Small business owner or entrepreneur?

These days I am having some tough conversations with a lot of small business owners who are struggling.

Yet, at the same time, my company is growing explosively and launching new products on the back of the OWN partner base.

So how can this be? How can one business owner be struggling while their peers are growing by leaps and bounds in the market that seemingly nobody is investing money in?

Simply put, there is a huge difference between a small business owner and an entrepreneur. They sound similar, but they are worlds apart. The small business owner builds a business plan, evaluates the market, finds the niche and builds a business around it and the said plan. They go after what is hot now and presume that small adjustments in course can be made over time to adapt to new technology while doing the same old thing.

I’ve had many discussions with small business owenrs over the years, most of whom have never figured out a way to grow their business beyond just themselves, and I don’t mean to rehash the argument. There is no point, the other side is dead or dying.

Why? The market they prepared their business plan for ($5K SBS install and management) is no longer there. Their business therefore is a lot less viable and they are either running it on the side or at a fraction of their income at the glory times.

Entrepreneurs don’t focus on the market, they focus on the opportunity. This focus comes at a significant risk and cost, something many small business owners shy away from for many reasons. Fortunately, some people learn the business essentials early on and apply them one opportunity at a time, scale and grow.

……

This is why there are people that are doing remarkably well and are existing beyond the crisis. To the same extent, OWN is not growing today using the same business plan or same products we had 2-3 years ago.

Now… how you would design a business to behave like an entrepreneur, and hit the level of reliability and consistency in all it’s ventures, is what consumes my every day. As you can tell from the constant bitching blog posts, it’s not so simple.