29 Characteristics of an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurs are the hearts that pump enthusiasm and drive into the veins of growing businesses and economies. They provide the goods and services we consume and create jobs and opportunities for all of us.

Over the past decade we have seen an avalanche of new age entrepreneurs. They have been inspirational and tenacious. They have thought outside the square and they have been spectacularly successful.

Despite the universal bad press for some high-flying business bad boys, hard working business owners have resuscitated the word ‘entrepreneur’, which did, for a time, fall into disuse. Entrepreneurs should include anyone who makes goods or services, either as a business owner or manager.

What is an entrepreneur?
I remember attending an excellent conference a few years back called ‘Encouraging Entrepreneurs – How to Build on Their Ability’ at the Australian Graduate School of Engineering at the Warren Centre in Sydney. This wasn’t an academic talkfest, but looked to people who had actually built businesses, searching for lessons everyone in business needs to learn.

Early in the day, Barbara Cail, who was the managing director of Rala Information Services, warned entrepreneurs “they were in danger of being left behind”.

For those interested, Cail highlighted the seven personal attributes of a good entrepreneur:

1. Creativity
2. Imagination
3. Confidence
4. Energy
5. Commitment
6. Good health
7. Luck.

Cail said entrepreneurs had to be technically-literate and “they had to know their workers”, who would increasingly be knowledge workers processing data in the growth areas of finance and information technology. The business strategy of being in touch with your workers to know your business will stand the test of time.

Tapping into opportunities
I have to admit we did get one presentation from an academic. Happily, he didn’t put me to sleep! Trevor Cole, the executive director of the Warren Centre, lucidly defined the entrepreneur and showed the characteristics they possessed.

He said that people shouldn’t think they were an entrepreneur just because they started a business. Everyone in business innovates – some well, other poorly, but entrepreneurship is one level above innovation. The core attribute of the entrepreneur is an ability to make decisions, but essentially they stand out because “they search for change, respond to it and exploit it as an opportunity”.

The success story of most business owners is about persistence, focus and determination to win. Even though there’s often an element of luck to success (a chance meeting or being in the right place at the right time) no-one is successful on luck alone. As the saying goes, “it took me 20 years to be an overnight success.”

Check out these characteristics typical of those who call themselves entrepreneurs:

1. Can’t work for anyone else – like to be the boss

2. Egalitarian – like to be the boss but they’re not
elitist

3. Take action – they are not daydreamers

4. Their business doesn’t make them a champion – from an early age, they are champions in the making

5. Often launch with very little money

6. Speak their mind

7. Handle rejection

8. Like to prove others (doubting Thomas’) wrong

9. Know how to get around obstacles

10. Believe in being hands on

11. Don’t mind being alone

12. Can cope with failure

13. Like control

14. Future focused – don’t get caught in today

15. They tick faster than the clock – they never watch the clock

16. Adrenalin charged

17. Manage time well

18. Goal oriented

19. Into self improvement

20. Often want to move faster than time

21. Strong work ethic

22. Having nothing is no barrier

23. Often have a naïve confidence in their own ability to do things

24. Respect staff

25. Understand the importance of systems in the business growth process

26. Not afraid of making mistakes

27. Make decisions even if they are wrong ones

28. Don’t like to be penned in – look for challenges

29. Retirement is not an option.

A potent cocktail
Edward de Bono coined the phrase “lateral thinking'', but people, let’s call them entrepreneurs, have been thinking differently since the beginning of time. Technology gives the edge that powers a business along, but it needs someone to tap into it and use it. And those who possess many of these characteristics are the very people who drive business growth and provide jobs.

Having a great product ready made for a well- primed market is the starting point for entrepreneurial success.
Then throw in the magic ingredient of technology.

Technology refers to machines, computers and also processes. And it is the physical manifestation of innovation and lateral thinking.

Thinking people with a great product or service, plus technology, is a potent cocktail for business success.

Grow or stay small?

Many businesses face a growth dilemma. They don’t know whether to increase their risk and grow their business or keep it very small.

If you don’t want to grow your business, don’t worry. You’re probably in a big majority! Many small businesses don’t want to grow because they want their business to fit in with their life goals.

