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.

Michael VanDervort told me he was sending a guy my way who wanted to discuss onboarding. A few tweets and emails later and we were on the phone. It was G.L. Hoffman, a serial entrepreneur and venture investor/operator/incubator/mentor. Two of his companies have traveled the entire success path from the garage to IPO. Currently, he is chairman of JobDig, and his blog can be found at WhatWouldDadSay.com or at JobDig.com. You’ll also find his thoughts all over U.S. News and World Report, Forbes, FastCompany, the Wall Street Journal and other business publications and newspapers.

Of note is his project LinkUp, a job search engine with a twist. What makes LinkUp better than other job websites like Monster or CareerBuilder?

The most significant difference between LinkUp and other job sites on the web is that we only list jobs from company websites. Companies interested in getting their jobs on LinkUp must send us the URL of their company website so we can link to them. This allows us to maintain a much higher quality database of jobs than you will find on any other job search site on the web today. There are no outdated jobs that have already been filled, no ads posted by recruiters and headhunters, and no identity thefts or work-at-home scams. Linkup will always generate the highest quality jobs available.

G.L. is quite personable and friendly. He travels a lot and is a never ending fountain of ideas which he has most recently taken to documenting in the form of Gruzzles from his command post in Minneapolis. He wanted to talk about the application of Gruzzles in the onboarding process. That morphed into many other topics of discussion. I had a suspicion Gruzzles might be ruling his life and that he was obsessively viewing everything concentrically.

When did you create the first one? What was it? What inspired you?

GL: I was exploring a new way of presenting a new business plan using simple graphs and language.  I was trying to take the executive summary idea to a new simpler level.  The task was to find if I could explain a new business with circles, with the connections being the differentators of the business.  The Gruzzle came out of this experience.

Are Gruzzles just a fad until you latch onto a new concept or are you completely obsessed with creating them as a lens to explore our existence?

GL: I am a bit obsessed on them now, just like I am when I get involved in a new company.  I think there is a commercial product and I am trying to figure out how to do it.  That is the fun part. What I am really obsessed about is our new job search engine called LINKUP.COM…it is the only place where someone can go to find jobs ONLY from company websites.

How do you take complex situations and questions and simplify them into a few intersecting circles?

GL: I am not sure to be perfectly honest.  I do know that trying to make connections amongst three disparate elements stimulates my own creativity, so I thought it might do the same for others.

Do you keep a notebook with you at all times or do you grab napkins in restaurants?

GL: I have notebooks all over.  Some I can do in five minutes, but most take a lot longer, days even.

Can you define Gruzzles into categories?

GL: A publisher contacted me and tried to tell me that there was a series like CHICKEN SOUP or DUMMIES in them.  I think there might be a place for a Gruzzles for Babyboomers, Golfers, Enrepreneurs and so forth.  Although I am finding much harder to create the narrow topics.

How do you think Gruzzles can help mankind?

GL: I don’t think they are going to cure cancer, but they might be a new way to communicate in a different, faster, funnier way.

How do you pick your next project? Or, do they pick you?

GL: Good question.  I am always receptive to new ideas, new concepts, new projects.  The challenge is in picking which one to spend the time on.  I am getting better at prioritizing, and knowing where and how to spend my time.

What will you be doing 6 months from now?

GL: Not ice fishing.

I also asked G.L. if Gruzzles keep him up at night. He said no but I’m not completely convinced. I see him up at all hours on Twitter.

What uses do you envision for Gruzzles? Inquiring minds want to know.

]]> http://karlaporter.com/interviews/what-gruzzles-you/feed 5