To a large extent, barring other external prevailing conditions, the success of a small business hinges very much on the adroitness and character of the entrepreneur. Like other skills, the adeptness of the entrepreneur comes about through a combination of life events which we will refer to as 'influences.' Four of these influences being life experiences, parental influence, career displacement and education. All of these have differing capacity to mold the entrepreneur and hence influence his/her success level.
Parental influence no doubt has a great impact on business success. The entrepreneurial world-view is radically different from the employee mindset. While the employee longs for certainty, the entrepreneur is constantly in a risky environment with no assurance of a definite outcome. Switching between both worlds can prove to be a daunting feat. Hence wards with parents-biological or 'adopted' - who run a business, have less problem overcoming this barrier and therefore more likely to succeed in business. But like most other life phenomenon, despite the preponderance of evidence in support of this, the contrary does hold true also.
Laurel Donnell interviewed two successful entrepreneurs who have been influenced deeply by their parents in two very distinct ways. Sean Rosensteel 27, founder of SavvyPRO SEO, serial entrepreneur is in the midst of launching his fourth venture; his father was an entrepreneur. He embraced almost everything his parents had taught him, applied them and now enjoys tremendous business success. On the other hand, Alastair Ong is a maverick who was born into tradition; he learned from his family that a career is how you are defined. He appeased his parents by going to Fordham Law School and then he landed a job at a big firm. He later rejected their lessons to find his soul work by starting his own law partnership and becoming a serial entrepreneur whose ventures have included a winery and several technology companies.
Career displacement is a catalyst that has birthed several viable and successful businesses; a well known example being the birth of Home Depot in 1978. Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank were fired after a disagreement with upper management. Throwing their lots together they opened their own home improvement store, based in Atlanta, Georgia. The Home Depot is the fastest growing retailer in US history. The 1980s and 1990s spawned tremendous growth for the company, with 1989 marking the celebration of its 100th store opening.
With globalization, fast changing business and technology landscapes, career displacement may be in fact one of the greatest catalyst to new ventures of the future. Though an unwelcome event for most, the need to prove their competence and financial survival in a dwindling job market; spurs many an ex-employee to start a business and do a great job of it, because they bring to the table their knowledge of the successes and failure of their previous employee.
Education is the act or process of acquiring knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing intellectually for life. It in do doubt has the greatest impact on business success of the four being discussed here. Formal education, a subset of education, has not proved to be an indicator of business success. It can rightly be called a 'license to learn' because it provides many skills that the non-educated entrepreneur will need to learn the hard way. But Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs that continue to learn new and innovative techniques to differentiate themselves from their competition are generally more successful in growing their business, than those that offer the same old services that everyone else does.
Of the four 'influences' mentioned above, it is perhaps most difficult to determine the effect of life experiences on the success of a business; for the very reason of the human ability to make choices. When a person encounters a life experience they choose what to make of it. For the successful entrepreneur, usually they make a choice to turn every life experience into a business opportunity, a positive force for better decision making.
http://www.allbusiness.com/company-activities-management/company-structures/12948686-1.html
http://www.phillyperformancemagazine.com/caseystillman/caseys-blog/does-a-formal-education-guarantee-success-in-small-business
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