Evan Davis,Presenter, Bottom Line, Evan
BBCDo you want to escape the world of wage slavery and start your own business, preferably one that is more than just a lifestyle – one that you can sell and retire on the proceeds?
To think about the likelihood of success, it helps to look at people who have walked that path and ultimately started wildly successful companies.
For our interview series, “The Decisions that Made Me a Leader,” we spoke with six successful entrepreneurs. The sample sizes are too small to draw statistically useful generalizations, but large enough to spot some interesting patterns.
I was struck by three interesting characteristics that, while they may not guarantee business success, certainly seem to help.
First, I noticed a rebellious attitude among some of them: they never really fit in, maybe at school, college or even their first job.
Duncan Bannatyne, best known as one of the original big stars of the TV series Dragon’s Den, certainly didn’t fit in with the Navy. He was court-martialed and dishonorably discharged after getting into a fight with an officer. “I just thought it was the right thing to do. He was poking me and shouting at me,” Bannatyne recalled.
His attitude, he told me, is that “you shouldn’t accept authority.”
Simon Beckerman, founder of the online marketplace Depop, has drawn a similar conclusion about himself: “I’m a pretty rebellious person by nature,” he says. “I think I’m unemployable.”
And when working for someone else doesn’t feel easy, it’s true that going it alone is clearly another career path.
Before founding her tea mixology brand Bird & Blended Tea, Chrissy Smith worked a variety of jobs, including cleaning cat kennels despite having a cat allergy, and working as a “shot girl” selling alcohol to patrons at clubs.
“I was always asking questions, wanting to know why we were doing things, and making suggestions,” she recalls, “and I think that tended to repel people.” After seeing her employers treat employees and customers badly, she decided she wanted to run her own business ethically.
The second characteristic I noticed is a kind of impatience that is deeply ingrained in their character. It seems like they always have an itch. They never stop.
But if you think that their business success is the result of some kind of life plan that they thought through and consciously executed, you’re missing the point.
Our entrepreneurs have seized the opportunity, and in fact have taken the opportunity and created the opportunity for themselves.
Timo Almouz, who founded the social media marketing company FunBytes, said he started his first business at school, charging other students for help with their maths homework. Then, at age 17, he emailed business summit organizers and offered a chair in exchange for a press pass, which helped him land interviews with Sir Richard Branson, Lord Sugar and James Caan.
“Within 20 minutes of sending it, I got an email back saying, ‘You’re crazy. Yes, let’s do it,'” Armu recalls.
Observable impatience can also be seen when entrepreneurs leave the very businesses they started. Self-aware founders know what skills they have and don’t have, and they know that as a business matures, it often needs managers who can do the heavy lifting that brings about sustainable growth, rather than those with the talent to create and discover.
At that point, impatience is exactly the wrong attribute, and because we entrepreneurs are impatient, we are ready to move on as soon as the business stabilizes, so we think about selling and moving on to the next step.
Take Martha Lane Fox, who co-founded Lastminute.com at the height of the dot-com boom in the late 1990s. She epitomized the emerging youth entrepreneurial spirit of the time, as kids really showed adults what the internet could do.
But at 31, she decided to step down as managing director of the company. “It was like being in a pop band that had one big hit, and I didn’t want that to be the only thing that defined my life,” she says.
So, the third and final entrepreneurial trait, following on from the others, is the willingness to actually do things rather than just think about them, or overthink them.
I think that’s the defining characteristic of truly entrepreneurial people, whether in business or in philanthropy and public service — they’re the people who get things done.
Personally, I think part of it comes down to a certain optimism: They’re less likely than most of us to slip into a fatalistic stupor because they believe that their actions are more likely to accomplish something. That’s what gets them out of bed in the morning.
Richard Walker comes from a family with a strong business track record – his father founded supermarket chain Iceland, of which Richard is now chairman – but as a young qualified chartered surveyor, Richard says “I also had an entrepreneurial spirit, wanting to do my own thing”.
He was encouraged to move to Poland by legendary property developer Tony Gallagher: “So I moved, because Poland had just joined the EU. Poland is the same size as Germany, has 40 million people, is highly educated but not much is known about it. There were no Brits running private property companies there full time, so I decided to move.”
I’ve met many entrepreneurs, and sometimes I think their optimism is misguided. Many overestimate their chances of success, and often can’t even imagine the many ways their next idea could go wrong. They have too vivid a picture of what could go wrong.
But as a delusion, optimism is a blessing if we refuse to be cowed by disappointment.
Of course the most important quality you need for anyone in business is good luck, and although things worked out well for all our guests in the end I think there was definitely some luck involved.
I’ve never heard of any no-name names that tried to build a business and their efforts ended in failure. They may have had good judgment, business sense, and all the right attributes, but they just picked the wrong product at the wrong time. It doesn’t have to be through any fault of their own. Things sometimes turn out badly. In business, they generally It will end badly. Always keep that in mind.
Entrepreneurs are not a special breed. We all have our quirks and impatience and get things done. I don’t want to be fatalistic and think that entrepreneurship is something you’re either born with or you’re not. To some extent, business skills can be learned and developed.
But if you’re asking yourself whether you’d personally be suited to the challenges of life like the stars of this series, it’s certainly worth examining their personalities – their strengths and weaknesses, and the efforts they’ve put in.
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