Entrepreneurs Are Both Born And Made
For generations, nerdy scholars and nervous investors have debated whether successful entrepreneurs are “born or made,” whether some venturers are “naturals” and others only self-made “strugglers” or, worse, “losers” who will never have what it takes.
Q. I’ve been talking for years about starting my own business and want to sign up for a “how to” course at the local university. My wife thinks I’m crazy. She claims that you have to be born with entrepreneurial aptitude, that it’s not something you can learn. What do you say?
A. Not wanting to get immersed in a domestic dispute, I’ll hedge a bit. But there is a lot of evidence to support my fence-straddling.
Recent scientific discovery points to the role of “good” genes in entrepreneurial success. Research into things like gender, birth order, and physical stature have produced some meaningful correlations between heredity and success in entrepreneurial ventures.
Based on these and similar findings, it is reasonable to conclude that some people “naturally” have the innovative bent, work habits, risk-taking tolerance and problemsolving talents that contribute to success in business. (Being born to rich parents, an “eco-genetic” event, also helps when it comes to fueling and sustaining entrepreneurial urges.)
Entrepreneurs who have little formal education (or a lot of education they never liked) generally argue for the gene theory. They buttress their arguments with an observation from Walt Whitman about another ethereal trait, wisdom.
“Wisdom,” he claimed, “cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it. Wisdom is of the soul.”
However, I believe that the most significant conditioner of entrepreneurial desires - perhaps even success - is the experience a person has between the time of birth and his or her midteen years. The biographies of most successful entrepreneurs reflect early exposure to people or events that conveyed strong “entrepreneurial messages.”
Contact with Uncle Charlie the grocer, a part-time job at the neighborhood filling station, or a tour of the local lumber yard can plant the seeds and generate the excitement needed to “steer” a youngster to future entrepreneurial pursuits.
My first nudge in that direction arose from my fascination with watching sales clerks collect, count and arrange the money they received from selling goods to my mother. I was also intrigued by a neighbor who was apparently getting filthy rich selling “free stuff” from her garden. I finally wangled my way into becoming the class “teller” for the in-school savings program sponsored by a local bank.
Behavioral scientists tells us that it’s this kind of early-life, first-person experience that not only propels people to entrepreneurial pursuits but also gives them the confidence, proclivities, and innate “feel” for venturing that can expand their probability for success.
Does this mean you should stick to your day job and prove that your wife is right? Absolutely not. While entrepreneurial endeavors might be easier, or more “natural,” or even more productive for some because of who they are or what they’ve experienced, anyone can be an entrepreneur.
I’ve known scores of very successful - happy - venturers who started from ground zero. Sure, it might have been harder and more perilous for them, but the success was all the more sweet.
In this decade alone, thousands of buttoned-down executives with nothing more than MBAs from Harvard and pink slips from their employers have sallied forth as entrepreneurs and found success in doing something they never dreamed of doing before. Last year, over 800,000 new businesses were started and, believe me, not all of those adventurous founders had the genes of a died-in-the-wool entrepreneur.
Of course, they had to do their homework. Some took jobs in small business first. Others studied the patterns of entrepreneurs they knew. Still others signed up for courses taught by people who’d “been there, done that.” A few were able to get the guidance they needed from the local library or from like-minded souls on the Internet. After all, entrepreneurship is simply behavior, and behavior can be learned.
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