Are entrepreneurs born or bred?

Jun 20 2007 by Bill Gleeson, Liverpool Daily Post

Bill Gleeson reports on why some people can make a success of going it alone

IF AN enterprising spirit was something people are born with, the distribution of businesses throughout the country would be even.

Yet, in some parts of the country there are more businesses formed per head of population than in others, suggesting enterprise has more to do with local customs and culture.

Liverpool is one region where there are fewer businesses.

Professor Tom Cannon is mystified by the issue. The former head of Manchester Business School has studied enterprise for most of his working life and he believes there is a degree of enterprise in most of us. He argues that Britain is home to the full spectrum of enterprise. At one end you have a small number of well-known phenomenal success stories like Sir Richard Branson and Anita Roddick. At the other end of the spectrum there is an equally small number of people who have no entrepreneurial spirit dormant within them at all.

“It’s a bit like a random distribution curve,” Prof Cannon explains.

“Probably at one end you have people who are born entrepreneurs. They are going to do their own thing come what may, whether in business or some other area.

“The obvious one is Sir Richard Branson. Almost from the day he left school, he was doing his own thing.

“If they are in this category, they could do other things.

“Sometimes they are in the informal economy and even the criminal classes can have a tremendous sense of enterprise, but crime is where its been directed.

“For others, it’s opportunity. People who have seen it in their dad, uncle or brother.

“Some may have been influenced once at work with a very enterprising boss.

“Or they are inspired by an Anita Roddick. She was frustrated in her career so she opened a restaurant and then a hotel. Both didn’t last. Then she developed a passion for the environment and opened The Body Shop and it took off.

“Another category is the stress entrepreneur, who succeeds after losing his or her job and starts a business and it takes off. These are people who are made by their circumstances.”

But what can be done to help those who have an entrepreneurial streak make the most of it?

Prof Cannon says: “Good training increases the likelihood of starting and surviving.

“But there is a tiny tail of people, far less than we acknowledge, who will never succeed.”

Cains Beer Company co-owner, Ajmail Dusanj, comes from an enterprising family. He acknowledges that family background has helped inspire him to get to where he is today, owning a Stock Market-quoted business.

Mr Dusanj said: “It was a combination of seeing it happen in the home and some luck.

“My father came to England from India in the 1960s. He started as a labourer on the roads. Then he worked in factories.

“After 20 years of slog, he decided to go into business for himself, but because he couldn’t read or write he did something straightforward. In 1980, he bought his first fish and chip shop. That was it, the turning point.

“We all helped in the shop. Mum used to cook. She made sure customers got their money’s worth. She wouldn’t allow any skimping on portions. The fish had to be fresh.

“Dad had shown signs of an entrepreneurial spirit before he started the chip shops. He did up houses. He was a grafter with his hands, but there was something there first.

“That fish shop is still in the family in Chatham, Kent.

“One secret is you have got to work hard, but you can’t do without luck either. You have to be in the right place at the right time. Then when the chance comes you grab it.

“The other lesson from that time is to stick to quality. The finest ingredients go in Cains bitter. It’s Maris Otter malt, from Norfolk, which ironically is related to the Maris Piper potato used in our chips.

“We grew the number of shops and hired staff to run them. We ended up with a small chain of seven.

“WE ALSO learned about having a good team around us. That’s been true from day one.

“We gave them the freedom to run the shops.

“Now we have stepped up the ladder with the larger business.

“We are brewing for the wholesale market and selling through to consumers.

“We owe where we are today to what we learned as younger men,” said Mr Dusanj.

Geraldine McEntegart started her own marketing agency a little over a year ago. What prompted her to become an entrepreneur?

“I just felt I had to do it. I don’t know why.

“It was just like it was my destiny.

“It’s too early days to say whether it was the right or wrong thing to do, but I felt if I didn’t do it I would regret it for the rest of my life,” she said.

Mrs McEntegart recalls the exact moment she made the decision to give up her well-paid job as a director of marketing at Merseyside Special Investment Fund and take the plunge and go it alone.

“It happened on a taxi journey.

“It came upon me all of a sudden. I saw the name plate, McEntegart Marketing, and said to myself, ‘Oh right, that’s what I’m going to do now.’ I told a friend half an hour later and she said ‘Great idea’, and after that I couldn’t let it rest and had to carry on with it.

“I’m pleased I listened to my instinct.

“I’m fortunate that the life I led and job I had gave me some insight into running your own business,” Mrs McEntegart said.

As with the Dusanj brothers, family influences played their part in directing Mrs McEntegart’s destiny.

“My father was a consultant physician, my mother a nurse, but he invented something that sold well. It was a shoe for people with swollen feet.

“They also ran their own private health screening clinic.

“We would talk about the family business around the kitchen table. That was always going on.

“The work ethic I inherited clicked with me at early stage in life. If you work hard and have ideas, all sorts of things can be achieved,” she said.

Matt Johnson runs a very different sort of business. When he left university, he immediately started his own web design company.

Asked whether it was family influences or something he learned while taking a business studies degree, he said it was probably “a bit of both.”

Mr Johnson said: “There is something instinctive in some people. Creativity is important. Entrepreneurs need to be able to create something from nothing.

“A huge amount depends on who you surround yourself by in the process. We had nothing to lose. There was no risk, no mortgages or cars to pay for.

“We said give it a go and see what happens. And it worked.”

But Mr Johnson says that you don’t have to work for yourself to develop an entrepreneurial spirit: “I think you can create ‘intrepreneurs’, people who create innovations within a large business.

“Most people working for a large business would admit that they would really prefer to quit their well-paid jobs, with clear career paths ahead to take their chances doing their own thing.

“But while most of us dream about it, some actually take the plunge and go it alone.

“To do so requires a degree of bravery as it means leaving behind all the supports that working in a large organisation can provide.

“But once done, most people don’t look back.”

James Dow quit a top job in one of the biggest professional firms in the world. He was a partner in with KPMG, the accountancy firm, but he resigned his partnership in January, 2002, to set up his own corporate finance boutique in his home town of Stockton Heath, near Warrington.

“I did it to take control of my own destiny.

“There is always somebody else controlling your future in any large organisation. There is no exception to that rule in a large organisation, even at the top.

“I didn’t feel the need to belong to a large organisation any more. The greater challenge for me came from going independent.

“I wanted to find out how good I was. Was I relying on KPMG’s brand or could I make my own name?”

Mr Dow says he has no regrets.

“It has worked out fabulously, exceeding all my expectations.”

His practice, which advises business owners on buying and selling companies, now has six others working in it, including other ex-KPMG staff.

“I wasn’t driven by pull factors rather than push.”

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