Small Business Entrepreneur Blog

Jeff Chavez came up with an interesting article on what he calls 11 Killer Instincts of Entrepreneurship. As usual, I’m copying them over so I could give you my feedback.

• The Solution Instinct: This is about ideas and always seeing them. Indeed entrepreneurs should be problem solvers – it’s an ability that can be developed over the years. Most of the times, only the most complicated problems make it up to the entrepreneur level (the rest being hopefully resolved by the employees) and even more, they aren’t limited to an area of activity. You have to solve problems from hiring to electricity problems if there are. If you are looking for a big cool place to store a birthday cake and you think the servers room can do the job (server rooms being especially cooled) then you have the Solution instinct in you.
• The Detective Instinct: This is about fact-finding and due-diligence. Yes, every decision is based on real life factors. But I believe what sets apart entrepreneurs from regular employees is that they can take decisions based on inspiration, overruling the obvious factors. Sometimes you have to play by your feelings.
• The Great Communicator Instinct: This is about connecting and constantly selling. While I’m probably missing most of the communicator instinct, I wrote before that the only ability an entrepreneurs can’t miss is the power of selling. As an entrepreneur you start selling even before the products is out on the market, you sell when you hire your first employee and you sell when you a pitching for investment.
• The Youthful Genius Instinct: This is about doing what you love. Yes, and still there is something wrong with the entrepreneurs minds.

• The Entrepreneurial Heritage Instinct: This is about how our heritage can reveal some or our natural gifts. I’m not sure about that. Where do entrepreneurship comes from in Easter Europe where we didn’t have entrepreneurship for like 50 years? Sure, I can agree that an Entrepreneurship oriented society can mean a lot as the paths have been traveled before!
• The Risk-Taker Instinct: This is about going out on a ledge. I had some previous thought on this, and still I’m not convinced that Entrepreneurs are natural risk takers. In fact, in a way they might have a very well developed adversity to risk as everything they do is a calculated decision. And in a way, even if you are an employee and you decide to flip jobs you take kind of the same risks.
• The Work-Horse Instinct: This is about paying the price. Yah, again, there is something wrong with the entrepreneurs minds.
• The Thick-Skinned Instinct: This is about being tough. Besides the power of starting something up, an undeniable entrepreneur quality is the power of keep things going even in tough times, just like a marriage: for better and for worse.

• The Flexibility Instinct: This is about being willing to change. As an entrepreneur you have to do what you have to do to make things work. This means that today  you could be the janitor or the secretary is this needs to be done. And as you are the ultimate goal accomplisher, you will work on your weak spots to improve them, not necessarily as a personal development process, but as an opportunity enhancement process.
• The Human Instinct: This is about people. Attracting the best people is more important than the business model itself. Well, if you are an entrepreneur you don’t really want to work. Therefore you just need to find the best people for the job that you are sure are able to implement your… dreams.
• The Knowledge-Quest Instinct: This is about constantly learning. Reading, thinking, listening, observing, absorbing, and applying is a hallmark trait of a great entrepreneur. If you are already reading this, then I don’t have to comment!

I’m reading a very interesting article on Entrepreneurship in Europe, called “Europe desperately lacking ‘positive entrepreneurship culture’ “. The main idea of the article is “the EU must work towards changing its attitudes towards entrepreneurship and create a positive culture which encourages people to take risks,” and the positions presented are quite interesting:

EU Education Commissioner Ján Figel’ said: “We need to promote creative thinking in kids’ minds, teach them ability to learn, sense of initiative and capacity to take responsibility to turn ideas into action.”

Matti Heikkonen, chair of the Finnish software entrepreneurs’ association argued instead that: “entrepreneurship is not an educational issue. “You can’t teach a person how to become an entrepreneur,”" and had the idea that as you get more educated you realize more the risks involved in entrepreneurship: “most entrepreneurs are not those with the highest university qualifications and perfect diplomas, precisely because the better qualified the person, the more risks linked with turning ideas into action he or she will see. Entrepreneurs are often generalists who have dropped out from university, who just have an idea they want to realize and go for it, without spending time calculating risks and fearing failure.” he sees a role for the education system in helping “to change attitudes towards entrepreneurship in general and to show both success stories and failures”

Asked whether future global leaders and entrepreneurs are born or made, the president of Microsoft International, Jean-Philippe Courtois, said successful entrepreneurs are immediately ambitious, with the drive to go global from the start. “They take risks, have failed before and are good at attracting talented scientists and other people around them.”

