All entrepreneurs create businesses.
What makes unusual entrepreneurs thick?
But all entrepreneurs are not created equal.
So what makes the difference?
A set of unique attributes that clearly draws the line
between ordinary entrepreneurs
and their extra-ordinary counterparts. Don’t be alarmed by
this, in the business world,
Obviously, they will end up creating only two kinds of
businesses.
For those who do business as usual, I refer to them as
average or
ordinary entrepreneurs and for those who do business NOT as
usual;
I refer to them as
unusual or extra-ordinary entrepreneurs.
The average entrepreneurs don’t really deserve much
explanation,
their title says it all – they are just average.
Meaning, at most, they are only capable of creating “good”
businesses,
but rarely ever create “great” businesses like the unusual
entrepreneurs do.
To know the difference between a good business and a great
business,
download the free ebook: the entrepreneur’s journey.
An unusual breed of entrepreneurs
Ever wondered what separates great entrepreneurs from
mediocre ones?
Ever wondered what makes entrepreneurs like Richard Branson
of Virgin, Oprah Winfrey,
Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, Tony Tsei of
Zappos and
the legendary Steve Jobs of Apple extra-ordinary?
I have.
It has been my central focus for the past 6 years
researching and
studying the lives and businesses of these unusual kinds.
It’s been my goal to
uncover those set of qualities that distinguishes them amongst others.
As a matter of fact, I created this site [naijapreneur] to
chronicle and share freely with
the world my findings on how these seemingly ordinary men
and women create and
build truly
extra-ordinary businesses from scratch.
In this unusual
article, I want to share as always some of my most
recent findings about what it takes to become an unusual
entrepreneur.
The 3-way approach
The making of an unusual entrepreneur is dependent on 3
critical factors;
Character – the will to succeed
Competence - the will to prepare
Results - the will to execute
CHARACTER
An unusual entrepreneur is a person of character.
An unusual entrepreneur is not your everyday individual.
An unusual
entrepreneur is exactly the title they bear – unusual.
Perhaps one of the best descriptions ever given about an
unusual
entrepreneur was given by one himself, Steve Jobs;
“Here’s to the crazy
one, the misfits, the rebels,
the troublemakers,
the round peg in the square holes …
because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can
change the world,
are the ones who do!”
This is where it all begins –within. Every endeavour whether
in life or in business begins first
within and then without.
The first order of things to be changed is you, the
individual. Character is about your person;
what stuff are you
made up of? What do you represent? What makes you thick? What drives you?
What guides you?
Character is about
your will to succeed. A person can only go as far as his/her character allows.
The journey within outweighs the one outside; no man can
rise above the limits of his own character.
In other words, your character determines your success
either in life as well as in business.
Who you are ultimately defines what you achieve –your
success or failure.
Defining character is the first step to greatness.
What is character?
Character means ‘wholeness’. It is the summation of several
qualities,
behaviours and thoughts that reveals the totality of a
person.
Character is not only a question of what a person does
[action] it also includes
both how you do [attitude] and why you do [thought].
Character is the whole of a person;
an integration of “what you do” [actions, behaviours]; “how
you do” [disposition, attitude];
and “why you do” [intention, thought].
It’s the summation of these three parts that makes up the
whole of a person’s character.
How is Character
formed?
Formation of character
Formation of character
Values
Why do you think the way you do? Values.
Why do you behave the way you do? Values.
Values are a set of deeply held beliefs, principles,
qualities, standards or virtues that inspire
and guides how we do (attitude) and why we do (thoughts).
Values are at the core of our attitudes,
thoughts and dispositions; the combination of what we
believe in and how we behave.
Values of unusual entrepreneurs
Values of unusual entrepreneurs
Habits
Habits are what you do (actions) as a result of what you
believe and
have accepted as true. Habits are your values in action.
Your values are manifested through your habits.
Your values are the source of your habits. If you have the
wrong values,
you will exhibit the wrong habits.
Here are some highly
effective habits of unusual entrepreneurs;
Habits of unusual entrepreneurs
Habits of unusual entrepreneurs
COMPETENCE
Character focused on the internal requirements of an unusual
entrepreneur;
the personal development phase. That is, who they need to
become on the inside in order to lead on the outside.
Competence on the other hand, is where the unusual
entrepreneur develops
the basic business
skills needed for exceptional performance.
Competence is the business development phase of an unusual
entrepreneur.
It explores the external requirements of entrepreneurship.
That is, what you need to know technically in order to
perform externally.
If character is the personal side of business [personal
development] competence
is the technical side of business [skill development].
Character is how the entrepreneur develops the capacity to
succeed.
While competence enables the entrepreneur prepare for
success by developing the required
skills for succeeding in business. However important
character is, without competence which is the
actual knowledge and skill needed to start, run and grow a
business successfully,
an entrepreneur will only be a dreamer.
What is competence?
Competence is the ability and skill required to carry out a
particular function,
activity, task or set of duties. It refers to the
willingness of the entrepreneur
to prepare by gathering the skill set necessary for the
unusual journey embarked on.
