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:
- Creativity
- Imagination
- Confidence
- Energy
- Commitment
- Good health
- 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.
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.
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