Talking about financing, investing, Mr. Peter Jungen, co-president of the SME UNION, “angel investor”, said that business angels invested some €24 billion in the US and only 200-300 million in Europe.

Thing is that in the same time I was reading an US article on “Young entrepreneurs sell lemonade to raise money for party” – The Blue Buddies Class at Childcare Network at 4225 Brambleton Avenue were excited about selling lemonade, especially Victoria Barefoot and Jennifer Asbury members of the Blue Buddies Class for ages 5 and 6. Rod McGough, teacher of the Blue Buddies class and his assistant Brittany Loyd, use the lemonade stand as a way to teach the children how to county money.

I think most European Entrepreneurs miss… selling lemonade while being children. Selling lemonade gives you the feeling that you can go out there and do money if that’s what you want. Opportunities are around and just wait for someone to start-up.

I’m quite amazed that hardly anyone mentions frustration as a source of entrepreneurship, business ideas and innovation. Most of the times, the closest thing to frustration is mentioning about finding or fulfilling a need in the market.

Frustration should be the most beloved word for any entrepreneur. I think frustration should be considered the number one driving force for entrepreneurship.

• frustration is  more than a need on the market. It’s a sure sign something is done badly and needs improvement fast. You don’t need to create the need or even investigate if it’s a valid need only need to approach the current frustrated users and you can easily build a base of potential sales.
• frustration is available anywhere. When was the last time your car wasn’t serviced right? Or when you had to walk for miles to get a nice cup of coffee? Or anything?
• When was the last time when you though: if I were to have run this business myself, I would have done this differently and much more better.
• When was the last time when you realized that a so called “market leader” provides a much weaker service than you could? Realizing you could do better doesn’t make you wish you start a business of your own?
• Frustration might keep you motivated. If you start a business because there is “market potential”, the excitement and driving force might fade away. But if you have to solve a frustration, your commitment never goes away until you see things done.

Now, most businesses are not about innovation how you might think, they are about doing something a little better. They solve frustrations, and the ones that do this well, even in the simplest ways available are the ones that hit gold. Frustration is gold

So send me your frustrations so I can get rich!

We have a joke here. “Why Australians never change their boomerang? Because they can’t throw of the old one as it gets back to them”. God knows why we have this joke as we are on the other side of the Earth from Australia.

If you are an entrepreneur and have a business you can always start a new one. But what you can’t get rid of is the entrepreneur-ism. I’ve once said in one of my articles that entrepreneurship is an opportunity enhancement, it doesn’t directly put money into your hands, but it facilitates it. While doing interviews with entrepreneurs on my other blog entrepreneurship-interviews.com I discovered an amazing truth about how entrepreneurship goes in terms of success and failure. If you ask most of the today’s successful entrepreneurs you will soon find out that they went through a series of business flip-ups, failures and missed opportunities before reaching gold. But they got entrepreneurship in their blood, and they couldn’t get rid of it.

Being an opportunity enhancement, even if you fail from time to time, I don’t think you can stop thinking that maybe the next thing will be the next great thing. Still, having previous entrepreneurship experience doesn’t make starting up a new business easier. It actually makes it harder. Not only that you know what went wrong with the previous one, but this time you also have something else to loose that can make you more cautious: money and pride. And if you had a great idea once, it’s really so hard getting a new one that is as good as the last one.

That’s probably one of the differences between a (small) business owner and an entrepreneur. Not all people are looking to develop their business, expand, or start a new one – they run a business that keep them happy and look no further. Entrepreneurs are different. They have the bug, and it’s like a boomerang. They can’t get rid of it, no matter how much they fail or succeed.