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Serial Entrepreneurs
Inc. Magazine’s article on the “The Secret Life of a Serial Entrepreneur” (January, 2008) (www.Inc.com) triggered a thought that many a business owner has experienced: one business is never enough! Although I have never started six high-tech companies or been courted by venture capitalists as in the article, I identified with the concept of serial entrepreneurial behavior because I know that there are all kinds of entrepreneurs and endless motives for starting a business.
The key to being comfortable with your entrepreneurial style is to identify which profile fits you! A few of these are are:
n The Inventor: This entrepreneur is motivated by getting their new product/service to the market. They are driven by the thrill of a market break- through and consumer acceptance of their product/service.
n The Business Builder: This entrepreneur is in it for the long-haul. They want to see their idea grow into a real asset that will have some legacy, and can eventually be sold or left to heirs.
n The Financial Mogul: This entrepreneur loves to see the dollars grow. They don’t care what kind of business it is. It could be a leverage buy-out, a new start-up, or an old business into which they breathed new life. The key to their satisfaction is that it makes money …lots of money!
And last but not least,
n The Entrepreneurial Starter: This entrepreneur is a creator. He/she is the economic artist in the group. They love the process of starting a business, not necessarily building it. The motivation for them is to take a raw idea and turn it into a successful economic entity.
I have seen all kinds of entrepreneurs in my career as a business consultant. However, it took me a while to get comfortable with the fact that I’d never be a “business builder”. I-- quiet frankly-- love the thrill of the start-up. I like the new idea. I get bored once a business has proven itself in the marketplace.
My profile hovers between entrepreneurial starter and inventor. Once proven in the marketplace, I want to move on. I want to tangle the next challenge.
While I have only had 3 businesses in the past 30 years, it feels like their have been more since the one I stayed with for two decades (Venture Concepts®) was really like several businesses. I watched it morph from its start as a training company targeted at state and city governments to become a a management consulting firm serving small businesses. (My other two venture were, thankfully, short-lived. They taught me the horrors of customer service and retail enterprises!)
So, should I have been a business builder? I don’t think so. While I might have become wealthier, I wouldn’t have been happier. I had too many ideas. Sticking with just one, wasn’t for me. I treated my business as an artist’s canvas where I could paint my economic future, introducing new products and services that I thought the market needed.
Did it work? Sometimes. Sometimes not. But that is business: the secret is to make more right decisions than wrong ones, and to learn from the wrong ones.
So what’s the next business for me? Well, if I don’t start my worm farm (no overhead, no maintenance—an entrepreneur’s dream), I am heading “west, young (wo) man”…or in my case to the web, not the west. So stay tuned for the next chapter in this Serial Entrepreneur’s Secret Life!
(©Charlotte Taylor, 2008)
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