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Are You an Entrepreneur or Just a Business Owner? And Why Does It Matter for Your Business?

What separates small businesses that grow and thrive and those that don’t? A large part of it is whether the business owner has an entrepreneurial spirit. In this article, Wayne Lynn looks at the behavioral traits that make an entrepreneur, and the difference between being a CEO or a business owner and an entrepreneur.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

OK, so you own your own business. The way most people look at that is that you’re an entrepreneur.  One thing is for sure, you own the business.  Behaviorally, you might not be an entrepreneur. “So what?” you’re saying under your breath. Well, describing in behavioral terms what an entrepreneur is can be one of the harder things we do. The reason is that assessing the 175 behavioral factors we can measure and looking for the entrepreneurial patterns that tell us if we have one isn’t possible. Why? There’s no job description for entrepreneur.

Here’s what I mean. A fledging entrepreneur:

There are dozens of job (descriptions) within each one of those seven bullet points. Nobody’s ever written a job description for everything covered above. I’m not sure you could.


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About Wayne Lynn

Wayne Lynn is an advocate of the adage that "you can't manage what you can't measure".  Combining his considerable strengths in leadership, economics, and strategy with broad experience in both public and private companies, he brings focus and discipline to the task of creating and sustaining success in today's chaotic environment.

Wayne has managed businesses ranging in size from $5 million to $500million in annual sales.  He has guided those organizations through a number of diverse market sectors including magazines, catalogs, inserts, direct mail, and general commercial printing.

A student as well as a practitioner of the fine art of business, Wayne's latest focus is on helping business leaders make their companies more viable economically, more relevant in the market place, more adaptive to constant change, and more durable in the long haul.  It's about people, what they know, and how well they execute on what they know.

Wayne can be reached at 704-516-7787 or at [email protected].

Recent Articles from Wayne Lynn

Double-Digit Growth

Double-Digit Growth

First, we pushed the constraint keeping a company from growing out the front door and into the market, the domain of our sales departments. This article will explore how lack of a true priority on customer creation may be the real issue. It might not be as much of a talent issue or lack of motivation as most of us think but, instead, a leadership issue where the true priorities that create growth are not managed. Read More

The Biggest Constraint of All

The Biggest Constraint of All

Outside of competent people, the biggest constraint on the long-term success of your business is the lifetime value of the commercial relationships contained in your customer base. In the article, Wayne Lynn explores how to drive growth when the only constraint you have left is found in the sales department. Read More

Six Keys to Better Leadership Performance

Six Keys to Better Leadership Performance

Wayne Lynn looks at The Six Leadership Actions, which derive from a philosophy that the key to improvement in a business usually comes from the efforts of leadership to drive fear out of the organization, as fear inhibits open, honest, and willing feedback about what the real problems are that are holding a company back from success. Read More

Give Your People Good Leadership

Give Your People Good Leadership

If you want a thriving culture where people are engaged and productive, give them leaders who fit the role. Wayne Lynn describes what good leadership looks like. Read More

Two Keys to Better Employee Performance

Two Keys to Better Employee Performance

Even if automation and AI transform your business into a much lower headcount situation, the employees you are left with will need a couple of key things: good leaders and the assurance their higher-level needs can be met working for your company. Read on to find out why. Read More