Last week I reviewed The Entrepreneur Next Door and gave it 7 stars. Over the next few days, I'm going to share excerpts from the book courtesy of the author and publisher. If you're interested in starting your own business (whether as a full-time pursuit or as just a sideline to earn some extra cash), you'll want to check out these posts (and maybe later the book) as they'll give you some good insights into what makes a successful entrepreneur.
Today's excerpt describes who the entrepreneur next door is as well as gives a pretty good overview of the book. Here goes:
Who IS the Entrepreneur Next Door?
The genesis of this book began nine years ago when Thomas Stanley and William Danko’s book The Millionaire Next Door (Pocket, 1998) was first published. I was one of more than two million readers fascinated with this glimpse into the saving and spending habits of millionaires. Actually, I believe most readers bought it because they wanted to gain insights into how they could also become millionaires. Their book surveyed 400 households with a net worth of $1 million or more. What was interesting to me was that more than 70 percent of the respondents were not entrepreneurs. They were schoolteachers, bus drivers, and professionals such as doctors, attorneys, and CPAs. Only 30 percent of those surveyed were actually
entrepreneurs.
It was then that my curiosity got the best of me, and I set about comparing Accord Management Systems’ survey group with their survey group. The members of our survey group, for the most part, belonged to the Young Entrepreneurs Organization, were under the age of 40 when they completed the survey, and had annual business revenues in excess of $1 million each.
Here’s the essence of our findings: The survey group for The Millionaire Next Door had an average age of 57 and a net worth of $3.7 million: our study group had an average age of 31 and a net worth of $3.4 million. How was it that the members of our group, relatively speaking, were still kids but had amassed similar net worth in 25 fewer years? They didn’t have the advantage of compound interest, but they did have the advantage of having very strong entrepreneurial personalities, and more important, they were enjoying opportunities that were very well suited to who they were.
Simply put, we’re able to measure one’s personality and predict success for a given role. The world’s best bookkeeper has a great bookkeeper personality, a great salesperson has a great salesperson’s personality, and a successful entrepreneur has a great entrepreneur’s personality. But a great bookkeeper will rarely become a great financial controller or a CFO.
Unlike most books, this one has been written with messages specifically designed for people with a range of different personalities. Remember the story about Goldilocks? Some personalities are too big, some are too small, and some are just right. There’s no such thing as a good or bad personality. The rightness of someone’s personality is more determined by the requirements of the opportunity. Basically, you want to get the right people on the bus and into the right seats. And, you definitely want to be on the right bus and in the right seat yourself!
Some opportunities require a lot of personality, and some require very little. Each reader has a different personality, and it’s typically much different from the author’s. As an example, if you read a book on leadership by former General Electric chairman Jack Welsh and you don’t have his strong personality, the stories that he shares are good stories, but they may not be ones that will help you learn how to be a great leader. In this book, however, there are elements and stories that have been written about and for each one of us.
As I said in the review, I was skeptical that this book could really deliver what it stated -- that it could help determine who was predisposed to become a successful entrepreneur. But stick with me (and this series of posts) -- I think you'll start to see, like I did, that this book does have some very valuable insights for people considering their own business.
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