Angela Vithoulkas - A Successful Australian Entrepreneur

Identify a business venture by analysing the environment and presenting alternative futures, and establish good social and financial outcomes.
Critically analyse a business plan by investigating opportunities to extend a business and adapt to achieve social and financial outcomes.
Present a convincing and novel identification of business problems from a company perspective and to evaluate future entrepreneurial ideas.
Engage with group members to offer diverse perspectives about a business and to reflect on the social, environmental and current issues facing a business.

Introduction to Angela Vithoulkas

There is a question which challenges every to-be entrepreneur and several actual entrepreneurs each day – how do I know if I have the abilities to become a successful entrepreneur? There are several tricks, ideas, and tips everywhere on the internet, motivational books from which people can take cues. However, reading about some real successful entrepreneur gives motivation and an understanding of what it really takes. The present report talks in detail about one such Australian entrepreneur Angela Vithoulkas.

Angela Vithoulkas' is the entrepreneur chosen for this study. She is an Australian entrepreneur who owns Vivo Cafe, a home to a radio booth. This has something unusual about its front corner. Vithoulkas was running Eagle Waves Radio from here. Angela Vithoulka has been a small business owner throughout her life. She has always lived and breathed small businesses. Her attention has always been towards small enterprises or businesses. She worked very hard to bring changes in the small business and moreover her focus was a lot on advocacy (McMullen and Dimov, 2013). She made her own radio station and brought the content out for small businesses as there was nothing there. She is the daughter of Greek Migrants to Australia. Angela Vithoulkas couldn't speak a word of English when she first started school.  Now she is not only local councillor for the City of Sydney but also an owner of small business.

Vithoulkas runs the Vivo Cafe with turnover between $2 million and $4 million. She was involved in the production of the nine shows on Eagles Waves Radio which are reaching 180,000 small business owners. She also spares her quality time for the decisions, being a councillor for the City of Sydney (Gupta, Chiles and McMullen, 2016).

There are following nine characteristics one must possess while starting or to run their own business:

Motivation

Entrepreneurs have skills of enthusiasm and positivity. They have the belief that they will succeed, entrepreneurs are risk bearers as, and they risk their resources to generate more profit. They contain a high level of energy but are sometimes eager. They mostly engaged in their business management, in how to raise their market share etc. According to Carnell, successful entrepreneur is one who is very passionate and enthusiastic in pursuing their own dreams, venturing new ideas and which finally helps in the success of their business. Angela personifies passion and enthusiasm for work which makes her a successful entrepreneur (Fisher, Maritz and Lobo, 2014). The enthusiasm and her drive to be victorious has benefited small businesses and made her very successful in her career.

Characteristics of a Successful Entrepreneur

Creativity and Persuasiveness

An entrepreneur who succeeds in running their management have the creative ability to know and drive opportunities. They have the strong skill of selling their skills in which both are persuasive as well as persistent. Angela has been trying her hand at entrepreneurship since a very young age. She keeps coming with some new and innovative ideas and implements them in her business and drives them toward growth (Kirzner, 2015).

Versatility 

Company’s employees depend upon staff to offer support or services. Being an entrepreneur, they are required to start their business as a solopreneur that means that you will be on your own for a while. Thus, the entrepreneur will finish off these by having different elements, including bookkeeper, secretary and so on. While taking this step mental preparation is required. She re-builds or starts businesses from scratch that are facing ruin, and that’s Vithoulkas' forté. This has kept her constantly in start-up mode and is incredibly rewarding (Navale, 2013).

Superb Business Skills 

Entrepreneurs by nature are able to set up their internal systems, actions and processes, which are vital to run a business. They keep an eye on sales, cash flow and revenue over time.  Mostly successful entrepreneurs depend on business skills and tools. They are required to evaluate their existing talents and expertise network lines. Anglea has owned and sold 17 businesses. Vithoulkas, new project or her newest baby is Weddings and Events of Australia which provides advice and support to businesses in the wedding industry (Putta, 2014). She has a very smart business sense and knows where to invest and which sector can reap the maximum benefits.

Risk Tolerance and Flexibility

An entrepreneurial enterprise establishment is risky to set up, so entrepreneurs must be able to consider risks. They can make a reduction in risk by thorough research and concepts, marketplace and industry. They can also examine their ideas and concepts on starting a business on a small-scale. At the same time, entrepreneurs require a persistent mission and vision. Entrepreneurs must be ever ready to drive any primary plans or strategies. By following this path, new and improved ways will come along this. So, entrepreneurs are required to be flexible yet open-minded in facing changes. Given the number of businesses Angela has built, acquired and sold, she is clearly a lady of strong mettle (Leyden and Link, 2015). This shows how flexible she is in taking risks and does not mind investing in a business where the opportunities of growth irrespective of how risky it is initially.

