Krug: Harnessing your inner entrepreneur can be a challenge

Entrepreneurism is present in any successful business, but it is at the heart of small and mid-sized business. And so that we’re on the same page, let’s look at small to mid-sized businesses for what they are: If you are operating a company with revenues between zero and $300 million in the United States, you’re probably running a small to mid-sized business. That’s purely my definition. There’s nothing scientific about it. Those simply are numbers to frame the context of the thinking I am about to borrow from the insights of others and share with you. The entrepreneur that is building his or her business from scratch is a fascinating character with so many incredible traits, and embodies what many could hold up as the portrait of the American success story. Entrepreneurs can find themselves in a difficult and unfamiliar space within franchising. That may seem somewhat counter intuitive, but it plays out time and time again and is among the foremost reasons behind the value that franchise brands place on finding multi-unit owners. In Michael Gerber’s book, “The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It,” which remains a fascinating read some 11 years since it was published, he suggested that The Entrepreneur in us, “lives in the future, never in the past, rarely in the present. “He’s happiest when left free to construct images of “what-if” and “if-when” … In business, the entrepreneur is the innovator, the grand strategist, the creator of new methods for penetrating or creating new markets, the world-bending giant – like Sears Roebuck, Henry Ford, Tom Watson of IBM (not the golfing great), and Ray Kroc of McDonald’s. “The entrepreneur is our creative personality – always at its best dealing with the unknown, prodding the future, creating probabilities out of possibilities, engineering chaos into harmony. Every strong entrepreneurial personality has an extraordinary need for control. Living as he does in the visionary world of the future, he needs control of people and events in the present so that he can concentrate on his dreams.” Gerber goes on to suggest that the entrepreneur also, “creates a lot of havoc around him, which is predictably unsettling for those he enlists in his projects,” and, as a result, “often finds himself rapidly outdistancing the others.” Sound like anyone you know? Ah, it should. If you are an entrepreneur, you are in some ways a madman (or madwoman – this never was meant to be gender-biased). But that’s what makes for great businesses: A highly driven, highly focused person is going to be fixated on the future in such a way that they can see the end in mind. It’s extremely personal territory and the quest to succeed can be all encompassing. The small/mid-sized business owner is not walking a tightrope in today’s economic times, they are sprinting across the wire as arrows are being launched at them from all directions – bobbing and weaving, while making their way across a wire that doesn’t always have a clear platform on the other end. As 1851franchise.com is a publication that serves to provide content specifically to the franchising industry, it would seem relevant to intersect the ideas from Gerber’s thinking and apply it to the business methodology that connects all within the franchise industry. It reasons that, especially in franchising and with franchise brands, the pure and unbridled entrepreneur isn’t necessarily the best fit for franchising – especially if they view their franchise as their business in the way that non-franchise business owners view most going concerns. The business, defined as the operational activity that they endeavor under the auspice of the brand system they have joined, is theirs. However, it is theirs only to the extent that they have bought into a specific system. And although the franchisee holds rights within a trade area and operates a business that could succeed or fail, the brand itself has rules, guidelines and specific operational practices that are designed to be closely followed – not expanded upon or experimented with – by the individual franchisee. Does that mean that a franchisee can’t be an entrepreneur? No, not by a long shot. The true opportunity for the entrepreneur in franchising is to not view their franchise as their business to tinker with, adjust or in some specific way deviate from the system, but to manage against guidelines to ensure best outcomes. That controlled focus might be turned over, as Gerber would suggest in his book, to the second and third personalities of the small/mid-sized business owner: The Manager and the Technician. The manager is, of course, the pragmatist who takes the vision and channels all of those wild dreams into specific activities to be accomplished. The technician then becomes the person that is the doer of those tasks set forth by the manager. And the best small/mid-sized business owner, as Gerber so astutely asserts, is the rare person who can balance the three distinct personalities of what many perhaps consider solely to be “the entrepreneur,” but in reality must be composed of The Entrepreneur, The Manager and The Technician. The most likely to succeed are those that can rationalize those traits as soon as possible – if not from the outset of their business journey. Best of luck.

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If you are interested in reading all of Gerber’s thoughts in the near-perfect clarity of straightforward writing, pick up a copy of his book via Amazon.com through this link.

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As always, stay classy. Chris Krug is president of the progressive media communications firm No Limit Agency* in Chicago. No Limit is a full-service agency whose practice focuses on strategy, brand management, creative campaigns and delivering unparalleled earned placement in the media. No Limit Agency works with some of the best-known and fastest-growing brands in North America, and that’s not a coincidence. Contact Krug by calling 312-526-3996 or via email at [email protected].