Entrepreneurial DNA: Joe Abraham at TEDxBend

so um entrepreneur magazine just picked Bend as the next hottest thing in entrepreneurship so I think it's kind of appropriate that this discovery that I'm about to describe to you called entrepreneurial DNA gets released to the world on your stage because entrepreneurship the way we know it or the way it's taught today the way it's being served today and the way it's being done today is broken and the reason I make that claim it's kind of an audacious claim the reason I make that claim is because when you look at the systemic success rate some people call it the failure rates in business today and you go back 250 years the rate is about the same and that's strange isn't it because you think of the unprecedented improvements that have happened for entrepreneurs I mean think about it today things that weren't even available ten or fifteen years ago I mean millions of web pages full of resources and and tips and downloads for the entrepreneur small business development centers where you can walk in and give free advice accelerators and incubators popping up everywhere you go can you think of a single college or university in this country that hasn't launched an entrepreneurship program angel networks forming crowdfunding I mean there's more money available to entrepreneurs today than ever before but the failure rate is the same so that would suggest to me and hopefully to you that there's a bottleneck somewhere something is suppressing the entrepreneurs capacity to be successful even though there's all these great tools and resources available so I stumbled across what I believe is that bottleneck and I'm going to share it with you today and I think it is the game changer for entrepreneurship as we know it I want to demonstrate that to you though with a kind of a silly set of pictures take a look at characters on your screen right now are they the same you're their dogs right they they bark they have fur they leave land mines on the yard but they're really the same either gifted to do the exact same things if you had to bet your life savings on that bebo taking on that greyhound for a race around the track would you do it silly right what about these two characters if there was a job interview for scary guard dog uneven playing field would you say silly analogy to ask this really important question are all entrepreneurs the same now the reason I asked that question is to say are all entrepreneurs wired to start the same types of businesses follow the same sales and marketing strategies build billion-dollar businesses you say hot show come on entrepreneurs I mean no that's not true well then why is it that since entrepreneurship has existed we've operated with the ridiculous assumption that all entrepreneurs are the same there's a pigeonhole that all entrepreneurs are put in that basically says and this happens in every college every University every high school teaching entrepreneurship every business coach every book every workshop you go to will say what works for one entrepreneur will work for every entrepreneur because all entrepreneurs are the same it's a one size fits all approach to entrepreneurship and my friends that is the root cause of the suppression of true entrepreneurial capacity just like those little dogs we saw we're about to discover how different entrepreneurs really are so the way I kind of stumbled across this is I was running an incubator from about 2005 to 2010 I'd sold a company and was bored didn't know what I was going to do when I grow up and started helping entrepreneurs start up their businesses and growing and what I found was one size wasn't fitting all I was taking my amazing best practices of how I was how I built companies and I'd read all the books on how to build marketing strategy I'd take it and give it to one entrepreneur they had an absolute home run with it whoo good for Joe take the exact same gameplan give it to the next entrepreneur they fall flat on their face and it wasn't that one was smarter than the other it seemed like some entrepreneurs would take to sales and marketing like flipping on a light switch for another one it was like pushing a bowling ball through a garden hose this is one entrepreneur we take him to do their investor pitch and investors at writing them checks left and right they just seem so charismatic and dynamic and another entrepreneur has a better product better business model couldn't get a check written for 50 pitches and there was no way to predict what was going to happen so it was kind of like trial and error there was this buffet of business strategy presented to all of us was like well I'll try a little bit of this and I'll try a little bit of that and this worked for Sue so it'll probably work for me and Jim hired that VP of Sales and they did a great job there so I'll hire them too and that's what's happening in entrepreneurship today a lot of trial mostly error and a suppression of what the true potential of these businesses really are so I just I got frustrated with it I just started asking entrepreneurs questions like hey why did you go into business in the first place help me understand why or what motivates you like what are the things that energize you in your business and one of the things that absolutely drain you what do you think your strengths are and what do you think your weaknesses are and then ask the business partner hey what are their strengths and weaknesses and you start to ask enough entrepreneurs that question 20 then a hundred and four hundred over a thousand entrepreneurs later we discovered this it's called the bossy quadrant and it basically segments entrepreneurs business owners and not just business owners even entrepreneurs in corporate America I believe there's an entrepreneur and all of us into these four very different DNA's actually 16 combinations I'm just going to cover the four of them with you I want you to picture these as characters in an act they're almost like presets on your radio where when you push one a-hole predisposed set of behaviors pop out a whole different matrix for decisions cop pop out and when you push the next preset everything changes this is what I consider the game changer because I'm going to give you some case studies of what's happening for companies that have this aha moment so let me run you through these four real quick B stands for Builder these are this DNA is found or this profile is found in people who tend to be serial entrepreneurs they'll build these highly scalable businesses sustainable