The F.A.C.E. of an Entrepreneur

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john_edmons.jpgIf you are considering starting a business - maybe one of the first steps you can take is to work how whether your F.A.C.E. fits.

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Bolton & Thompson in their book, The Entrepreneur In Focus (2003), have identified that entrepreneurial character can be divided into six basic facets which they have called F.A.C.E.T.S. These six letters stand for Focus, Advantage, Creativity, Ego, Team and Social. Of these six facets, the first four (F.A.C.E.) are the most important components of entrepreneurship, and we deal with them as follows:

FOCUS is a major factor in becoming an entrepreneur. If we don't have focus, it will be impossible to become an entrepreneur. Without focus, we lose direction, flounder and ultimately fail in our endeavour to get our business up and running properly. There's an old Zen phrase: "Person who chases two rabbits, catches neither." In life, we could all do with a little more focus sometimes, but to the entrepreneur, it's essential. Bolton and Thompson split focus into three by identifying focus on action, focus on time and focus on targets.

ADVANTAGE is the distinguishing mark of an entrepreneur. It's what makes an entrepreneur's product or service more attractive. It's the promotion of uniqueness which makes products and services stand out from others. Advantage is possessing the vision to understand and promote product and service benefits and performance which in reality (or perception) stretch far beyond competitor's benefits and performance, (in other words demonstrates the ADVANTAGE of dealing with us) and to get our resources together to ensure efficient delivery. In today's world we cannot give lip service to products and services and then fall short. We have to BE DIFFERENT! We have TO DELIVER. And beware: There's little use promoting better service, faster delivery or superior quality because the customer takes this as read.

CREATIVITY, innovation, insight and foresight are the number one factors behind becoming an entrepreneur. Creativity actually comes before focus and advantage above. Creativity is being able to look out into the world and the market place and to design products and services that solve people's problems at a price they can afford. Creativity involves coming up with the ideas, then assessing and taking advantage of the opportunities thus created, and then to turn them into reality. However, beware: Creativity on its own can be a dangerous commodity and we can too easily fall into the trap of simply becoming an Idea Generator - we all know people who have great ideas - none of which reach fruition - and ideas alone do not maketh the entrepreneur.

EGO is that thing inside of us that discriminates between things we hear, see and experience; how we make judgements; how we perceive and react to the world around us. Certain aspects of our Ego are visible to others whilst other elements are really known only to ourselves. If we are serious about being an entrepreneur we have to be truly honest with ourselves about what drives us, the implications of our journey, and our temperament and strength of character. However, it's not just about self-assurance, dedication and personal motivation, it's about having the mental courage to take calculated risks and rise above what we experience around us. It's about taking responsibility for our own actions and ultimately being accountable for the actions we take. Entrepreneurs don't blame anyone but themselves if they fail at something - they simply learn from the experience and bounce back.

These four 'FA.C.E.' facets are dealt with in great detail in Bolton and Thompson's book along with the other two facets of Team and Social, which concentrate on an entrepreneur's skills at putting teams together, and Social, being the issues connected with social entrepreneurship. A good read for any aspiring entrepreneur and written in very understandable 'street language' with dozens of examples of entrepreneurs and how they made it.

Information provided by John Edmonds  - http://www.getaheadinbusiness.com 
Copyright 2009 John Edmonds