Entrepreneur possibilities promoted by speaker
by Amy Hohenbrink
reporter

    “Achieve happiness and be lay-off proof by becoming an entrepreneur,” the director of the Women’s Business Center in Fort Worth advised 25 students prior to spring break.
   In honor of Women’s History Month, Catherine Simpson talked about entrepreneurship and the Entrepreneurial Expo 2004, which primarily promotes and supports small women-owned businesses.
   “ To be successful as an entrepreneur, you must have a love relationship with what you want to market and be not good, but great, at it,” she said.
Simpson focused on the importance of people really knowing and loving what they are marketing in order to succeed and be happy in the business world.
   “ To have a successful business is to love, eat, sleep, breathe and market the business at all times,” she said.
   Before becoming entrepreneurs, Simpson said, people should plan their businesses out for at least two years by making it only a side job or hobby.
   This means attending many seminars, making sure there is a need for the business, knowing the competition and possibly volunteering somewhere that involves the kind of work they want to get into.
   Simpson described the type of personality someone needs to become an entrepreneur.
   “ It takes a person with vision, passion, creativity, ambition, along with the ability to be a risk-taker, have an expertise of some sort and have some type of financial access,” she said.
   Through citing these qualities of a successful entrepreneur, Simpson said she tries to teach the importance of the involvement of partnership.
   “ Don’t make yourself an island, but work with others,” she said.
Networking with others and forming partnerships are important so one person is not doing all the work, Simpson said.
   Having a partnership when getting into a business offers more variety and balance to the business, leading to easier success and possibly more profits.
   Simpson said more women than ever before are currently achieving success in the business world.
   “ Women are growing 2-to-1 against men in business and now own 43 percent of all businesses,” she said. “Every 12 seconds, one woman is leaving the corporate world to get into the business world.”