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What it takes to be an Entrepreneur

Guest post by: Sam Allman

Article Overview: What is an entrepreneur? Are you one? Do you fit the mold? The word “Entrepreneur” comes from the French word entreprendre (to undertake) + eur (-or). Thus, an entrepreneur is one who undertakes, or an undertaker. (Not in the funeral director sense.) One who undertakes to organize an enterprise. Just because you started a business or own a store doesn’t mean you’re a true entrepreneur.

What it takes to be an Entrepreneur

Recently I was conducting a training session on how to run a small business. Attending was a gentleman who shared with the group that after his business opened it’s doors for business, it took 5 years to break even. However, when a franchised business, purchased and managed by an entrepreneur, opened, it took only 3 1/2 years for the business to start making money.

Recently, Jon Trivers has reported that the small independent retailer is alive and well and prospering in the cities of America. According to the study, the reason is because retailing is difficult. Why can’t some mega corporation break into the retail market? Maybe at the helm of their stores they need an entrepreneur, instead of just an employee.

What is an entrepreneur? Are you one? Do you fit the mold. The word “Entrepreneur” comes from the French word entreprendre (to undertake) + eur (-or). Thus, an entrepreneur is one who undertakes, or an undertaker. (Not in the funeral director sense.) One who undertakes to organize an enterprise.

Just because you started a business or own a store doesn’t mean you’re a true entrepreneur. According to the small business administration, most small business fail. About 12% of the retail stores fail annually. What’s the difference between a real entrepreneur and a want to be?

After delivering some training in Detroit, I was flying back to Atlanta when I met Jeffery Willis, an Afro-American. As I sat down beside him, I noticed he was wearing a shirt that said American National Carpet Mills. I’d never heard of the company. We immediately engaged in conversation. I questioned him about the company. I found that it manufactured carpet for the automobile industry.

As we visited, I realized that I was talking to a true entrepreneur. Jeff grew up in Brooklyn. He left home at age15. He lived with an aunt where he paid $20/wk for rented basement bedroom. Jeff worked with her in a factory that manufactured knobs for stereos & TV’s. While working in that factory he vowed, “I’m not going to work in this factory unless I own it.”

After graduating from high school, he boarded a bus with $200 in his pocket, and headed to Louisiana. A friend had told him about Southern University. Getting off the greyhound, he was 10-12 miles away from school, his sole companion, a footlocker. He vowed, “This must be temporary.”

He was able to enroll and get a dorm room without paying any fees. But, three weeks later, he was called into the administration office. “You need to pay your tuition or you’re out, you can’t stay here.” But, they didn’t know they were dealing with an entrepreneur. He was determined to receive an education. He “didn’t know what he didn’t know.” But what he did know was that he didn’t know enough to be successful. Determination to succeed was not enough. Hard work was not enough. He needed personal power that only comes with learning and growing. He told me, “My insatiable desire for knowledge helped me prepare for my struggle.”

He found out that there was a Board of Trustees meeting that night. He barged into the meeting “I have no money, no family, and no place to go and I want to graduate.” The director of financial aid, Mildred Higgs said, “There’s no aid available. All I can do is invite you to dinner.”

He said, “I’ll take it”

They worked out an arrangement and he got job in library. He also worked as a security guard. He was able to stay in school. But soon it was Christmas vacation. He was ordered out of the dorms, but was able to hide and stay. He wondered around and hid through Christmas. He ate food from cans he found in the dorm. He had no place to go. He told me that the worst was, “pure unadulterated loneliness.” Every semester he wondered if he’d make it through the year. Again he said to himself, “this must be temporary. “You don’t have to lose site of your goals when you have set backs.”

Eventually, he graduated with honors and won a scholarship to Oxford. Upon graduating he received 30-40 job offers. He always maintained his grades, thinking, “I’m just getting ready for my next challenge.” He kept asking himself, “Are my goals worthwhile for me to pay this price?” He frequently thought, “If God gave me this burden called “minority” – why should I fear anything? – no fear – It all goes with the call” He feels he has a destiny, a sense of purpose. “The Lord must have something for me to do because I’ve been through so much. The Lord takes care of fools and drunkards, and I’m no drunkard.”

