The Entrepreneur Quadrant Explained - Daphne Mallory's Family Business Quadrant

The seed of family business is you, the entrepreneur. My work is to awaken the entrepreneur giant within you and guide you towards maturity: owning a family business. The fruits of your family business will result in investments, which will help build and grow your family wealth, legacy and community.

To start, every member of your family who is willing must learn the mindset, skills and actions required to become an entrepreneur. Then, you must BE an entrepreneur everyday. Even if you're working at a job, are a stay at home parent, are retired or volunteer. You can think and act like an entrepreneur.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in discussions regarding the strategic plans for our local school district.
I was advocating for entrepreneurship education in schools, and some of the representatives insisted that career counseling and information was sufficient for teaching entrepreneurship. I was shocked. I realized how critical entrepreneurship education is for all of us.

So, let's begin with the proper definition of an entrepreneur.  Here's one from Entrepreneur.com:

Entrepreneurs are focused on building and growing an enterprise, whether it's a brand-new business or transforming an existing company through innovation and making the most of opportunities hidden to others.

If you believe in this amazing dream of owning a family business for generations to come, then your time, energy, resources and daily activities must come into alignment with determined focus on building and growing your entrepreneurship skills and your family business.

What does focus mean:

                      Close or narrow attention; concentration.

This is one of the instances in your life where it's good to discriminate. You should separate yourself from activities which hold your attention, but DO NOT help you build a strong family and a strong business. The only exception, of course, is if you're called to do those activities. With that said, seemingly unrelated roles and responsibilities often are there to set the stage for you to excel as an entrepreneur. You may not recognize it.

After separating yourself from those activities, you have to replace them with meanigful activities that fit your identity as an entrepreneur. Who are entrepreneurs? What do they do on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis? Here's a short list:

• Hustling...or if you prefer...selling
• Writing
• Hosting events
• Appearing on television and radio
• Negotiating
• Deal making
• Buying
• Investing
• Team building
• Leading
• Managing people
• Managing projects
• Growing themselves
• Growing others
• Sharing meals
• Having conversations
• Attending or hosting events
• Organizing people
• Submitting proposals
• Serving people
• Serving clients
• Answering phones
• Delivering services
• Creating or improving products
• Innovating
• Planning strategically
• Creating budgets and cashflow statements

You can and should do a few or all of these everyday and/or everyweek. You are an entrepreneur. You can do these while you're still holding down a job, or holding down your little ones at home. It may look different for you because of your family and financial circumstances than another reader. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you claim responsibility for making the change you want to see in your family tree.

This is not all that has to be said about what it means to be an entrepreneur. Stay tune for future posts to help you learn and grow.