Guest post by Joe Abraham and Dan Bischoff, authors of Entrepreneurial DNA.
From finding financing to marketing and sales, success in business depends on identifying your strengths and weaknesses. Joe Abraham and Dan Bischoff unveil two tools and one book to help you find your Entrepreneurial and Financial DNA.
There is no secret recipe for being a successful entrepreneur and a successful business owner. What worked for someone in another industry probably will not work for you. What worked for someone in your same industry might not work for you either.
Why? Everybody is cut from different cloth.
Every personality is different. Every motivation is different. Every financial situation is different. Every type of funding is different. Every business and business owner is different. Different people make different choices and thrive in different environments.
Some entrepreneurs are built to launch highly scalable national and global brands. Others are built to run a well-respected local business. Some are sales and marketing rockstars. Others can’t sell their way out of a paper bag. Some business owners thrive on having large employee bases. Others hate the very idea of having any employees at all.
To be successful, act on what fits your specific business and your specific personality: both from a philosophy and financial view. How to do that? Here are two tools and one book:
1. Entrepreneurial DNA and BOSI
In Joe Abraham’s book Entrepreneurial DNA, he helps you understand exactly the type of entrepreneur you are so you can make the right decisions along your entrepreneur journey.
What’s Entrepreneurial DNA? Put simply, your Entrepreneurial DNA is like a virtual ID card that tells you (and the people around you) who you really are as an entrepreneur, Abraham said. It identifies your strengths, weaknesses and predispositions as a business owner and compares it to the millions of other business owners out there — so you can quickly identify people who are like (and unlike) you in business.
With this ID card formed, youll be more prepared to create a plan and strategy that will help you be successful. As a companion to the book, Abraham launched BOSidna, an online platform where entrepreneurs can get matched with people, insight and solutions best suited for their DNA.
2. Financing DNA Lendio
Financing your company the right way is much different than just going to the bank down the street, or pitching to an investor, or asking your dad for money.
Just because your buddy got a million dollars in investment capital from a handful of VCs, doesn’t mean you will too, Abraham said. The flip side of that can be true as well. You may raise a million bucks in the next 90 days while others fight to get their hands on a $5,000 loan.
Personality goes a long way to determining what type of financing you should pursue. Banks and investors look largely at the character of the business owner to determine if theyll loan money, so understanding your entrepreneurial DNA will go a long way in securing business financing.
In these days, lenders look long and hard at the facts, the details, the collateral, the revenue, financial statements, pro formas, business plans, a website, etc. And there are literally hundreds of types of business loans, lines of credit, and other sources of financing — from banks and credit unions to non-traditional lenders.
With all those options, it should come as no surprise that there is also not a one-size-fits-all financing strategy for every entrepreneur.
Similar to BOSI, Lendio is an online tool that can help you find your Financing DNA. The website is like a Match.com for business owners and lenders. Users can set up a profile for free, fill out some information about their business, and then be matched to the best fit from among more than 3,000 lenders and loan types. Lendio users loan approval rate so far is about a 50-70 percent better than the average national business loan approval rate.
Bankers are pretty smart people, Abraham said. They have invested tens of millions of dollars over the years figuring out how to create profiles (they call them guidelines) for who they should finance. Youve got to understand your profile as an entrepreneur to make sure you present yourself in the best possible financing light to the most ideal financing source. Studying your Entrepreneurial DNA will help you do that. And so will going through Lendios system that helps match you with the right business loan.
Joe Abraham is founder/CEO of BOSI, a venture-backed business community and online concierge for entrepreneurs. He is author of Entrepreneurial DNA: The Breakthrough Discovery That Aligns Your Business to Your Unique Strengths available in bookstores and online. Prior to launching BOSI, Joe was involved in the startup and growth of over 30 companies in industries ranging from IT and Wellness to Consumer Goods and Motorsports.
Dan Bischoff is the Communications Director for Lendio, an online organization helping companies secure viable sources of capital. Hes a former journalist who has worked at the Associated Press and several other media outlets. His articles have appeared on ESPN, USAToday, Yahoo Sports and others.