Entrepreneurial spirit

“True entrepreneurial spirit should be about working hard to do something well, for the optimum benefit of the consumer”


Speaker's Corner
Denise Horan

THERE are few things we can say with certainty about ourselves, but with absolute confidence I can declare that I will never be a millionaire. Not remembering to buy lottery tickets on a regular basis, never bothering to check Lotto numbers when I play that game and being a gambler who bets on horses on the basis of which one looks prettiest, a handy windfall million is never likely to fall into my lap.
And doing it the hard way is even less likely, devoid as I am of all entrepreneurial instincts. I’m an admirer of entrepreneurs though, so millionaire status by association might be something I could manage.
Last week, I got to meet and talk to five young entrepreneurs from around the west and northwest. Five very different people, with five diverse businesses, all bound by a belief in themselves and a determination to succeed.
And for that one day, they were all also bound by a desire to impress four judges and advance to the national finals of the Shell Livewire Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition.
I should have known from the experience of last year that each business would appear very different when communicated through the words and body language of the entrepreneur than it did through the cold prose on the application form, yet I still mentally wrote off a couple of businesses halfway through my advance reading. Which made the pleasant surprise of being proven wrong during the interview process all the more pleasant.
We have a narrow view of entrepreneurship sometimes. But there are probably as many different types of entrepreneur as there are businesses. Each of last week’s five was unique. There were some common personality threads, but each had his or her own distinct philosophy, approach and style.
The stereotypical entrepreneur – confident, pushy, hyper-enthusiastic, cocky, money signs in the eyes, chance-anything attitude – wasn’t, I am happy to report, among them at all. None was off-putting. Some clearly had a better business sense than others, while personal likeability was the strongest card for others.
But it was the enthusiasm and positivity of all five, in the precarious economic conditions of the day, that was the most impressive thing about them all. That and their sense of values, their ethics and their quality focus. None of them was trying to pull a fast one with their product or service; instead they were clear in their determination to be the best-quality provider in the marketplace of whatever it was they were providing.
Alan Sugar, Bill Cullen or Michael O’Leary would probably take a dim view of such considerations, but for our judging team they mattered. And they should matter.
True entrepreneurial spirit should be about working hard to do something well, for the optimum benefit of the consumer. It should be about placing a premium on the way success is achieved, as much as on its achievement.
If making money is the only focus of a business it will be soulless. And if it’s soulless, it won’t fulfil the person fronting it. The difference between a mere businessperson and a true entrepreneur lies in the personal satisfaction the latter gets from knowing that, by dint of his or her hard work, something worthwhile and worthy is being provided to other people.
Who knows how the five young people from last week’s competition will fare in business. These are difficult times and prospering in such times will be a big ask. But, as Paddy McGuinness, Chairman of the Mayo County Development Board, remarked at last week’s awards dinner, establishing a business in the good times is easy, making it work in a depressed period is a much bigger challenge.
The next couple of years will provide a stiff test for our young entrepreneurs. Only the very best will survive, but then only the very brave will try it. So even those that don’t make it will have learned valuable lessons and will come out the other side much stronger people. And our society will be a much richer place because of them.
Our young entrepreneurs will be the heroic role models of this recession.