I’m a fourth-generation entrepreneur. My father, my two grandfathers, and all four of my great-grandfathers each started one or more businesses. Entrepreneurship richly flows in my blood. I’ve also worked with more than 100 entrepreneurs in some capacity over the past 30 years in and around high-tech startup ventures. So, how does the mind of the entrepreneur work?
Clearly, some amount of entrepreneurship is born simply out of having no other choice but to forge one’s own way. Economic downturns routinely foster basement or kitchen-table innovation when it becomes clear that a job working for someone else isn’t going to materialize any time soon. I expect we’ll see the emergence of some remarkable bootstrapped entrepreneurial innovation rising from the economic ashes of this century’s first decade.
But classically, there’s entrepreneurial chutzpah—the brash hubris of believing you can do something better, faster, or cheaper than the big company you’ve been working for that never listens to your great ideas. Or maybe you never even started down the path of working for that big company.
The biggest myth I hear as an entrepreneur is this: “Oh, you’re so lucky to own your own business. You don’t have a boss!” Right. Other than clients, customers, vendors, landlords, employees, bankers, lawyers, and macroeconomic trends completely out of our control, we entrepreneurs have nobody in the world answer to. Woo-hoo!
And yet, entrepreneurship probably produces more endorphins than anything else in the world, including bungee jumping. That’s because the thrill and the reward of crafting something out of nothing simply cannot be matched. Blending together the powerful potion whose ingredients include inspired leadership, innovation, exceptional luck, and the ability to know how to build the right team is what entrepreneurship is all about.
Innate tendencies toward entrepreneurship can lie within the fabric of a cultural background. They also can be found as a familial predisposition. Some families may say that entrepreneurship is just the way that they do things. It may not occur to them that working their way up inside an already established and fully functional corporate structure might be a heck of a lot easier and even more lucrative than starting something from scratch.
Of course, starting from scratch comes with a back-breaking ton of risk, enough stress to make you lose your hair (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it), and a 24/7 work schedule because the mind of the entrepreneur is pretty much a nonstop engine of worry, excitement, and innovation.
Also, the vast majority of entrepreneurs aren’t in it for the money. Don’t get me wrong. Every entrepreneur enjoys the extrinsic financial rewards that can flow from a successful venture and/or exit. But entrepreneurship does not necessarily imply success, and many entrepreneurs never make the amount of money that they would have made in the “safe” confines of someone else’s company.
The intrinsic rewards of entrepreneurship are a coin of far greater value in the minds of entrepreneurs than any bank balance they might accumulate. We certainly see this with serial entrepreneurs who go back again and again to take risks, forge brand new paths, take on stress, and once again try and remake the world when clearly they already have “enough money.”
Continue on next page