Feb. 24-March 3 was National Entrepreneurs Week. For people like me, it was a pretty special event. Not that there was some big celebration, or presents, or songs, or even a Hallmark card selection. No, it’s just the idea that we can celebrate people who take risks to bring their ideas to the marketplace, and sometimes win big.
From my perspective, the entrepreneur is the unsung hero of our economy. They’re the ones who start the companies that create the majority of new jobs.
In the business world, the reason the entrepreneur is a different breed is that instinct often plays a big role in what an entrepreneur does and who he or she is. From conception — that “eureka” moment — businesses spawned of bold risk-taking frequently play by different rules than the typical organization.
Some businesses were obviously started on an impulse. What rational mind, for example, would conceive of a business like Crime Scene Cleaners Inc., which handles extreme cleaning jobs? This includes biohazard spills and animal waste, as well as murders and suicides. Neal Smither of Orinda, Cal., got the idea to start this business while watching the movie “Pulp Fiction.”
“I was a downsized mortgage banker and looking for something to do when I watched the part of the movie where two characters had to clean up after a gruesome murder,” Smither said. Within a couple of years he had 17 employees and turned the company into a successful franchise.
The entrepreneur inhabits an almost-mystical world of inspiration, innovation and the subconscious, and is someone in touch with his or her “inner child.” Like children, entrepreneurs can be impulsive, uninhibited and relentlessly experimental. These qualities aren’t exactly rampant in mainstream business.
Corporate Shackles
Few situations better illustrate the essential differences between the entrepreneurial business and the traditional business than when a successful entrepreneur returns to a large corporation. I know someone who made this transition at the height of the dot-com boom to a whole different reality as an executive in a sizeable company. As he often complains, there’s a big difference between now and then.
Now, he’s constantly faced with the challenge of punching through the thickets of corporate bureaucracy. He says that because the corporate environment is so cumbersome and undynamic, good ideas that need immediate action or out-of-the-box-thinking are often sabotaged. Big business may claim to cherish innovation and personal initiative, but when the culture is not equipped to allow such initiative, it’s just so much talk.
When this dot-com entrepreneur headed up his own company, he had the freedom to be agile and boundlessly creative. Things happened when he said they would. There was little if any barrier between thought and action. Often, it wasn’t even a matter of thought, but instinct. He made split-second decisions that were definitely not based on any truly rational, thoughtful process. Yet they turned out to be right far more often than not. At the core of any successful entrepreneur is someone who trusts his or her instincts with good results.
Gut Instincts
Being a successful entrepreneur means knowing how to improvise. In our individualistic, action-oriented culture, being able to think on your feet is a real asset. Most American folk heroes — the pioneer, outlaw, self-made millionaire and the free spirit — were masters of improvisation. Our capacity for creativity is what distinguishes us from authoritarian societies. Rigid hierarchy and inflexible tradition are the opposite of America’s ideals.
In no realm of business is improvisation more important than in a start-up. All the surrounding creative energies of the company are geared toward making products or services happen and getting them to market. To this end, people in start-ups perform many roles. Some of them are less than familiar, and they encounter problems that may be new to them. This is because entrepreneurship often involves navigating uncharted waters.
Business, like the rest of life, rarely comes with an edited script, and sometimes there’s no script at all. Mastering improvisation is a sure-fire way to become better at everything you do.
The instinct of an entrepreneurial spirit is not some erratic force. It is widely reflected within our society and romanticized in popular fiction, blockbuster movies, even advertising spots that use action-oriented, themes. For example, “Just do it” and “Sometimes you gotta break the rules.” Hollywood and Madison Avenue, especially over the last 10 years, have tapped into entrepreneurial spirit that has long been an American ideal.
Mackay’s Moral: Entrepreneurs are people who take the cold water thrown on their idea, heat it with enthusiasm, make steam, and push ahead. n
Harvey Mackay is president of Mackay Envelope Corp. and a nationally syndicated columnist.