Motivation

Drive and vision

The entrepreneur must be proactive and positive in all the aspects they consider. Entrepreneurs must first consider that they will be doer someone willing to take the reins or else they will outsource. The key responsibilities of a leader of own company are to decide the path of business, for this aspect vision is required. Without this, the Titanic (business) will sink in the sea. Further, entrepreneurs must consider everything in a big picture. Angela is a visionary because at a very young age she envisioned that small businesses are the lifeblood of the economy and that developing a brand in small business is as crucial as building it for a big one (Chell, 2013). This vision has made her a success story.

Decisiveness

There is no room for procrastination or hesitancy in the house of entrepreneur.  This not only pauses progress, but also business can miss opportunities that could move you toward success (Ward and Sobek II, 2014).

At present era, Entrepreneurship is said to be the rapidly growing field in the seeing of contemporary economic era. Opportunity perception drives entrepreneurship, as it is all based on the knowledge of entrepreneur and identifying business value of goods and services to be put on sale in a new market at proceeds (Storey, 2016). Similarly, the opportunity is considered as a detailed and thorough plan to convert the concept of business into reality.

Figure 1 process of generating idea in product development

Recommendation 1 – Drive perfection in the preparation. Be completely sure about the business, where will it get profitability, which business sector will be beneficial and so on. In order to get successful startup for any business entrepreneur, Angela is recommended to be familiar with each and every aspect of business properly. An efficient business strategy is generally designed and planner earlier. All the potential issue or problems must be considered by her for her future endeavours (Chaston, 2017).

Recommendation 2 – Angela should never ever hesitate, having a perspective idea, it’s never too early or late to start working on it. Therefore, once the business plan work is finished, it is an appropriate time for realizing the idea (Storey, 2016).

Recommendation 3 – Ensuring the new business model is working effectively. While running a new business, it is possible that Angela doesn’t recognize how much time and efforts are needed to wait for results. By considering this aspect, it is mostly recommended to make an investment of fewer amounts. In case a business idea fails, the losses are minimal and can be minimized by time. For her future ventures, at times it is very important to stop at a time (Kuratko, 2016).

Recommendations 4 - Explore and study competitor to enjoy a competitive edge. By performing this, Angela must make necessary improvements in their business strategies and plans. By doing study and research on other company’s activities, she will get to know new business ideas and further there will be more chance of success (Drucker, 2014).

Recommendations 5 - Make use of social media, blogs, microsites etc. as social media is trending these days in the business environment, it is that part every small business owner like Angela must explore. If business targets market and audience by using social media in daily activities, it makes complete sense to be there too (Hans, 2017).

Recommendation 6 - Planning is significant; as everybody says, if there is a failure in, there is planning to fail. New businessman often considers every step that their business takes. The CEO of Transform Your Business, Anthony M Turner has laid five basic guidelines that if taken care of properly, then it can ensure the success of ANY business (Golden and et al., 2017):

References

Chaston, I., 2017. Entrepreneurship. In Technological Entrepreneurship (pp. 1-24). Springer International Publishing.

Chell, E., 2013. Review of skill and the entrepreneurial process. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 19(1), pp.6-31.

Drucker, P., 2014. Innovation and entrepreneurship. Routledge.

Fisher, R., Maritz, A. and Lobo, A., 2014. Evaluating entrepreneurs’ perception of success: Development of a measurement scale. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 20(5), pp.478-492.

Golden, S., Daron, J., Schumacher, J. and Thomas, E., 2017. Illuminating Entreprenuership.

Gupta, V.K., Chiles, T.H. and McMullen, J.S., 2016. A process perspective on evaluating and conducting effectual entrepreneurship research. Academy of Management Review, 41(3), pp.540-544.

Hans, V., 2017. Redefining Entreprenuership: Impact on Gender Differences.

Kirzner, I.M., 2015. Competition and entrepreneurship. University of Chicago press.

Kuratko, D.F., 2016. Entrepreneurship: Theory, process, and practice. Cengage Learning.

Leyden, D.P. and Link, A.N., 2015. Toward a theory of the entrepreneurial process. Small Business Economics, 44(3), pp.475-484.

McMullen, J.S. and Dimov, D., 2013. Time and the entrepreneurial journey: The problems and promise of studying entrepreneurship as a process. Journal of Management Studies, 50(8), pp.1481-1512.

Navale, A.B., 2013. Developing entrepreneur skills for corporate work. Research Directions, 1(4).

Putta, S.S., 2014. Improving entrepreneur's management skills through entrepreneurship training. Journal of Commerce and Management Thought, 5(3), p.459.

Storey, D.J. ed., 2016. Entrepreneurship and new firm. Routledge.

Ward, A.C. and Sobek II, D.K., 2014. Lean product and process development. Lean Enterprise Institute.