Sam Walton, Henry Ford, Bill Gates…all mega entrepreneurs who built their businesses from the ground up with their own two bare hands, right? Not so fast…According to Dr. Ernesto Sirolli, of the Sirolli Institute of Enterprise Facilitation, all of these “solo entrepreneurs” built their businesses with the help of trusted colleagues and even family members. Though their names and faces may not grace the covers of the glossy magazines, their contributions to the building of their respective companies was critical.
In fact, Sirolli studied the biographies of hundreds of famous entrepreneurs, and in every case, the “solo” entrepreneurs built their business with the help of others, yet the myth of the solo entrepreneur persists. I recently had the opportunity to hear Ernesto speak about the “myth of the solo entrepreneur” at the Oklahoma Entrepreneur Conference.
Sirolli asserts that in order to be successful every business needs three components -aka Sirolli’s Trinity of Management:
1. An excellent product or service.
2. Incredible marketing/sales skills.
3. Strong financial management.
There is nothing earthshaking in the formula itself, except that Ernesto believes passionately that no ONE person can or does possess all three components. Sirolli has earned the right to his opinion, as he has spent the better part of his career promoting economic development through entrepreneurship. Throughout his career, he has met thousands of entrepreneurs who each had one, maybe two of the components, but not all three.
Sirolli believes people achieve their best when they are passionate about something. He used as an example, artists. Many artists are incredibly talented at what they do, and they might even be good at marketing, but if they hate keeping the books, then they will always be mediocre at it. And in business there is no room for mediocrity.
By bringing people together with the resources and people they need to grow their businesses, Ernesto has had incredible success helping others launch highly profitable businesses in some of the most economically depressed areas in the world.
So as you think about going into business for yourself, remember that you shouldn’t do it by yourself.
What do you think? What areas of your business do you hate? Do you agree with Dr. Sirolli?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I know a lot of successful solo-preneurs.
The difference is they know the roles they have to play and they knew their strengths and weaknesses. I think a good book is The E-Myth which talks about the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician as roles.
They type of business or arena you play in also makes a huge difference, and not everybody is cut out to be a solo-preneur.
My weakness would be task prioritizing. Some days I’m all over the board, hopping from task to task, not sure where I should put the importance on. Which is odd considering one of my strongest skills is organization. I hear white boards, to-do lists, etc, but in the Web 2.0, information is fed so fast that daily lists would just grow as new tasks are fired at me.
Nice article, thanks for the thoughts.