businesses very very fast and they'll break past five million in revenue and go to 2050 100 million and then that same entrepreneur will sell that company go start a completely unrelated company do the same thing again go to another company do the same thing again and those people who don't have this DNA look at him and go what know what what can I read your book please and then they write the book and no one can do what they did this is a totally different wiring these people tend to have a Pied Piper like predisposition they can attract things like capital and investors and great talent almost effortlessly and it's very frustrating to not be this person they tend to be very controlling very excitable almost obsessive-compulsive and how they do what they do very very driven individuals and they measure success very interestingly when you say how do you know you're having a good year it's never personal income its infrastructure how big is our office how many square feet how many how big is our payroll how many trucks do we have on the road how badly did we crush our competition this week that's what drives these people and because of that they approach strategy and they approach team and they approach everything with infrastructure in mind and that's why they build these highly scalable businesses it's pre wired into them you know you're dealing with a builder when you see these huge growth rates in their business now lots of great talents lots of great capacity weaknesses just like any of the DNA's we're about to learn about the number one weakness of this group is relationships people they blow through people like a tornado in Wichita in the weakness of their DNA they will just use people and you'll see if you look at a classic builder and you look back on their history you'll see a wake of dead bodies key employees spouses children it's just part of who they are oh is opportunist these this DNA activates so this behavioral profile activates an entrepreneurs when they want to get rich quick you know they're they want to be at the ground floor of something jump in on a money-making deal and make as much money as fast as possible and then cash out sit on a beach sipping mai tai and never have to work again have you ever had that feeling that's it that's your opportunist DNA and it has a whole decision-making matrix that comes with it opportunist DNA causes the entrepreneur to really look at business as a vehicle that's it so if they're driving along in a Honda of a business opportunity and you pull up next to them in a Ferrari of a business opportunity a good opportunist will gladly vacate that Honda and jump in the Ferrari with you and that's why you'll see these people jump from deal - deal - deal is real estate and it's this and it's that it's a it's a behavioral profile this DNA also makes the entrepreneur extremely optimistic they could lose a million dollars on a deal today wake up tomorrow and call you ok ok ok ok ok I know we lost our shirts on that thing but but this new one this next thing this is the one that's opportunist DNA highly incentive driven so most professional salespeople most great salespeople who do a lot of new business development will show this as their behavioral profile because they it's all about the carrot I don't really care about how much I make now even though that's important but how much will I be making when I hit those sales numbers and break through those barriers multiple streams of income is really what this group is about so if you've ever found yourself saying oh I'm going to do a little bit of this and maybe I'll buy some real estate on the side and maybe we'll flip some do some day trading that's your opportunity DNA wanting to get to the goal faster and with this DNA comes a lot of great gifts like you're seeing one key weakness is the area of focus much like that beagle sniffing around for the next great thing juggling lots of things at the same time and so an opportunist in their weakness will show up and down income make a wacky cash lose it all make a racket cash go backwards make a whack of cash and then nothing that's opportunist DNA s4 specialist DNA shows itself up in the experts of our world people who go through years of schooling apprenticeship on-the-job training they'll develop some great skill doctors lawyers accountants graphic designers and this DNA activates in them and they pick one industry and will stain it almost for a lifetime then you'll see that these people tend to be very analytical in their approach decision-making they almost slow every buying decision down to a crawl completely opposite of opportunity in a very methodical very risk-averse and what they do they plateau in growth very very quickly - they'll go through a revenue jump when they first start their business and in the business plateaus you know why because they measure success very differently than the others do they measure success based on personal income if I ask a classic essay how do you know you're having a good year they'll typically go to the adjusted gross income on their tax return and if that's a healthy six or seven figure number good year so when they hit that goal in their business the business plateaus and it's almost impossible for them to leapfrog that business out of that realm without some changes some significant changes if you generate most of your business through referrals and networking s is your primary DNA it's a given because that s is hate selling so they would much rather have the phone ring and someone call them asking for help the number one weakness of this profile is in the area of demand generation lead generation they really struggle with that standing out in a crowded marketplace eyes are the innovators of our world these are people who are the accidental entrepreneurs they were doing something they loved and a business kind of just popped up around them and their friends like oh you got started businesses the most amazing thing ever and they're kind of forced into entrepreneurship and you'll find them saying I kind of don't wanna I just I just want to make the stuff I I don't want to be at the cash register I don't want to be balancing the checkbook I don't I don't wanna that's because as soon as they have their presto invention if you pick picture Mark Zuckerberg in the movie The Social Network you'll see innovator DNA activating Facebook had to be cool it was about changing the world it was about the mission not the money and that's innovator DNA in action these people are driven by mission and control most