World Entrepreneurs’ Day on 21 August is a tremendous opportunity to celebrate the courage and resilience of entrepreneurs in Australia and developing countries - entrepreneurs who have much in common despite their vastly different circumstances and the differing scale of their businesses.

On a trip to Indonesia with Opportunity International Australia, I was impressed with the way the entrepreneurs, who were mostly women, focused so relentlessly on their customers. They remembered their likes and dislikes and ensured they offered each customer their preferred product or service in exactly the way the customer wanted it. They were highly sensitive to customer feedback and immediately adapted their product or service offerings to precisely meet customer needs.

The other thing that struck me in Indonesia was how hard the entrepreneurs worked. I know Australian entrepreneurs work hard but the women I met in Indonesia started preparing their products for market at 3am every morning. They then spent all day at the market and returned home late in the day to get products ready for the next day. Many of them worked beyond midnight. Yet they did this seven days a week as well as looking after their families. Families who depend on their income for the basic necessities of life – food, clean water, safe shelter, medicine and education for their children. Without exception, the women I met invested in their children’s education, hoping they would have a better future than them.

Like many entrepreneurs in Australia who build start-ups, entrepreneurs in developing countries manage every aspect of their businesses. They source raw materials, make the products themselves, sell the products at the local market, manage revenues and cashflows and promptly pay back their loans. But the speed at which it all happens is breathtaking. They must turn cash into more cash very quickly out of the necessity to survive – to buy food for the day – so they are ruthlessly focused on the cash cycle and turning raw materials into products that instantly sell and return a profit.

While a focus on demand and supply is universal amongst all entrepreneurs, those in developing countries are acutely tuned into market sentiment. They can only afford to supply as much as they can sell on a particular day. They can’t afford to have any products left over at the end of the day as this could be the difference between buying food for their family or going hungry.

Entrepreneurs in developing countries experience much shorter, faster and tighter timeframes than those in Australia. They don’t have the resources to give their businesses much time to succeed, so if a business doesn’t return a profit quickly they briskly move onto making and selling something else. They keep persevering to find a way to succeed. The speed at which they get product to market, the speed at which they respond to customer feedback, the speed at which they work out which products are in demand, is much greater in developing countries than in Australia.

I know that the generous Australian entrepreneurs who support their fellow entrepreneurs in developing countries do so because they can relate to them. They all share universal challenges. They know the battles involved in starting and running a successful business. They have the same mindset. They like building things and seeing things grow. They experience the same very high highs and very low lows and the speed at which one can oscillate between these two states.

Because the highs and lows of running a start-up are so intense, entrepreneurs need support from each other. In Australia, many networking groups for entrepreneurs are emerging and in developing countries, Opportunity sets up loan groups for its loan recipients. In Australia’s networking groups and through Opportunity’s loan groups, entrepreneurs can share their experiences with one another and provide a shoulder to cry on when the going gets tough.

World Entrepreneurs’ Day is a great vehicle for putting the spotlight on entrepreneurs everywhere and for particularly appreciating the challenges of entrepreneurs in developing countries who, while they are doing it tough, relentlessly persevere. It’s a mechanism to celebrate entrepreneurs and their crucial role in building enterprises and to particularly appreciate the exceptional courage and resilience of entrepreneurs in developing countries who often beat the odds and succeed in the most difficult circumstances.