Adrie's Blog

Idle Chat

After I built several large sized companies, with 500-1000 employees, I decided I never wanted another company requiring a lot of people. Both our subsequent companies, firstly OHM (www.ohmbusinessdevelopment.com) and later on E.Factor, are companies that work primarily on entrepreneurship - at least that was the intention. This week I was getting annoyed again with someone that only seemed to remember one side of our agreement, i.e. that we have to pay for their services - but very conveniently forget that in order to earn pay, they first have to deliver. Of course they always disagree with that simple principle - they can't help that they didn't make their targets or met their side of the agreement - it's never their fault.

Every time people see you at work, they think - "I can do that too, I have a large network, how difficult can it be?". It turns out that whilst they have a large address book filled with names, they do not have a network you can rely on. But that's never their problem - it's the market that is against them, or the product that needs to improve - in short "it's not my fault"...

Time and time again it turns out that that are disappointingly few genuine entrepreneurs - people that are prepared to build something and will take responsibility and risk in the process for their own account. In the past years, things were easy enough but now a large percentage of these people appear in their true colours, spineless and when things get tough they blame someone else instead of look at themselves as being the core problem. At the moment increased numbers of people enter the market, labeling themselves as "Entrepreneur" - often forced by unemployment. They all speak about the zillions of contacts they have and as they are well educated and talk a good story - they seem believable. However, Doing is a different game entirely then idly Chatting about it.

What I have learnt over the years is that when you should trust your own gut feel when it comes to dealing with others, to determine if this is a true entrepreneur or another "chatterer" - don't do it, if your instincts tell you it is the latter. If you are not sure, you can have a trusted contact talk to them to take the emotion out of the decision. In this period of time, you cannot afford to choose the wrong people to work or partner with. I have to admit that my own track record is not great in this - I tend to want to give people a chance even though my intuition tells me differently. Only 30% of all the people I meet are true entrepreneurs - the rest is just hassle and heartache.

Whenever you meet someone, an entrepreneur, that you want to work with - don't be tempted to bypass your own principles and rules. Let them prove, at their own risk and for their own account, that they can do it. If they can't - sever all ties. It's not worth your time, energy and money!

You need real entrepreneurs around you - no people with lots of idle chat. Test them as to what made them "successful", in a large organisation if that is where they got their grounding. And on how they actually define "success" - if that success was mostly dependent on the fact that they had millions of dollars to achieve their goal - then you know it will never work or be the same in a start-up . Another good measurement is to look at their sport achievements - were they successful there, did they rise high in their chosen sport? This tells you a lot about their competitive edge and their will to win - against all odds. And what is so different about that then running a business?