­out the doc­tor’s as­sis­tance.

Ex­per­tise ac­qui­si­tion is a long game. Sell­ing in­tan­gi­bles (ser­vices and ex­pe­ri­ence) is, by na­ture, dif­fi­cult for cus­tomers to ac­cess com­pared to phys­i­cal prod­ucts. So, to con­vince them, you need to have tan­gi­ble arte­facts, such as cer­tifi­cates and pho­tographs of past work, vis­i­ble. Walk­ing the client through the process con­vinces them that you un­der­stand how to solve their pains. Re­mem­ber, val­ue is cre­at­ed in the mind of the cus­tomer.

En­tre­pre­neur­ship can be for every­one. It is not ge­net­ics, ge­og­ra­phy, eth­nic­i­ty, so­cial class, or an­oth­er de­mo­graph­ic. You have it in you, and you must do some soul search­ing and re­flec­tion on your life. The next step you take will be shaky, but on­ly the con­fi­dent and re­silient will take the en­tre­pre­neur­ial leap.

Saj­jad Hamid is an SME and Fam­i­ly Busi­ness Ad­vi­sor and a Fel­low of the Fam­i­ly Firm In­sti­tute. He is the au­thor of Build Your Lega­cy Busi­ness: Solo­pre­neur To Fam­i­ly Busi­ness Hero. He can be con­tact­ed at en­tre­pre­neurt­nt@gmail.com