He had the determination to absorb the hits and keep going. Even though he owns a multi-million dollar carpet manufacturing company and has had so many other set backs before he “arrived”, he told me, “My story is unfinished.”

He hasn’t forgotten from whence he came. He gives back. Most all of his employees are white. He watched as people came to apply to work in his factory. Their children accompanied them. He asked, “Why aren’t they in school?”

The response was, “Did you see that kid? He is wearing his father’s shoes and clothes.” He found out from a social worker that there was a 40% dropout rate in the schools. “I knew we needed to help, but with dignity. In the reception area of his Chatsworth, Georgia manufacturing plant are letters and posters from grateful children who were able to go to K-Mart or JC Penney and pick out new shoes and coats. Every child in grade school and Jr. High in the area, who qualified, received a new coat and a new pair of shoes.

Jeffery Willis is a true entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are intent on accomplishing something. They are driven to accomplishment. These achievers don’t seek “some intangible conceptual objective,” says MIT professor Edward Roberts. “They are not devising brilliant ideas that only other brilliant people like themselves recognize. They want to create something significant and tangible – a building, a bridge, a company.” They don’t just want to create a company, they want to build something that works well, not just works. Entrepreneurs with the right stuff don’t think much about taking risks or getting rich. Instead, they are obsessed with building a better mousetrap.

One reason entrepreneurs – at least the ones likely to make it – behave like men and women possessed is that they have experienced a flash of understanding known as “entrepreneurial insight”, says professor Ian C. MacMillan, a guru of entrepreneurship at the Wharton School. They have seen, in their mind’s eye, the better mousetrap; the great unmet need, the changing tide, the big opportunity. Because they see it so clearly, they feel they know exactly what must be done to prevail.

True entrepreneurs are obsessed with learning. They know that knowledge is power because it gives one choices or alternatives. They may not know how to build the better mousetrap, but they know what must be done.

If you are terrified at (or even just anxious about) at the prospect of becoming an entrepreneur, or are busy dreaming of the money and power that success as an entrepreneur will bring, you’re probably not cut out for this line of work.

Joel Hyatt, who started a chain of innovative legal clinics in the 1980s and now teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford: “It will take longer and require more money than you thought, and there will be problems you could not have anticipated.” Some people think entrepreneurs are lunatics because of the way they spend years struggling to make an idea work. But Hyatt says the critics don’t appreciate the optimism that drives the dreamers. Wouldn’t you say that Jeffery Willis is an optimist? “This is only temporary.”

True entrepreneurs don’t think much about risk, sweaty palms, wealth, power, or failure.
MIT Professor Edward Roberts found that it takes a very high need for accomplishment to lead a would-be entrepreneur to make it big. The lower the need, the less likely the success.

You see, entrepreneurs want to do it right. Instead of just doing business, they just want to build one. They don’t just want to build an enterprise. They want to build a good one; one that produces a predictable rate of return. They study, read and learn about successful business. If they don’t know how or what to do, they find out.

The average business owner compensates for his/her lack of knowledge by working harder. They have made that fatal assumption, “If I can know a trade or skill, I can run a business.” The problem is that it takes different skills to “do” the business, than it takes to “run” a business.

Many business owners have told me that they would love to come to my training seminars, but they just don’t have time. Maybe that’s the very reason they need to come.

True entrepreneurs are driven to build a business and they are also driven to learn what they don’t know. They want to get it right. Instead of working harder, they strive to learn whatever takes to make it better. How about it? Do you fit the mold? Jeffery Willis does.

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Article Tags: afro american, automobile industry, basement bedroom, carpet mills, french word, funeral director, independent retailer, knobs, mega corporation, national carpet, retail market, retail stores, small business administration, stereos tv, training session, trivers, true entrepreneur, undertaker, wk, word entrepreneur



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