I have been supporting and coaching professional people a long time.  Nearly 25 years.  In that time I have made a number of observations about the characteristics that distinguish entrepreneurs, intrapraneurs,  and small business proprietor.

As you begin the process of finding the perfect business for yourself, understanding these distinctions will be important to you.  While you can certainly create astonishing success as any one of them, knowing which appeals to you and aligns best with your goals will help you understand the business systems and processes you will want to plan on implementing.

The Entrepreneur

A widely held definition of the entrepreneur includes the idea that they assume the risks involved to undertake a new business venture.   This is not an entirely accurate characterization however.  While it is true that entrepreneurs do assume risk to establish, own and operate new or emerging business ventures, they are, in fact as risk averse, if not more so, as anyone else. 

A more accurate distinction is in how the entrepreneur interprets the creation of value in the market place.  They are successful because they are able to effectively organize the available resources of land, labor, capital, intelligence, knowledge, and creativity into new, more valuable ways to help people solve problems.   In other words, the entrepreneur builds value in the market place by leveraging the skills and assets of others, not through his individual technical contribution. 

It is this strategic and coordinative capacity that unique demarks the contribution the entrepreneur makes to the success effort.   The more efficiently a person can manage these resources and add value to the market the greater the margin of success.

Perhaps a better representation of an entrepreneur is that of a passionate expert as opposed to a renegade or gambler.

The Intrapreneur

An intrapreneur is someone who practices the skills of entrepreneurship within an established organization or business system.  The intrapreneur may be an employee who is engaged in a special project and behaves as an entrepreneur even though he has the resources and capabilities of the larger firm to draw upon.  While he captures the nature of entrepreneurial management, he follows the goals of the organization.

Alternatively he may be self employed and operate within a set of established business policies and procedures such as with a franchise or network marketing business.  These business models offer a low risk alternative to creating a standalone business while allowing the entrepreneurial spirit to be expressed. 

The majority of people investigating new business opportunities frequently begin here.

Both the entrepreneur and intrapreneur are principally focused on finding innovative ways to use the available resources to provide greater value to the market.

The Small Business Proprietor

While both entrepreneurs and intrepreneurs are often business owners, there is an important distinction to be made between the businesses they build and those of the small business proprietor.

The small business proprietor builds his business around himself.  Be it his individual talent, a unique product, or his personality, he weaves himself into the fabric of the business often to such a degree that the business would not function without him. 

He often relies in large part on what he accomplishes as the ‘technicians’ of his trade for the growth and success of the business and may tend to be less strategic with regard to engaging alternative resources as a source of increased value.

Independent shop owners, non-franchise restaurant owners, tradesmen, free lance writer, and sometimes medical professionals are a few examples of small business proprietors.

Don’t be misled by the word ‘small’ however.   It refers to the business structure and number of employees (usually less than 100) and not revenue or profitability.   Many small business proprietors do extremely well financially, especially in this day and age of the internet.

As you consider finding the perfect business for yourself, you should be very clear about these distinctions and know which best suits you and your desires.

Do you pride yourself and measure your accomplishment by how much you individually produce or contribute to growing the business in a day, a week, or a month?

Are you more interested in applying your unique passions to following somebody else’s business system than creating one of your own?

Or

Are you always scanning the way things are done looking for something better?  Do you often find yourself seeing things that could be done differently and so, improved?

Are you an entrepreneur, and intrapreneur, or a small business proprietor?

What information will you find most helpful in actually finding and starting your perfect business?

Let me know and I will put it together.

Keep Learning,

Steve

PS - Be sure to visit www.theperfectbizfinder.com

There are literally an infinite number of entrepreneurial business possibilities available to you.  For each business concept there are dozens of business models and a virtually limitless number of strategies and tactics to choose from.  In the truest sense of the expression, the variety of possibilities for creating the perfect business for yourself is positively mind blowing. 

What makes a particular business perfect for you at any given time in life is actually not what you might think though.

Business-school principles and conventional wisdom would suggest you find the perfect business for yourself by, amongst other things, evaluating market and economic trends, creating uniquely differentiated competitive products, writing a good business plan, and finding and securiing favorable financing. 

Indeed these are important considerations and, depending on your individual circumstances, to a greater or lesser degree have bearing on how you decide to build the perfect business once you know what it is. 

To the extent that these activities make a useful contribution to fulfilling your vision for the perfect business then you should do them. They are not, however, the most important beginning place, nor are they necessarily determinant of your ultimate success.

I have built several wildly successful businesses without consideration of some of these.  I have met hundreds of others who have as well.  You can too

To be clear, I am not advocating that you not attend to the adminstrative and planning basics for your new business, however, from the perspective of finding the perfect business for yourself, there are more important and immediate considerations.

What makes a particular business perfect for you and what guarantees your astonishing success is how well it aligns with you, your purpose, your passions, and your true inner-most commitments and desires.

The Perfect Business for you is one in which you are free to apply your true passions to the pursuit and successful accomplishment of your greatest life purpose.

Whether you consider yourself a business person today or not, the knowledge, skills, interests, talents, and past experiences you command have prepared you to build many kinds of businesses.  

