For the last year or so, I’ve been seeing a disturbing trend. I call it Budding Entrepreneur Syndrome. Basically, it’s the tendency of many business coaches to try and push soloists into becoming full fledged business magnates. There’s a belief that every one-person business owner is in fact a "budding entrepreneur" who just hasn’t flowered yet.
I blame Michael Gerber!
Michael, who is the author of The E-Myth series of books, has become the darling of many business coaches. His most often repeated mantra is "work on your business, not in your business."
Don’t get me wrong. Gerber’s book is loaded with great ideas to help your business. What bothers me is an underlying attitude that if you don’t have an entrepreneurial personality, you should either get one fast or go back to working for someone else!
About a year ago, I wrote a rant on this topic… A Conversation with Renoir.
The simple fact is that you can’t lump all one-person businesses into the same basket. To my reckoning, there are at least three different baskets and maybe more. Here’s another article I wrote… The Entrepreneur, the Virtuoso, and the Solopreneur that looks at the different routes you can take in developing your one-person business.
The dark secret is that a majority of soloists have no interest in building a major entrepreneurial enterprise. Many of them don’t even like business. These soloists thrive on the work they do, and would be very cranky if you asked them to give it up. For many, their work is a fundamental expression of their creativity.
What they want is a lifestyle. They want the holy grail of freedom and quality of life! They want to do work that feeds them, work that matters. They want to see their kids grow up. They do not want to be Donald Trump!
Paul and Sarah Edwards in Secrets of Self-employment were among the first to identify this group of soloists. They coined the unfortunately awkward phrase "propreneur" to describe those who would rather keep their businesses small. Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky at Sohodojo coined one of my favorite phrases… "ruthlessly small businesses".
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