What are you?
Or what do you want to be? A link from Martin Williams:
At the bottom, in terms of size, income, wealth and opportunity, are the “be-yourown-boss†business owners. These are people who started or bought, start or buy businesses in order to give themselves a good job, without an annoying boss. Often, this is someone who has been working in an identical or similar business: the employed restaurant manager buys a sub shop franchise; a car mechanic buys a muffler shop; a carpet cleaner prints up business cards and starts his own one-man operation. These
people often never expand their businesses, continuing to do the same job they were doing, behaving as a worker, certainly not as an entrepreneur. In short, self-employment is not necessarily entrepreneurship.On the next level is the small business owner. He may enter business with bigger goals, and is typically quicker, even eager to have employees doing the ground-level work while he focuses on the marketing and management of the business. However, if you meet this fellow and ask him what he does, and he says ‘I own a jewelry store’, if you meet up with him again 12, 24 or 36 months later, his business will still be a jewelry store, largely unchanged. By his very definition of his business, he rules out all sorts of expansive opportunities. By his tunnel vision, he precludes many activities.
At the top of the financial pyramid, the entrepreneur. Even though he, too, might own a jewelry store, he might say ‘I’m in the jewelry business’, and 36 months later, he will still own his jewelry store but may also have satellite mini-stores in three malls, a
thriving web site and mail-order business, a high-end custom jewelry business, a diamond brokerage, and be selling a week-long trip to South Africa for $25,000.00 per person, where they pick out their diamond at the mines. Unlike the business owner, this
entrepreneur has broad, wide, open vision, thinks bigger, and avoids too narrowly defining himself.
March 22nd, 2006 at 6:07 pm
Ejovi,
How have you balanced being an in-the-trenches techie with being an entrepreneur and visionary? These days do you find yourself looking at big picture ideas or at bit level code? I’d imagine it’s a combo of the two, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
-Zach
March 22nd, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Zach,
Everything I do or get involved in starts with a question or problem that requires a simple solution. Probably because of my tech background I assume everything MUST have a clear and simply solution.
This approach doesn’t change if it’s a business question, security question or question about life.
I’m personally interested in many things and so I find myself thinking about things I have no real expertise in. In trying to understand problems I study and read A LOT so I tend to have a grasp of many different things, this gives me perspective. The thing I have to be cautious of is trying not to stray to far from my core area of expertise.
April 6th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Ejovi,
I hate to say this, but the article I read above is the biggest load of crap I have read about entrepreneurship for a while. There are people running chains of shops who aren’t really entrepreneurial - they don’t try out new stuff, they just push out a fixed formula relentlessly. Often they make money at this, but definitely not always.
On the other hand, there are guys with one shop, or even no shop, who are always trying new stuff. They don’t do projects to get rich (although that’s part of it), they do ‘em because they haven’t been done before. That’s the core of entrepreneurship (although it isn’t really the core of big business or financial success).
I am being a bit critical. The article does have good points (it is true to say that many people have limited vision for their businesses; the article is quite short). But successful business and successful entrepreneurship are not the same thing.
April 6th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
I don’t agree with you. The article is short and to the point. In my opinion their are three types of people in the busines world: The PROFESSIONAL, a doctor or accountant, the BUSINESS OWNER, owns a chain restaurant or a small store and the ENTREPENEUR, he owns multiple stores, his stores are franchised by BUSINESS OWNERS, who hire PROFESSIONALS. A PROFESSIONAL and BUSINESS owner can become ENTREPENEURS but they usually don’t. And the skills needed to be good at one area does not always translate into what one needs to succeed in another. That’s the point.