Type-Cast Know your personality, know your strengths, know your weaknesses...know your business.
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Mike Brown knew his business but until he participated in astudy to identify entrepreneurial types, he didn't know himselfquite as well. Now the verdict is in: Brown, co-founder andpresident of New York City interactive content developer Cyber-NY,is an Idealist.
That means, Brown learned, that he loves his work and believeswhat he does is special but doesn't care for financial andadministrative details. The 34-year-old found the descriptionspookily accurate. "The results were very revealing," hesays. "It's like going to a fortuneteller who startstelling you stuff about yourself."
Brown's revelation flowed not from a fortuneteller, butrather from researchers hired by Pitney Bowes Inc. Pitney Bowes,the $4.2 billion global leader in mail management, commissionedYankelovich Partners to conduct a study of the small-businessmarket. "Eighty to 90 per-cent of our customers are smallbusinesses," explains Ed Gillespie, director of small-businessfinancial solutions for the Stamford, Connecticut, company."So understanding this segment is really important tous."
The survey is significant due to its size and scope, says DonBradley, marketing professor and executive director of the SmallBusiness Advancement National Center at the University of CentralArkansas in Conway. "Bits and pieces of the research have beendone in the past," says Bradley, who also owns aninternational consulting business, American Marketing Group ofConway, and helped Pitney Bowes apply the results of the researchto small-business needs. "Two things made this study sosuccessful: the large number of people interviewed and the bringingtogether of a lot of research ideas that had never before beenlinked."
Concentrating on businesses with less than 25 employees,Yankelovich conducted half-hour telephone questionnaires and focusgroups with more than 2,000 entrepreneurs across the country.Questions ranged from finance to technology and zeroed in onentrepreneurs' attitudes toward their businesses andthemselves.
The resulting report, "Attitudes and Behaviors That CreateSmall Business Success," reveals the approaches actually usedby successful entrepreneurs, not to mention the most pressingconcerns of small-business owners. One finding showed thatmaintaining quality and attracting and keeping customers were thedominant concerns across the board, outranking worries aboutstaffing, competing and paying the bills.
But the key finding was that many successful entrepreneurs havevery dissimilar attitudes. "We found that one answer is notright for all business owners," says Gillespie. "Itdepends on the business owner." For instance, one businessowner would measure success by how fast sales grew, while anotherwas primarily interested in maintaining an independentlifestyle.
To make sense of the answers, analysts divided business ownersinto five groups, each displaying distinct attitudes toward theirbusinesses: Idealists, Hard Workers, Jugglers, Optimizers andSustainers. While each type can be successful, they found all takea different route to success and often define success in their ownway.
In this five-part series, we'll examine each of the types,complete with profiles of representative entrepreneurs, startinghere with the Idealists.
Twenty-four percent of business owners surveyed fit theIdealists 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 creatingcontent, developing software and doing all the designing," hesays. After starting a record label and a nightclub in his 20s andlater working for other companies, Brown says building interactivecontent for Web sites, kiosks and CD-ROMs has become a personalcreative passion that he indulges through Cyber-NY.
Although they love creative work and are technically adept,Idealists are impatient with administrative tasks. "My fear isI'll wake up two years from now and realize I haven'tdesigned anything or touched any content in two years and allI'm doing is dealing with accountants and attorneys and doingbusiness and administrative stuff," Brown says."That's not why I got into this. I want to keepdesigning."
Optimizers, who comprise the second largest group at 21per-cent, are into the personal rewards of entrepreneurship, oftenpreferring freedom and flexibility to expansion. They do wantgrowth, but the most important financial figure is the amount ofprofit they take home.
Hard Workers, representing 20 percent of those studied, tend toput in more hours to achieve results. They're detail-oriented,financially aggressive and the most growth-oriented group ofentrepreneurs.
Jugglers, also accounting for 20 percent of the sample, are themost personally involved in their businesses. They feel thepressure to pay bills, make payroll and keep cash flow positive.They're technologically savvy and embrace the Internet. Theythink nobody can do it like them and are consequently reluctant todelegate.
The smallest group, at 15 percent, is the Sustainers. Theseentrepreneurs are likely to have inherited or purchased companiesrather than started from scratch. They work hard and would ratherput in more hours than apply technology to problems. They'rethe most conservative group, often declaring they don't wantgrowth and are happy with the way things are.
Segmenting business owners by type helps entrepreneursunderstand that many other entrepreneurs share their particulardefinition of success, Bradley says. They can then apply advice andtechniques appropriate for them.
How often is a study actually life-changing? Brown'sanalysis spurred him to alter his management style to betteraddress his weaknesses and leverage his strengths. In addition todisliking paperwork, he now realizes he's overly controllingwhen it comes to letting others exercise their own creativity."Being an Idealist, you want things to happen the way youenvision," he says. "Basically, I found I have to lightenup a little bit."
Today, as a direct result of identifying his entrepreneurialstyle, 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 thegrowth of the business."
Take The Test
Curious as to which type best describes you? Take the shortonline survey at Pitney Bowes' small-business Web site,http://www.pitneyworks.com.The half-dozen questions it poses represent a distillation of whatresearchers learned from more thorough interviews in the actualstudy, says Ed Gillespie, director of small-business financialsolutions.
After answering the online questions, you're assigned atype. Next, you can access online advice and information sourcestailored to each of the types. Tip sheets and links to sources areavailable directly from the site.
Contact Sources
Cyber-NY, (888) 70-CYBER,mike@cyber-ny.com
Pitney Bowes, (800) 5-PITNEY, info@pitneyworks.com
