Essence of the Entrepreneurial Spirit

The other day I was talking to a business owner from Rochester, NY. He is the head of a civil engineering firm that has weathered many storms since its inception and is still struggling with the current winds in an adverse business climate. I asked my entrepreneur friend what made him stand in the face of setbacks and survive. His answer was, ‘entrepreneurial spirit.’

For an entrepreneur, life without risk (and struggle) is life without living. According to my friend from Rochester, NY, “There is an opportunity in every crisis. One has to recognize those opportunities, conceptualize and move forward.”

The opportunity that my friend found in the present crisis is ‘cost reduction by going green.’ He spreads that message to the local industry and townships very effectively with the zeal of a messiah.

“Don’t you meet skeptical and fiscal conservatives who would rather maintain a status quo than 'going green'?” I asked.

“Yes, but I present a ‘sustainability assessment’ to them where I demonstrate how ‘going green’ would save them money.”

My friend has a great presentation that projects productivity improvement for his clients by providing good lighting and noise reduction at the workplace.

“But, if I were a manufacturer in the present business environment, I would still be hesitant in applying your ideas. How do you convince your clients to embrace them?” I was curious.

“We do this by ‘shared-saving contract.” He further explained to me that he gets paid based on real performance and not promises alone. His company monitors pre and post-metering at the clients' sites. That way, the benefits of ‘going green’ become evident without leaving any room for speculation.

My friend’s company has installed wind mills on the top of the cliff at a client’s site in the Fingers Lake area of New York state where his client generates its own clean energy and saves cost by ‘going green.’

There is a lesson to be learned here: The entrepreneurial spirit requires perseverance. It is quality that one must have to achieve success. ‘For example, it took Thomas Edison roughly 20,000 failures before he got the light bulb to work. And horse jockey, Eddie Arcaro had to ride in 301 races before he finally won a race.’ That is the essence of the ‘entrepreneurial spirit.’