Mike Brown knew his business but until he participated in a
study to identify entrepreneurial types, he didn't know himself
quite as well. Now the verdict is in: Brown, co-founder and
president of New York City interactive content developer Cyber-NY,
is an Idealist.
That means, Brown learned, that he loves his work and believes
what he does is special but doesn't care for financial and
administrative details. The 34-year-old found the description
spookily accurate. "The results were very revealing," he
says. "It's like going to a fortuneteller who starts
telling you stuff about yourself."
Brown's revelation flowed not from a fortuneteller, but
rather from researchers hired by Pitney Bowes Inc. Pitney Bowes,
the $4.2 billion global leader in mail management, commissioned
Yankelovich Partners to conduct a study of the small-business
market. "Eighty to 90 per-cent of our customers are small
businesses," explains Ed Gillespie, director of small-business
financial solutions for the Stamford, Connecticut, company.
"So understanding this segment is really important to
us."
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The survey is significant due to its size and scope, says Don
Bradley, marketing professor and executive director of the Small
Business Advancement National Center at the University of Central
Arkansas in Conway. "Bits and pieces of the research have been
done in the past," says Bradley, who also owns an
international consulting business, American Marketing Group of
Conway, and helped Pitney Bowes apply the results of the research
to small-business needs. "Two things made this study so
successful: the large number of people interviewed and the bringing
together of a lot of research ideas that had never before been
linked."
Concentrating on businesses with less than 25 employees,
Yankelovich conducted half-hour telephone questionnaires and focus
groups with more than 2,000 entrepreneurs across the country.
Questions ranged from finance to technology and zeroed in on
entrepreneurs' attitudes toward their businesses and
themselves.
The resulting report, "Attitudes and Behaviors That Create
Small Business Success," reveals the approaches actually used
by successful entrepreneurs, not to mention the most pressing
concerns of small-business owners. One finding showed that
maintaining quality and attracting and keeping customers were the
dominant concerns across the board, outranking worries about
staffing, competing and paying the bills.
But the key finding was that many successful entrepreneurs have
very dissimilar attitudes. "We found that one answer is not
right for all business owners," says Gillespie. "It
depends on the business owner." For instance, one business
owner would measure success by how fast sales grew, while another
was primarily interested in maintaining an independent
lifestyle.
To make sense of the answers, analysts divided business owners
into five groups, each displaying distinct attitudes toward their
businesses: Idealists, Hard Workers, Jugglers, Optimizers and
Sustainers. While each type can be successful, they found all take
a different route to success and often define success in their own
way.
In this five-part series, we'll examine each of the types,
complete with profiles of representative entrepreneurs, starting
here with the Idealists.
Twenty-four percent of business owners surveyed fit the
Idealists mold, making this the largest of the five groups.
Idealists start businesses so they can work on something special,
according to the study. Brown can identify. "I love creating
content, developing software and doing all the designing," he
says. After starting a record label and a nightclub in his 20s and
later working for other companies, Brown says building interactive
content for Web sites, kiosks and CD-ROMs has become a personal
creative passion that he indulges through Cyber-NY.
Although they love creative work and are technically adept,
Idealists are impatient with administrative tasks. "My fear is
I'll wake up two years from now and realize I haven't
designed anything or touched any content in two years and all
I'm doing is dealing with accountants and attorneys and doing
business and administrative stuff," Brown says.
"That's not why I got into this. I want to keep
designing."
Optimizers, who comprise the second largest group at 21
per-cent, are into the personal rewards of entrepreneurship, often
preferring freedom and flexibility to expansion. They do want
growth, but the most important financial figure is the amount of
profit they take home.
Hard Workers, representing 20 percent of those studied, tend to
put in more hours to achieve results. They're detail-oriented,
financially aggressive and the most growth-oriented group of
entrepreneurs.
Jugglers, also accounting for 20 percent of the sample, are the
most personally involved in their businesses. They feel the
pressure to pay bills, make payroll and keep cash flow positive.
They're technologically savvy and embrace the Internet. They
think nobody can do it like them and are consequently reluctant to
delegate.
The smallest group, at 15 percent, is the Sustainers. These
entrepreneurs are likely to have inherited or purchased companies
rather than started from scratch. They work hard and would rather
put in more hours than apply technology to problems. They're
the most conservative group, often declaring they don't want
growth and are happy with the way things are.
Segmenting business owners by type helps entrepreneurs
understand that many other entrepreneurs share their particular
definition of success, Bradley says. They can then apply advice and
techniques appropriate for them.
How often is a study actually life-changing? Brown's
analysis spurred him to alter his management style to better
address his weaknesses and leverage his strengths. In addition to
disliking paperwork, he now realizes he's overly controlling
when it comes to letting others exercise their own creativity.
"Being an Idealist, you want things to happen the way you
envision," he says. "Basically, I found I have to lighten
up a little bit."
Today, as a direct result of identifying his entrepreneurial
style, Brown delegates more administrative and creative work.
"It makes things easier on me, and everybody is happier,"
he says. "In fact, it was kind of a turning point in the
growth of the business."
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