For instance, in my life I have worked as a cabinet maker, a carpenter, a statistician, a satellite communications engineer, a salesman, a sales manager, a “C-level” executive leader, strategic planning advisor, a writer, a champion athlete, a professional trainer, coach and mentor, to list a few.

While any of these can be (and have been) turned into a successful business, what made one or another the perfect avenue to success for me at a given time in my life was how well it matched the personal lifestyle desires, passions, and purposeful commitments I had at the time. 

For instance, when I was 13, the perfect business for me at the time was lawn-care.  I grew that business an average of 100% per year and employed a crew of over 20 laborers.  I ultimately sold the business for a handsome 6 figure sum when my father accepted a new position requiring us to relocate.  Throughout my years in high-school and college I was constantly innovating new ways to earn money by providing products and services that people needed or wanted. I share many of these stories in my forthcoming book

Later, the perfect business for me was a cabinet & fixture shop.  I quit college at the age of 19 and started a cabinet making business and was ultimately awarded a number of large scale exclusive contracts for high-end furnishings and fixtures throughout the eastern seaboard.  That business expanded into a general contracting business which grew an average of 200% per year and, when I was ready to return to school, financed an undergraduate degree and the majority of a masters degree at one of the top ten private universities in the country.

Still later, it was a series of 6 computer technology ventures netting investors an average of 500% ROI, followed by several consulting practices, a personal training, fitness and nutritional practice and a successful network marketing (MLM) business.  Each of these was the perfect business for me at the time.  Each has provided me an experience of astonishing success and accomplishment. 

I started out as a regular kid just like you.  Over time, each of these experiences has challenged me and equipped me with new knowledge, skills, and experience.

All together, they have contributed to preparing me for this, the most meaningful and significant entrepreneurial business endeavor in my lifetime.

Now, creating information products and providing coaching programs that apply all I have learned from each experience combined with all of the training, coaching, and mentoring I have received throughout to help you create the perfect business for yourself is the perfect business for me. 

It is clear to me that the journey I have taken in life has lead me right here, right now, for the expressed purpose of delivering what I have learned to you. 

It is clear to me that my success in accomplishing this committed purpose will be measured solely and exclusively in relation your success.

Whatever your indiividual interests and experiences, where-ever you are starting from, the question is; which will create the perfect business for you, right now?

Because we are each completely unique individuals, while your desires may indeed be similar to those of another, somewhere within you there is something that uniquely differentiates you and your motivation for the pursuit of a given business idea.  It is this uniqueness within the infinite sea of possibility that makes the business that is perfect for you possible, and, when you find it, guarantees your astonishing success

As you begin the process of finding the perfect business for yourself, realize that you are opening a universe of new possibilities.  You may have a vision for success which includes a suite on the top floor of a high-rise office building downtown.  Or, perhaps your vision is a home-based business with no employees and which allows you a casual work environment and ample time for family, hobbies, or travel. 

Before you can begin the process of finding and planning the perfect  business, you want to be crystal clear about what you really want out of this new life you are about to create.  

You will clearly be more fulfilled and experience a greater sense of satisfaction and accomplishment if you create a business that draws upon what you really enjoy doing.  You are also going to invest a fair amount of time and energy into making your business a success.  If you are truly passionate about it and enjoy it, it will not seem like work and you will not regret investing the time in it.

 This is the most important thing for you to know at this juncture:

 Regardless of the business you choose, in order for you to ultimately experience it as a success, it must be in service of your individual life purpose, align with your vision of success, and support the life you truly want to live.

Before you can really generate a meaningful list of options to choose from, you must get clear about what you want and why.

A good starting place is to be crystal clear about what success is and how you want it to show up in the life you love to live.

I will continue with this series next Thursday with a terrifc new exercise which will help you get clear on what success means to you. 

I welcome your questions, comments, and feedback.  It is my sincere desire that the products I create provide real tangible value to you and help you experience the success you desire.

Your Success Champion,

Steve

I few months back I received an invitation to Twitter.  To tell you the truth, I did NOT get it.

If you are not familiar with Twitter yet, it is what is a Microbloging system.

With it you can blog simple acts and thoughts as they happen throughout the day.

I honestly could not imagine why anyone what want to know what I was doing at that level, and I just did not see why I would care to knwo what they were doing.

Well, I have had an opportunity to rethink that opinion.

I had an opportunity to meet with a true internet marketing guru, Drew Kossoff (www.rainmakeradventures.com), a few weeks back, and we chatted a bit about it.

He planted a few thought seeds so I started watching this more closely.

I found myself gaining interesting and meaningful insight into the lives of the people I was following.

I suddenly realized that I had a new competative marketing weapon to use.

One colleague I ran into was amazed when I asked him very specific questions in regards to a trip he had just taken with his family.

An business associate of mine asked me how I knew who was where and what they were up to? I explained my use of Twitter and how I was using it to track friends and see what everyone was up to. 

Now he is addicted to Twitter and uses it to cultivate relationships with clients and get the inside edge on his sales competitors.

This is interesting but it is nothing when you consider the internet marketing and social networking implications of it.

I can think of dozens of creative ways to use it.

Can you?

Please comment with your ideas.

Twitter me:  stevelittle

Keep Learning,

Steve