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O P I N I O N
Entrepreneurs and small business owners have fundamentally different views on the opportunity each has in front of them. Where are all the entrepreneurs?
W hen I look out over the pool of roughly 100,000 A/E or environmental consulting firms, I see lots of small company owners – but few entrepreneurs.
I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise. Few people choose to become architects, engineers, planners, land surveyors, or scientists because they are interested in business. If they were that interested in business, they’d have started out with a business degree, right? But you would think some – more than those who actually do – would get seduced by the business opportunity they have with their A/E or environmental firms. Let me step back a moment. You might wonder what I am talking about here. If these people own a business they are by definition, “entrepreneurs,” aren’t they? No – they aren’t necessarily, and that is one of the things that drives me mad about the popular media. They act as if anyone who has a lemonade stand is an entrepreneur. The primary distinction between someone who is an entrepreneur and someone who is just a small business owner is the entrepreneur believes in
and works toward creating value in their business which they can harvest upon exit. The small business owner only seeks to maximize the living they can earn from their business as they operate it. These are two fundamentally different ways to view the opportunity each has in front of them. So, besides the fact these people didn’t set out to be businesspeople, why aren’t more owners of A/E firms entrepreneurs? Here are my thoughts: 1)They don’t understand that to be an entrepreneur your business HAS to grow. This is the single most important thing for many reasons. First and foremost, growth is the best indication the market served by the firm like what they do. But another good reason is growth rate directly impacts the value of the firm. Why do you think start-ups in other industries that are growing quickly are worth so much money?
Mark Zweig
See MARK ZWEIG, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER NOVEMBER 9, 2020, ISSUE 1367
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