The competencies required by an entrepreneur to
exceptionally fulfill the
responsibilities of his/her position are of two categories;
leadership and management.
Starting a business
requires entrepreneurial competence, working with people requires leadership
competence and growing a business requires managerial
competence.
An unusual entrepreneur relies on both competencies to
effectively and efficiently function in business.
Competence = leadership skills + management skills
Leadership
I know you are the owner of your business no doubt,
but you also need to understand this fact; building a
successful business takes
the collective efforts of others and not just the effort of
only you the owner.
It is not a one man show.
Before you chose to become a business owner, success was
very much all about
you and the result of your personal efforts, but now that you’re
building your own business;
success is all about
others and the result of their collective efforts.
The success or failure of an organization depends largely on
how well the entrepreneur performs as a leader.
As an unusual entrepreneur, your role as a leader demands
that you shift your focus from yourself and begin
to focus more on others and what you can collectively
achieve as a team.
The focus and function of the unusual entrepreneur’s role as
a leader stems from his character as an individual.
Without sound character the entrepreneur cannot function
exceptionally as a leader.
Leadership is about inspiring and motivating people towards
the fulfillment of a predetermined goal,
aim or objective; this is often referred to as VISION.
The combination of character mixed with vision is what makes
an ordinary person become an extra-ordinary leader.
You cannot be in front if you don’t have a firm idea of
where you’re going [vision]
and you cannot inspire others to follow if you haven’t first
led yourself [character].
Character makes you a leader, but you need vision to lead
others.
Inspiring them to fulfill
that vision is the job of a leader and the essence of leadership.
Management
Every business has a way of operating that makes it
completely different from any other business in the world.
Ever wondered how
some companies keep attracting and retaining high performing workers
while others struggle to keep just a handful?
Have you ever walked into some business premises and without
being told, you could
feel a sense of intense energy in the air?
ow come some workers find fulfillment at their place of work
and others don’t?
How is it that some businesses in the same industries do
better than others?
The answer to all these and so many more is management.
As individuals are unique such that there are never any two
people one hundred percent alike,
the same is true of businesses regardless of whether they
produce similar products or serve similar markets.
What makes the difference? Management.
After all is said and done, the day-to-day activities of a
business purely rest on the competence of management.
It’s possible for a business to have a great leader and a
great product, but without great management practices in place,
the business cannot exist for long.
Business is like a puzzle, the entrepreneur paints the whole
picture but management is
the one who begins to arrange them one after the other,
putting each piece in its rightful place.
Management puts the whole pieces together and brings
everything into proper perspective by creating an organization.
Management takes everything the business is about and weaves
it into one big and integrated whole known as organization.
The creation of an organization is management’s core task.
The fact that people congregate every day to work in a
particular business doesn’t necessarily make it an organization.
Management through the creation of an organization is the
binding force that unites all the resources of a business;
human, financial, material etc. together towards the
achievement of a corporate end.
To make a business
into an organization is what management stands for.
This is the essence of the unusual entrepreneur’s competence
as a manager.
RESULTS
Result is the unusual entrepreneur’s ability to stimulate
progress in the organization by creating an
environment where change can thrive.
He/she must inspire
the whole organization to keep asking and answering this critical question;
“what is our business
and how well are we doing?”
Asking this question draws the entire organization back to
the fundamental purpose of a business enterprise;
to create customers by offering innovative products/services
that meets their needs and solves their problems better.
Making the organization capable of creating consistent
change through innovation is the result the unusual
entrepreneur must pursue.
How is he/she able to achieve this? What are the tools for
creating change?
Creativity
Creation is the essence of entrepreneurship. The unusual
entrepreneur is nothing without creation.
He/she must be
involved in a never ending process of creation by forming a creative habit.
It is only through the habit of creating that the
entrepreneur masters the art of creation.
I wouldn’t dwell much on this because there’s an unusual
article that covers this subject of creativity,
you can read it here
–harnessing creativity for business success.
Risk
Creativity is about the unusual entrepreneur’s ability to
see opportunities and generate ideas;
risk is about the
willingness to explore and exploit them. It’s one thing to be able to imagine
innovation;
it’s another thing to actually deliver it. The difference is
risk.
Risk is the entrepreneur’s willingness to consistently
invest time,
effort and resources in the pursuit of change [ideas and
opportunities].
Besides seeing opportunities, the entrepreneur must be
willing to accept a high level of personal,
professional or financial risk to pursue them.
Risk is the sacrifice the entrepreneur is prepared to pay in
order to create change.
The entrepreneur must never be afraid of sacrificing
immediate gains for
the pursuit of better ways of doing things and satisfying
the customer.
Risk is the entrepreneur’s willingness to step out of
his/her comfort zone in
pursuit of change even though the outcome is not certain and
unknown.
It refers to the willingness of the entrepreneur to
experiment with the idea generated
and opportunity discovered. The entrepreneur must be willing
to confront every uncertainty,
fear and doubt and commit all that he/she is and has in
pursuit of ideas and opportunities.
Credit: by Tito Philips, Jnr.
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