Something from “The Beer mat Entrepreneur”

For someone who would like to be an entrepreneur, I’m quiet sure you have many business ideas in your mind now.

Have you ever asked yourself about how good your business ideas really are?

I have found an interesting book called “The Beermat Entrepreneur” (Beermat is a thick paper under a chilled glass or bottle of beer) and it said the good business idea always comes out from the conversation in the pub; so you can imagine that situation, you don’t have any paper to jot it down then you use beer mat instead.

I think it’s something strange which can draw the readers’ attention, that’s all.

Something which I said “It’s interesting” is inside. The authors propose his view about entrepreneur’s characteristics and I would like to share them with all of you guys, my readers.

1. Entrepreneurs are confident and optimistic; it is not they do not feel fear but, when push comes to shove, their confidences just overcome the fear they have.
2. Charismatic; always inspire people
3. Ambitious; this book stated that entrepreneur’s ambition doesn’t based on money or “I wanna be rich” but about wanting to change things. “It’s suck at this moment and we will change it”

But…. Everything has two sides. When you look at 3 things above you will see that are the good parts of entrepreneur. However, with the same characteristic, there are some bad parts inside that you have to consider.

1. Entrepreneur’s confidence may lead to entrepreneur’s arrogance; too much confidence brings entrepreneurs to the illusion about his skill. They may think “I’m good at everything. But I don’t have the time to do everything, so I have to let the people in finance, sales, delivery and so on get on with it” and is this thought is very dangerous. It’s a trap.
2. Charismatic – Manipulative; entrepreneurs may inspire their employees, pay them well – but they still use people.
3. Ambitious – Impatient and cannot complete things; with their own ideas, entrepreneurs always come up with new ideas or new projects all the time. They cannot focus on the same thing for a long time. They want change and they want it now. That’s why too much ambition may bring entrepreneur to the bad parts

What do you think?

I think this is very interesting. Many books always mention about how to be a good entrepreneur but rarely state that good part can be bad at the same time if entrepreneur uses it in the wrong context.

There are many more interesting things in this book which practical, comes from real life and I think it’s better if we can get out from theoretical books and learn from real life cases sometimes

Will see you agian with that!!


Reference

Southon, M.& West, C.(2002), The Beermat Entrepreneur, Pearson education.