Brad Sugars was born an entrepreneur, but it's also a taught skill.
Lots of people say Brad Sugars was born to be an entrepreneur, and with good reason — he managed to create a very successful business coaching company just two years after graduating from Queensland Tech, and was financially retired at the incredibly young age of 26.
But new evidence supports the fact that entrepreneurs can be made…and very rarely are people, like Brad, born to be entrepreneurs.
Vivek Wadhwa, a guest blogger for TechCrunch.com and a senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University, conducted a survey with a team of other research associates. They surveyed 549 successful entrepreneurs, and found that many didn’t have entrepreneurial aspirations from birth. 52% of the successful entrepreneurs were the first in their immediate families to start a business.
There was no significant difference between the success factors or hurdles faced by entrepreneurs who were extremely interested in entrepreneurship in school and the ones who lacked interest, but entrepreneurs with extreme interest started their company — or companies — sooner.
What does this mean? Entrepreneurship skills can be learned. It does take a certain type of person to really succeed as an entrepreneur — after all, it takes ambition and dedication to really get a business off the ground.
The education and training entrepreneurs have is something the Kauffman Foundation has looked into extensively. They recently started a program called Kauffman Labs, which teaches small businesses to become big businesses — isn’t that what almost every business owner wants?
Kauffman Labs would educate entrepreneur-wannabes and provide them with a powerful, supportive network…because according to survey findings, these two factors are the most important in terms of what really makes an entrepreneur.
The article is an interesting read. What do you think about the survey’s findings?
ActionCOACH also aims to educate business owners with business coaching sessions. Think you’ve got more to learn about being a business owner? Click here to see what a free business coaching session could do for your business.