On the other hand, there are businesses who really want to grow but simply don’t know how to expand. These businesses therefore avoid growth. Sometimes they start to take on employees and up scale their operation, but the stress becomes too much and they pull back. They don’t want to grow at the expense of ruining their family, their relationships and their happiness. This, of course, is totally understandable.

There is a way to grow without costly consequences, though you must be prepared to spend money.

Let’s look firstly at some reasons why people start businesses in the first place.

The start ups
Many home-based businesses are started because the humdrum of employee life is too rushed and impersonal. Mums want to pick up their children from school, dads want to be there at special moments in their children’s lives, and their skill set permits them to trade in a job for a business. Some are forced into re-inventing themselves because they’re shown the door or made redundant, while others leave their job before the inevitable happens.

Often the amount of money needed to make a business work is set in relation to what someone has earned in their former job. So, if someone was on $60,000 as an employee, a home-based business bringing in the same amount or a little bit more, with some of the tax deductions of running a business, can make the switch to self-employment an alternative.

Many of these people just want to keep their business as a one person band and have no desire to do any more work than what they do. And that’s fine. However, anyone choosing to stay very small should make the commitment to start working smarter so they won’t have to work longer.

The fast growers
Now let’s look at those who need to do something in terms of growth. These people start a business and they’re so good at what they do and their customers love them so much that before they know it they have more work than they can handle.

If you have so much work coming in that you don’t know how to manage it all, this can be a sign of a business that needs to work out its direction.

Many business owners just go along for the ride. They know that the really good times could be followed by bad times and so they feel they have to take on the additional work to keep them going when times are slow. More often than not however the excess workload starts to get too much and the business owner is left stressed and sleepless.

What happens ultimately is a choice — do I want to grow or not?
Growth brings challenges like employing people, new costs like workers compensation, superannuation, etc and it means more time and government red tape to deal with. It can also mean the cost of external premises.

You need to work out if you want to get bigger. If your decision is that you do want to grow, then you need to work out a growth plan.

How do you do it? You need to start investing in your business – this means increasing your risk and spending money to bring in the resources to help you through the growing pains. In essence, you have to stop doing all the jobs yourself and start letting go.

It’s good to use an expert in areas like bookkeeping. The time you spend in an area where you’re weak steals time away from the business area where you’re strong and where you can make more money. It is really wise to compare hourly rates, say, yours compared to a bookkeeper and then make a decision. The same can be done with a cleaner, administration person and eventually, a manager. It all comes down to working smarter.

How do you work smarter?
Working smarter and allocating your time more effectively means you find time to work on your business instead of working in your business.

How do you make the transition?
The transition from a managed business to a fast grower is made easier by your commitment to innovation, which means you work smarter.

Ignoring time-saving technology and better business techniques could make your life a whole lot tougher than it has to be. It could also unfairly steal the time you might be desperate to save.

Telkomsel Pertahankan Kepuasan Pelanggan Satu Dekade

Luar biasa. Bertepatan dengan hari pelanggan nasional, Telkomsel kembali mempertahankan posisi puncak sebagai perusahaan yang memberikan tingkat kepuasan pelanggan tertinggi dengan meraih 3 penghargaan pada ajang Indonesian Customer Satisfaction Award (ICSA) 2009, sekaligus mengukuhkan dua produk Telkomsel, yaitu simPATI (kartu prabayar) dan kartuHALO (kartu paskabayar) sebagai kartu pilihan utama selama 10 tahun berturut-turut.

Keberhasilan mempertahankan prestasi ini membuat Telkomsel berhak memperoleh predikat tertinggi Diamond ICSA 2009. Di samping simPATI dan kartuHALO, Telkomsel juga meraih penghargaan untuk Telkomsel Flash sebagai layanan mobile internet yang memberikan tingkat kepuasan tertinggi.

Penghargaan ICSA yang diberikan Majalah SWA Sembada dan lembaga riset independen Frontier ini memasuki tahun yang ke-11, sehingga telah menjadi barometer tersediri bagi produk/layanan di Indonesia dalam hal kepuasan pelanggan. Tahun ini survei dilakukan terhadap berbagai kategori yang melibatkan 1.600 responden di 6 besar di Indonesia, yakni Medan, Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, dan Makassar.

