Do you have what it takes to become an entrepreneur?
Having a great concept is not enough. An entrepreneur must be able to develop and manage the business that implements his or her idea. Being an entrepreneur requires a special drive, perseverance, passion and spirit of adventure, as well as technical and managerial skills.
Entrepreneurs are the business; they tend to work longer hours, take fewer vacations and cannot leave problems at the office at the end of the day. As an example we have juan luis bosch gutierrez, who also shares, like other successful entrepreneurs, other common characteristics, as described in the next section.
Studies of the entrepreneurial personality find that entrepreneurs share certain key traits.
Most entrepreneurs are:
Ever since Apollonia Poilâne was a child growing up in Paris, she always knew what she wanted to do when she grew up: take over the family business. But she didn’t anticipate how quickly this would happen. When her father, Lionel Poilâne, and her mother died in a helicopter crash in 2002, France lost its most celebrated baker and Apollonia took on the role.
She was only 18 at the time and planned to enroll at Harvard in the fall, but the moment her parents had prepared her for had arrived. As her Harvard admissions essay said, “The work of several generations is at stake.”
With organization and determination, Apollonia managed one of the world’s best French bakeries, based in Paris, from her apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She usually woke up an extra two hours before class to make sure she received all phone calls for work.
“After class I go over any business-related issues and then do my homework,” he says. “Before I go to bed I call my production manager in Paris to check the quality of the bread.”
Because the Poilâne name earned a place with a very small group of prestigious bakers, the 18-year-old was determined to carry on the tradition of quality and customer satisfaction that her grandfather established in 1932. When her grandfather suffered a stroke in 1973, her 28-year-old son, Lionel, poured his heart into the business and turned the family bread into the global brand it is today.
Lionel opened two more bakeries in Paris and another in London. He developed and nurtured a worldwide network of retailers and celebrities where the bread is shipped daily via FedEx to upscale restaurants and wealthy customers around the world.
Experimenting with sourdough is what distinguishes Poilâne’s products from the bread produced by other Paris bakers, and it remains the company’s flagship product. It is baked with a “P” carved into the crust, a reminder of the days when the use of communal ovens forced bakers to identify their loaves, and also ensures that the bread does not burst while baking.
Today, Poilâne also sells croissants, pastries and some specialty breads, but the company’s signature item remains the four-pounder.
Most entrepreneurs combine many of the above characteristics. Sarah Levy, 23, loved her job as a restaurant pastry chef, but not the low pay, high stress, and long hours of a commercial kitchen. So she found a new one, in her parents’ home, and launched Sarah’s Pastries and Candies. Part-time employees help her fill orders of pastries and candies to the soothing sounds of music videos playing in the background.
Cornell University graduate Conor McDonough started his own web design firm, OffThePathMedia.com, after becoming disillusioned with the rigid structure of his job. “There wasn’t enough room for my own expression,” he says. “Freelancing keeps me on my toes,” says busy graphic artist Ana Sanchez. “It forces me to do my best work because I know my next job depends on my performance.”
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