I have since attended hundreds of networking sessions, spoke to aspiring entrepreneurs and established business owners alike.
Here are the 4 Types digital entrepreneurs we usually come across.
1) The Idea Entrepreneur
In startup events, I meet ‘idea’ people (sometimes highly educated with some Ivy League degree) to their names and they’ll fancifully come up with an idea. The Uber or Airbnb of anything.
They’ve never built a single website, rarely done any sales in their life and they think that their single idea is going to change the world.
99% of business is in execution. It’s not about your product OR idea. 99% of business is in implementation. That means doing it! That means building websites from ground up, running traffic to it, getting leads, following up and then pitching them a price or product in exchange for cash.
It’s not playing around with pitch decks, coming up with the next ‘Uber’ of anything or writing your next business proposal.
One of the biggest mistakes was to start a dating consulting company thinking that all my client wanted to hear about was my smartness about human psychology. That’s because that’s what I cared about. It wasn’t what my customers cared about. They cared about getting dates! not my course curriculum!
If you are in business, realize that you are not in the dating advice business. You are not in the SEO services business. You’re not in the music business. You’re not in the real estate/ financial consulting, plumbing and aircon repair business.
You are in the sales and marketing business. Period!
2) The Sales Person Turned Entrepreneur
If your first business skill set is sales, you have a much higher possibility of succeeding as an entrepreneur. However, sales itself still doesn’t cut it. When you work for huge corporations that have a price point or commission on your products, you are confident in selling.
However, take that huge corporate brand away from you and you’re left to create a brand on your own. Can you sell it? Can you sell yourself? Take away a corporate brand that you can already leverage to sell your products, can you still do it?
Can you sell when it comes down to you, your products, your vision and your services.
I know of people that consider themselves a great salesperson. However, he has never generated a dollar out of his own products and services.
However, as a digital entrepreneur, your concerns go beyond just sales or your commissions. It becomes a game of marketing budgets, market positioning, scaling, fulfilment, customer service, operations and many more. You’re required to juggle multiple hats.
3) The Raise Money Digital Entrepreneur
The raising money entrepreneur is highly concerned with financial projections, pitch decks and predictions on market size. (and fancy startup lingo)
Traditionally, I am extremely against the idea of raising money before profitability. However, I’m saying: pay attention to the primary concerns of the CEO/ top management that runs the company. Is their top concern attempting to raise the next round? Is their concern making the numbers look pretty?
I know working capital can accelerate things. This is why I am NOT 100% closed off to the idea of raising capital. The majority of businesses are built on working capital.
Ultimately, as an investor (if I do become one), I am going to look at the ethics of the entrepreneur himself, and the way he speaks about his business and his primary concerns. There’s a huge difference between presenting fancy numbers VS maximising shareholder’s equity.
This brings me to my next point.
4) The Ground Up Digital Entrepreneur
Over the years, I’ve spoken to the ‘idea entrepreneur’, the ‘raise money entrepreneur’, the salesman entrepreneur and the ground up digital entrepreneur.
The idea entrepreneur is overly concerned about his idea. The salesperson can only sell but not market. The people I enjoy working with and can resonate with the most are the ground up entrepreneurs.
The ground up digital entrepreneur’s primary concerns are always: free cash flow, advertising budget/ spent, lead generation, sales, closes and net profit.
In the information economy, you are to start low cost services such as marketing paid advertising services, SEO packages services, UX/UI design, etc… They are all skill sets with huge demand!
The majority of the ground up entrepreneur’s time and effort are spent generating leads, prospects and pitching them their service to get sales! It’s not trying to raise their next round or make their pitch deck look super attractive.
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