Artisans and Entrepreneurs

One of my many hats is as an independent business advisor assisting SME’s in Wales. The Welsh actually start more small businesses per capita than any other part of the UK and the survival rate after 2 years of trading is also the best. 5bn Euros in state aid over the past few years has probably helped!

My work is with start-ups and established businesses and I have rooted about in the innards of a wide variety of businesses and had serious discussions with a wide range of business people.

Very broadly speaking I find that SME’s are run by two categories of people – the artisans and the entrepreneurs. What is amusing to me is that many of them fall into one category but fervently believe they are in the other.

Here’s an example. I worked with an independent marketing consultant a while back and he thought he was an entrepreneur. After all he had started up his business (offering to do exactly what he did for his previous big corporate employer for anybody who wanted him) and was beginning to make a small income. His was an over-romanticised view of his own enterprise. There was nothing entrepreneurial. All he was doing was applying his existing skill set to create a job for himself. He complained about the fact that the business admin was stopping him doing what he was good at for enough days per week to generate a decent income. Of course the entrepreneur starting out would be creating a job but would also realise that this was a launching pad. Business admin has to be done and so you can only reasonably expect to bill for up to 3 days per week, spend half a day doing admin and the rest marketing and selling, selling, selling. The entrepreneur knows this and has a grand plan to springboard to a larger business.

People with specific skill sets who want to use those skill sets need to recognise that they are artisans. If they have aspirations for growth then it may be better to club together in much the same way that accountants and solicitors form partnerships so they can do what they are trained to do and share the admin and promotional load. Craftsmen operate in cooperatives for this reason and to create a wider product offering so they can feed off each others’ customers.

Entrepreneurs may have specific skill sets but they also have a burning desire to achieve something, be it profits for the sake of profit, profits for philanthropic purposes or profits in order to stay in business and grow into a success (however that is measured).

Getting people to recognise which of the two categories they fall into is the first step to them taking proper ownership of their business and assuming full responsibility. Up until this point they will blame failure on anything and anybody but themselves. Why is it important to recognise which you are? Artisans tend to build unspectacular businesses. They don’t crash and burn with massive debts and they don’t make millions. Entrepreneurs take more risks; their grand plans will produce spectacular crashes or a garage full of paid-for Ferraris and a second home in the Algarve.

Artisans who believe they are entrepreneurs (the most common misconception) will forever be unhappy with their achievements and some can be quite bitter that the world has not recognised them and made them rich. Artisans who know they are such are better reconciled with who they are and can balance work with their private lives. True entrepreneurs on the whole tend to know that they are and the canny ones get their families on board and make a deal to work hard until they can cash in and spend more time playing then. I have yet to come across a true entrepreneur who though he/she was an artisan, there are many who start a business in their core skill set but they soon branch out and create a string of diverse and often unrelated businesses.
So the lesson is? Know whether you are an artisan or an entrepreneur and build your business and your life accordingly. Being true to yourself is the only path to happiness.