Is the Entrepreneur Born or Made?
When discussing topics related to the entrepreneurial mindset, people often ask me whether they can—or cannot—be entrepreneurs. When someone asks this question, they are assuming that there is a set of qualities you are born with, and that depending on whether you have them or not, you could—or could not—become an entrepreneur. The eternal question of whether the entrepreneur is born or made.
“You were born to win. But to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win”
It is difficult to answer this question in absolute terms, with a “yes, you can” or “no, don’t even try.” When it comes to the entrepreneurial mindset, we don’t move in black or white. We move in an endless range of shades that color every particular experience.
There are those who, from a very young age, are interested in entrepreneurship. Children who are the first to find a way to earn some income, by selling something or offering a service. Children who find it easier to stand out as leaders and guide their peers in the development of tasks.
My Own Story, Starting as a Child Entrepreneur
My first entrepreneurial venture as a child was a newspaper I wrote, inspired by the monthly newspaper published at my school, which was written by the students. I must have been around 11 or 12 years old. I remember spending several days writing each section. At that time, we didn’t have computers, so I typed it on an old-fashioned typewriter.
I had to write two copies because my first audience was my parents (one copy) and my uncles (another copy). It was an edition of just two copies.
That initiative didn’t last much longer than that first edition. But throughout my school years, I was often class delegate and frequently took on tasks that required me to coordinate and organize activities—including, one year, the school newspaper.
Without realizing it, those activities that I enjoyed and felt comfortable with were preparing me to lead bigger projects in the future.
Entrepreneurship as a College Student
When I finished school and started university life, I began a business with my best friend making handmade wastebaskets. They were handcrafted, interwoven cardboard wastebaskets. We made many of them and sold them to our classmates during our first semester at university. I remember going to campus carrying two or three wastebaskets on the bus that had been ordered.
Later, I dedicated myself to sewing shirts. I used to sew almost all my clothes, and I had made a shirt that many of my friends liked. Several of them told me, “Make me one, I’ll buy it from you.” And that’s how I started. In a couple of months, I had sewn about 20 shirts. I would come home from university, and after studying and doing my assignments, I would sew the orders for the next day.
Right around that time, when I had already been in the handmade shirt business for two months, I received a job offer at an advertising agency as a market research assistant. At that moment, my entrepreneurial career paused for 10 years, until I decided to support my husband with his market research company and resumed my entrepreneurial journey. Since then, I haven’t looked back. Every new professional effort has been tied to an entrepreneurial project.
Are Innate Traits the Only Factors That Matter?
Like me, many entrepreneurs have started with small initiatives, from childhood. Some may argue that stories like these suggest that innate aspects influence the decision to become an entrepreneur.
However, there are other parts of the story to tell.
We must take into account, for example, that in my home, my father was an entrepreneur. After several jobs as an employee, he decided to start his own business. He was a dental technician and had his own lab. My mother, my sister, and I helped him. My mom designed the logo and did the invoices. My sister and I helped with cleaning equipment and organizing materials.
Watching my father work, I learned that being an entrepreneur not only required the ability to do his job well as a dental technician, but also demanded administrative and managerial skills. I remember seeing him at the end of each month calculating accounts in an accounting notebook, recording sales, collections, and pending accounts. He also made graphs on graph paper to see how his sales had grown (or decreased) throughout the year.
Later, he also became a community organizer for dental technicians in Venezuela—a social venture with no financial benefit—and I was his assistant in all the administrative and secretarial tasks required.
In that sense, someone could say that my interest in entrepreneurship came from following my father’s example and from the experiences I had at home, which allowed me to learn managerial and administrative skills while helping him.
Thus, the discussion about whether the entrepreneur is born or made is not linear and does not lead to a single answer.
The Entrepreneur Is Not Born or Made—The Entrepreneur Is Born “And” Made
My answer, when people ask me whether they can or cannot become entrepreneurs, whether they have the skills and ability or not, is always to highlight the importance of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each person’s mindset at every specific point in their professional journey.
These strengths and weaknesses are dynamic and ever-changing. They evolve with experience.
I am convinced that the entrepreneurial mindset is complex and made up of both innate elements and learned skills. It’s true: some of us are born with a greater predisposition toward entrepreneurship. Perhaps our personality allows us to take more risks, be more independent, or have higher organizational and planning skills than others of the same age or environment.
But if those innate abilities don’t find fertile ground in an environment that encourages and develops them, they won’t necessarily evolve into entrepreneurship.
It is the same as people born with other talents. Some children are gifted in music, sports, science, or mathematics, for example. While that innate ability is very important, the right early and consistent exposure to formal education and an environment that nurtures those abilities is what enables them to reach their full potential.
Not everyone born with entrepreneurial skills or interest will develop successful businesses. And many who may be born with fewer innate qualities could, through study, preparation, and effort, become successful.
The entrepreneurial mindset, then, is both born “and” made.
It is a combination of innate qualities together with effort and training.
The good news is that, thanks to this, we can compensate for or adjust through learning those characteristics that we are naturally less developed in—or perhaps excessively developed in. We can learn, for example, to take more risks if that quality is not strong in us, and we can also learn to hold back if our natural tendency to take risks is too high.
EMP — Entrepreneurial Mindset Profile
That’s why when I came across the EMP (Entrepreneurial Mindset Profile), I was immediately drawn to it as a solid tool and decided to get certified.
It is a tool developed by Eckerd College, FL, USA, that measures the entrepreneurial mindset across 7 personality dimensions and 7 skill dimensions.
It is an extremely useful measurement tool because its application and analysis take into account the specific circumstances in which the entrepreneur and their venture find themselves at that particular moment, allowing for the definition of specific actions to develop the elements that are most necessary and best suited to the challenges faced at that time.
If you’d like to learn more about this tool, you can visit my professional consulting services page. And if you are interested in taking the assessment, you can request it directly through that link.
