Are Entrepreneurs Made Or Born?

I have noticed a few articles as of late that have been written about this subject. One in particular proved quite interesting to me. Specifically I enjoyed “Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught” in an issue of Fortune Small Business Magazine. I won’t spoil the article for you because I think it is a valuable read, but in essence they have some extremely successful entrepreneurs state “made” or “born” with regard to how entrepreneurs come to be. After having thought about this topic in the past, reading about others thoughts on it and hearing the viewpoints of other entrepreneurs I am finally ready to stand my ground in this debate. Entrepreneurs are born and then they are made. I think the truly GREAT entrepreneurs are simply born – regardless of their circumstances they will be extremely successful. They don’t need to be made – circumstances matter little to the Steve Jobs of the world. However, the vast majority of entrepreneurs in this world aren’t going to be the great ones – how many Steve Jobs are reading this right now? I know one isn’t writing it.

Chances are, you or I will never read about or even hear about these types of business owners – even if they live in our same city. The woman who owns the small consulting firm downtown or the man that runs his own shoe store on the West side. These people are entrepreneurs on a smaller scale – they take risks, they make tough decisions that impact their personal salaries, they provide an income for others and they compete every day for a buck. Although on a much smaller scale, these entrepeneurs aren’t all that much different from Uber-Entrepreneurs Steve Jobs or Michael Dell with one critical exception. These entrepreneurs were likely born, but they weren’t made.

What I mean by this is they probably had some example of entrepreneurship growing up. Perhaps their parents owned a business or they worked for their Uncle in the Summer in his company XYZ. They watched, and learned and realized they wanted to try and do their own thing. This is where the differentiation occurs (in my mind anyway). These smaller entrepreneurs probably didn’t do anything about their desire at first – unless they inherited their business, which doesn’t really count – unless they take that business to the next level, but that is a whole new discussion. Anway, what likely happened is they went to school or got a job, or went to school and then got a job. Either way, they ended up working for someone else. This likely went on for years – working, saving money and dabbling in side businesses and deals. Then, one day, something happens. Perhaps they get fired, or they just get tired of answering to “the man”. Maybe they get enough money saved to satisfy their risk tolerance. This event, whatever it may be, triggers them to get into business for themselves and then they become entrepreneurs – probably for the rest of their lives. Remember, we are talking about people who actually are entrepreneurs, not those who try it and aren’t good at it – so let’s assume these folks have a solid career of business ownership and then retire as the sun sets……..quietly and with little fanfare.

The discussion on made vs. born does not end with the “everyday” entrepreneur. Most of the articles focus on the highly successful and likely well-known entrepreneurs. People are generally more interested in learning how they became so successful. They want to hear Mark Cuban’s story of Broadcast.com – not Harry Jones story about his car wash chain of 11 locations. It is human nature that we are more interested in Cuban then the Car Wash. We all want to know how Mark did it – was it because he was born to be an entrepreneur? Harry has achieved financial security with his car wash chain, but Mark is famous and has made enough money to buy an NBA basketball team! This is where my point hopefully connects the dots. Mark Cuban was born extremely intelligent. He clearly had a gift from Heavenly Father at birth that allowed him some fairly rare characteristics and more brain power then your average human being. Even still, there are a lot of Mark Cuban’s born every day, all around the world. So why did Mark become Mark – and not Harry? This is the crux of my argument.

Mark likely had some sort of an intellectual advantage at birth. But if you are Mark Cuban, I would submit that it doesn’t matter which circumstance you grow up in after your “born” characteristics are already in place. I am sure I can research and find 10 extremely successful, well-known, billionaire entrepreneurs that grew up in ten totally different environments and yet still made my list.  Nothing would stop them from becoming great entrepreneurs. Good parents or bad ones, lots of money or no money, going to school or dropping out, success the first time around or the fifth time around – none of it would matter to these ten entrepreneurs I would choose (and there are many groups of ten I am sure). That is because they are born to be great! They can screw it up thru a variety of bad personal decisions but if they don’t do anything too catostrophic to their lives, they are going to make it big. Mark Cuban would have been highly successful regardless of what happened to him between birth and his $5 billion dollar sellout to Yahoo (assuming he didn’t kill someone or his Mom didn’t beat him horribly).

Back to Harry, the car wash chain owner. Let’s put him in two totally different sets of circumstances in his formative years and early in his career. Let’s throw lots of money and education at him. Let’s give him great parents. Let’s say his first business is a big success. Harry is likely now the proud owner of 450 car washes. Harry was born with some innate entrepreneurial characteristics, but he was made into who we are interested in learning about – not born. To illustrate this point, let’s give Harry an entirely different set of circumstances. No money, bad parents, no education and his first shot at a business is a huge failure. Since Harry probably took a little time to start this business (per my point a few paragraphs earlier) and didn’t just jump right into things, I would bet this combination of negative factors would cause Harry to return to his job and forget about entrepreneurship, at least for awhile. Harry would in a sense, give up as an entrepreneur and perhaps never return. That is because although Harry was born with some special traits that support an entrepreneurial career, he wasn’t made and therefore the road ended for him pretty quickly.

At the end of the day, what I am saying is this:

A GREAT entrepreneur – the ones we read about and aspire to become – is born and not made. BUT, there is hope for the rest of us. If we are born with some (not all) of the same personality traits and abilities that a GREAT entrepreneur has, we can be made. Our parents, our childhood friends, our financial situation, our opportunity level (think 3rd world country vs. USA), our risk tolerance, the spouse we pick and a variety of other factors now come into play. Have you ever heard an entrepreneur talk about luck as one of their major success factors? These entrepreneurs are probably the ones like you and I and they know it.  Some or all of the “made” factors were present and it helped them greatly, but deep down, a lot of them know and give credit to the fact that they were lucky. They aren’t simply being humble (a nice trait in a successful entrepreneur), they know that they could have ended up somewhere totally different if a few things in their lives had gone differently.

Unless you are one of the few who really are born to be super-entrepreneurs, then join the herd with the rest of us. Make the best of your surroundings. Do your damnedst to give your kids as many “made” advantages (a blog for another time) as you can. And don’t rest on your laurels! There is nothing wrong with being Harry at the car wash – but wouldn’t you just assume own 450 of them instead of 5? C’mon, you are going to be washing cars anyway – might as well wash a lot!

My question for my readers is what do you think? Born or made?

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