KARLA PORTER

Why doesn’t every­one take their ideas to market?

Fri­day evening I sat in a con­fer­ence room among stu­dents at Mis­eri­cor­dia Uni­ver­sity attend­ing the 8th Annual Entre­pre­neur­ship Insti­tute. Prof. Jeff Babin, Whar­ton School, Univ. of Penn­syl­va­nia said, “If you ask your­self if you should start a busi­ness the answer is no, you are not ready yet”. Entre­pre­neurs have a com­pelling burn­ing desire to do what they do and their busi­ness hap­pens as a result of the inno­va­tion, rela­tion­ships, energy and vision they have and can’t help.

The fact is the most recent pub­lished research from Global Entre­pre­neur­ship Mon­i­tor 2008 National Entre­pre­neur­ial Assess­ment for the United States of Amer­ica reported 8.7% of adults 18–99 years of age were entre­pre­neurs. Cer­tainly since the study was pub­lished, the eco­nomic down­turn is said to have spurred increased entre­pre­neur­ship. But, if less than 1 in 10 owns a busi­ness, where does that leave the rest of us?

It leaves us to find what I call our inner entre­pre­neur.

Does every­one have an inner entre­pre­neur? How do we know?  Though I per­son­ally know many peo­ple with­out one iota of entre­pre­neur­ial spirit, many peo­ple have one or more of the 7 char­ac­ter­is­tics Joe Hadz­ima, Senior Lec­turer, MIT Entre­pre­neur­ship Cen­ter out­lined in Seven Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Highly Effec­tive Entre­pre­neur­ial Employees

• Abil­ity to deal with risk
• Results ori­ented
• Energy
• Growth poten­tial
• Team player
• Multi-tasking abil­ity
• Improve­ment oriented

Employ­ees with these char­ac­ter­is­tics enable com­pa­nies to forge ahead, be inno­v­a­tive and grow. They act as busi­ness own­ers, have immense pride in and potent pas­sion for what they do. They own their tal­ent, con­tin­u­ally seek to develop it and con­tin­u­ally look to stretch them­selves to see over the hori­zon to the next chal­lenge and success.

I recently had a con­ver­sa­tion with G.L. Hoff­man about his new book, Start Up 100 Tips to Get Your Busi­ness Going, and speak­ing to young entre­pre­neurs in north­east­ern PA this com­ing fall. G.L. said that when he speaks he is often asked for the top 3 or top 5 lessons he has learned doing start ups. He decided to put his tips and thoughts for entre­pre­neurs in book form (another prod­uct offer­ing from the GLH line of solutions).

As I read the book, I iden­ti­fied with much of it and the rest of it made me think. What jumped out at me was that many of the tips in this book, writ­ten for entre­pre­neurs in the dic­tio­nary sense of the term, are also highly applic­a­ble to the employee entrepreneur.

Start Up answers why story tellers are needed and why trust­ing your instinct is so impor­tant. It talks about blam­ing oth­ers, hav­ing fun and get­ting com­fort­able ask­ing for advice and help.

If you put the right spin on these they eas­ily turn into 100 tips for career man­age­ment for your inner entrepreneur.