Direktur Utama Telkomsel Sarwoto Atmosutarno (tengah) saat menerima penghargaan Indonesian Customer Satisfaction Award (ICSA) 2009 dari Pemimpin Redaksi Majalah SWA Kemal Effendi Gani (kanan) dan Chairman Frontier Consulting Group Handi Irawan (3/9). Bertepatan dengan hari pelanggan nasional, Telkomsel memperoleh predikat Diamond ICSA atas prestasinya mempertahankan tingkat kepuasan pelanggan tertinggi untuk kedua produknya simPATI (prabayar) dan kartuHALO (paskabayar) sebagai kartu pilihan utama selama 10 tahun berturut-turut (2000-2009).

Direktur Utama Telkomsel Sarwoto Atmosutarno mengatakan, “Pada momen hari pelanggan nasional ini, secara khusus kami mengucapkan terimakasih kepada masyarakat Indonesia yang memilih simPATI, kartuHALO, dan Telkomsel Flash sebagai layanan selular yang dianggap relatif mampu memberi kepuasan sesuai ekspektasi mereka. Hal ini seiring dengan upaya Telkomsel dalam menjalankan visinya sebagai operator selular penyedia layanan mobile lifestyle terbaik di Asia Pasifik.”

Kesuksesan meraih predikat Diamond ICSA 2009 membuat Telkomsel semakin mengukuhkan posisinya sebagai service leader pasar selular di Indonesia, di mana saat ini telah dipercaya melayani 78 juta pelanggan atau sekitar 50% pengguna ponsel di Indonesia. Tingginya kepercayaan para pengguna ponsel terhadap layanan Telkomsel dikarenakan produknya relatif dapat memenuhi 5 parameter kebutuhan pokok, yakni: jaringan yang luas, kualitas jaringan yang handal, inovasi produk, pelayanan pelanggan berstandar ISO, dan tarif yang semakin terjangkau dan murah.

Sarwoto menambahkan, “Keterlibatan langsung masyarakat sebagai pemilih menjadikan penghargaan ini sebagai representasi kenyataan di lapangan. Meraih predikat Diamond ICSA selama 10 tahun berturut-turut menggambarkan konsistensi kami dalam upaya memberikan yang terbaik, di mana menghasilkan sesuatu yang secara nyata telah dirasakan kemanfaatannya dibandingkan produk-produk sejenis di pasaran. Bagi kami penghargaan ini tidak hanya sebuah apresiasi tapi juga sekaligus menjadi tantangan bagi kami untuk terus berinovasi menghadirkan nilai tambah bagi kepuasan bagi pelanggan.”

“Di tengah persaingan industri telekomunikasi yang semakin ketat, Telkomsel sangat berorientasi pada kepuasan pelanggan, yang sama artinya dengan membangun sebuah kepercayaan. Penghargaan ini menggambarkan tingginya kepercayaan masyarakat terhadap produk dan layanan Telkomsel. Kepercayaan tersebut harus kami jaga dengan selalu berupaya memberikan yang terbaik, sehingga ke depan Telkomsel tetap menjadi operator pilihan utama masyarakat,” ungkap Sarwoto.

Penghargaan ICSA tahun ini diukur berdasarkan 4 parameter, yaitu: kepuasan terhadap kualitas produk/layanan (QSS), dan kepuasan terhadap harga berdasarkan kualitas yang diterima (VSS), persepsi bahwa salah satu merek dinilai terbaik secara keseluruhan dibanding merek lainnya (PBS), serta customer expectation (ES), yang merupakan parameter yang sangat menentukan kepuasan pelanggan sekaligus memberikan potret yang lebih akurat terhadap hasil penilaian. Telkomsel sendiri memperoleh Total Satisfaction Score (TSS) 4,294 untuk simPATI dan 4,261 untuk kartuHALO, serta 4,038 untuk Telkomsel Flash.

Penghargaan di ajang ICSA 2009 ini melengkapi penghargaan yang telah diterima Telkomsel tahun ini, yakni Forsel Award (Operator GSM Favorit), Top Brand Award (simPATI dan kartuHALO), Call Center Award, Word of Mouth Marketing Award (simPATI dan kartuHALO), Service Quality Award (GraPARI), Indonesia Cellular Award (Best Customer Growth), Selular Award (Best of The Best Service Provider dan Best GSM Operator), dan Platinum Best Brand Award (simPATI dan kartuHALO).