of the great intellectual property of our world unfortunately they hide in dungeons so they're very hard to find and that's the challenge for those of us that are in the ecosystem to find these people and bring their great IP into the world because they are horrible business operators so if you if you take their great capacity and put them in business they start to struggle and in many cases fail because they're outside their gifting old-school entrepreneurship would say oh just go take the mba class oh you just got to learn how to write a business fine or you just got a hot and don't know how to hire and fire and this person's like I so don't want to do that and so it's really empowering for an entrepreneur to realize okay so if I'm an I don't have to do the things that the others are doing it's game changing and so for me the tip of the iceberg was to realize that we're different but that was just the tip of the iceberg the big thing the big aha for me was realizing the tide to every one of these profiles is a completely different path to market that blows my mind because an old-school entrepreneurship and the colleges and universities and everywhere we go we're teaching oh no one-size-fits-all a couple quick examples right here in Bend Oregon kombucha mama right so they discovered their entrepreneurial DNA about two years ago had the aha moment that Michelle was an IEEE showing all the traits we just described Jamie shows all the traits of an O and so as a company they have what's called a right quadrant thing opportunist innovator a lot of creativity creativity people love their product people can't stop talking about it but when it came to growing their business they were really struggling like how do we get to that next level how do we expand and grow old-school entrepreneurship would have said to them well just figure it out we go go go write the business plan and they're like but we don't wanna they had their aha moment that they were missing the other side of the quadrant they brought in a builder they optimized their business around who they really were they doubled in revenue last year they're about to quadruple in revenue that's the Pacer on this year they're opening a brand new facility right here in Bend hiring new people that are going to be new jobs right here in this town just by activating what these people were really gifted to do and not telling them to be someone they're not pretty awesome right well just so you don't think that this is just about startups here's a 25 year old insurance company in my hometown of Chicago frustrated that the growth had stopped the CEOs like that things aren't working the way they used to we are out of fresh ideas we're not growing that we're not scaling we're not bringing a lot of new business development here's what their organization looks like entrepreneurially and you start to see that there's no builders there's no innovators so sure it's not going to scale there's not going to be all the creativity and we just got a couple people with the opportunist profile the Rainmaker profile no wonder new business isn't coming in the door and also no wonder the customers are so satisfied with the service of the company because we got a bunch of S is working for us you start the conversation here and you can now start to build strategy we can now start to say okay what can we do based on who we are as a company rather than trying to be the guys in gals next door so the impact of this for entrepreneurship and for business owners is huge but the real impact of entrepreneurial DNA will be seen and we'll experience it when the entire ecosystem starts to adopt it when the academics the people teaching entrepreneurship start to say okay no longer will I assume that every student my class is designed to start the same type of business or employ the same business development strategy that's broken we're hurting these entrepreneurs we're setting them up for the next five years of a lot of pain while they figure it out themselves let's change that ahead of time when you look at all these nonprofits and governmental agencies pouring money into entrepreneurship let's not do that until we start to see these people through the lens of who they really are business advisors business coaches which shouldn't if you're a business advisor listen to this you're like oh I totally get it I can totally see all my clients anything and I can understand why they're doing what they're doing and why they're not but the big thing is for finance here is people writing checks to these businesses don't write another check until you know who's sitting across the table from you because even though the investor deck looks sexy and the business model is scalable is the entrepreneur sitting across from you the person who's going to pull it off and if not before you write the check make sure they put the right people around them just like kombucha mama did and now they're probably one of the most investable companies in the city of Bend so for me here's my mission here's my goal the number five percent when we talked when we started we talked about the systemic failure rates and success rates that have been stagnant I did a quick back of the napkin calculation to say what would happen is systemically not just here but across the globe there was just a 5% improvement in the success rate or growth rate of businesses its trillions of dollars of economic impact it's enough to raise entire cultures and countries out of poverty when I moved here from from India the India was a third world country in 1988 today it's home on the verge of becoming a superpower entrepreneurship did that and it did it with its arms tied behind its back imagine what will happen as we start to unleash the true power of these entrepreneurs and allow them to do what they're really gifted to do it's going to be game-changing so I invite you on that journey with me spread the word about entrepreneurial DNA have conversations about it in your companies in your offices and see where I take this let it take a life of its own and we'll start to see globally the tide start to raise these boats of these entrepreneurs and then the entrepreneurs will go change the world thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 153,639

Rating: 4.9096417 out of 5

Keywords: ted, Bend, tedx talk, business, tedx, entrepreneur, ted talks, Joe Abraham, ted x, Oregon, TEDxBend, ted talk, \Entrepreneurial DNA\, tedx talks

Id: fsU9N6A18sY

Length: 17min 37sec (1057 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2013