A friend of mine sent me the following email today:
“With all the news lately about the subzero weather and snow that the Midwest and East coast areas are experiencing, you shouldn’t forget that Arizona has its share of devastating weather also.
Attached is a photo illustrating the excessive damage caused to a home from a storm that passed through the Phoenix area last week. It really makes you cherish what you have, and reminds us not to take life for granted”
Ready?
AZ Storm Damage
If you live in AZ or ever visited AZ or even know anything about AZ you’ll see the humor in all of this. It’s pretty much the extent of our winters.
What does this have to do with today’s blog post? Well…absolutely nothing.
It’s been a very busy week so far filled with plenty of meetings. Each day I learn more and more about entrepreneurship and youth entrepreneurship, so naturally the notion of whether or not entrepreneurs are born or made crept into the thought process.
Seems that the general consensus is no consensus and there’s differing opinions as to whether or not one strikes a fancy (I almost sound British there) for entrepreneurship straight out of the womb or one learns the ropes and decides it’s a much better professional course to take. Quite frankly, I lean more towards the latter.
According to Raffi Amit, an entrepreneurial professor at Wharton, entrepreneurial characteristics are not clearly defined. There are no distinct personality traits that every entrepreneur possesses and therefore, people can be taught how to become entrepreneurs.
To make things a little more interesting, the Kauffman Foundation did a study on entrepreneurs who currently run businesses and found that just over half (51.9%) of the respondents were the first in their family to launch a business. Some 95% of them had college degrees and 55% of them had parents with a high school degree or less.
The report also found that 71.5% said they came from middle class backgrounds and less than 1% came from extremely rich or extremely poor socio-economic classes. So what were the reasons why these entrepreneurs started their own business? Nearly 3/4 said creating wealth was a big motivator followed by other factors such as capitalizing on a business idea, the startup culture was appealing, they wanted to own their own company and they had no desire to work for someone else.
When I was a kid, there were plenty of things I wanted to be – doctor, lawyer, artist, teacher, etc. I also figured I would be an employee. My father worked retail and was a funeral director until he discovered his entrepreneurial path. (He really wanted to be a historian or baseball player, but those didn’t happen.) My grandfather was an attorney before he opened up his mortuary business.
So are we entrepreneurs really born to start businesses or is it a something we’ve learned along the way that eventually shapes our future?
Success to you!
Melissa
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Thank you for all the great posts from last year! I always get great information from your blog. God bless you this 2010.
It’s really well done! Respect to author.
Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.
Great, this can be exactly what my wife and I needed to learn