An Instruction of the “Self-Made”
There’s a popular old saying in China, “you can’t have a noble child from a humble family”, which means that a child from a poor family is unlikely to become a member of the upper class in the future. Most normal people would think that it’s extremely difficult to start their own business from 0, and it’s complicated to operate it. In 2019, 55.8% of the 2604 billionaires in the world are self-made (Clifford, CNBC), the US and China are the two countries that have the most billionaires and millionaires in the world.
“Self-made” means someone gains wealth by starting his/her own business, instead of inheriting fortune from others. However, if you look at the following case, you might doubt about this simple definition. In 2018, Kylie Jenner was nominated “the youngest self-made billionaire” by Forbes. At the beginning, I believe that some of you would feel confused about this nomination. When I read this news I felt like there are question marks floating over my head, and a puzzled look stuck to my face until I finished reading the report, just like this :
Her family is globally famous, with that fame the Jenner-Kardashian family has built an empire of wealth. However, if you get to know Kylie’s story of building an empire of cosmetics, you would understand why she could be an appropriate candidate on the list of Forbes.
Kylie Jenner already had millions of fans on social medias, before she found her cosmetic company, which I would call it “the accumulation of customers at the early stage”, an online celebrity with a huge fan base is usually easier to get support from the fans when they start to sell some products. Kylie was not satisfied with her lips so she liked to use lip liners to make her lips look bigger, her lips size got more attentions because of the covers of the gossip magazines, this is the process of drawing attention. Later, #Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge# became popular among the teenagers on social medias, this is another boost of the attention on her lips. “She used $250,000 of her earnings from modeling gigs to pay an outside company to produce the first 15,000 lip kits.”(Forbes). Posting the coming-soon lip kits on Instagram is the easiest way for her to advertise, as simple as you post your photos of your vacation on Instagram. Her lip kits are not very expensive, she has drawn so many attentions with her lips, there should be many girls who are interested and curious about her new lip kits. As expected, once the kits put on sale, they were sold out in one minute. What a marketing genius.
Logically, this is the process of accumulating customer resources, building brand image with her lips, using people’s curiosity and enthusiasm from her fans for product marketing, which is a low-cost advertisement, and the final step is to launch her products. Kylie definitely got advice from her mother, but the money to produce the lip kits was hers, and from the beginning to the end this process goes on with her name, Kylie Jenner.
“Self-made”, means from the beginning to the end, you’re completing every step of starting a business with your own ability. You get your initial fund, every resource you need by yourself, regardless of the wealth and social status of your family.
Nowadays, although it’s risky, many people are trying to start up a business. If you win the battle in the field of capital and market share, which means that when your product or service takes more parts of the market, reaches to more people, there may be more zeros added to the right side of the numbers in your bank account, because you win the customers and the chances to cooperate with those outstanding companies; if you lose heavily, your financial situation will likely to be a minus “-“. The success in business is not easy to achieve, but we can at least learn something from those who are successful.
According to Oswald Mhlanga’s research paper, “Identification of personality traits affecting entrepreneurial performance in the hospitality subsector: A five-factor personality model”, which studies the traits of entrepreneurs, functional convergence and intuitive decision-making are the important features on a successful entrepreneur. This research includes the study of extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness and neuroticism, these traits form a 5-factor personality model that measures the traits of an entrepreneur (Oswald, 2). I think these 5 traits cover the personality effects on the way entrepreneurs operate business in various aspects.
First of all, extraversion means good skills of sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness and ambition (Oswald, 2). It is always essential to expand your social network when you own a business, it’s like a spider web, which reaches different end points to make a stable place waiting for the coming of the food, which I call it the “nutrition”. The end points are the people you know, with your cooperation with them, your nutritions that make your stronger will be the new resources, new market and capitals. My interviewee, Mr.Chen, my father’s friend who owns his own business, said that, “the more friends you have, the less problems you need to worry about” (Chen). Developing good interpersonal skills will benefits a lot, the strong connections with different people will make you be in the lead of getting fresh commercial resources and not be bothered by some unnecessary troubles in business.
The second trait is agreeableness, which is the positive trait that works well in interpersonal communication, including “being courteous, exible, trusting, good-natured, cooperative, forgiving, soft-hearted and tolerant”(Oswald, 2). Although the findings of this paper shows that this traits doesn’t play important role in entrepreneurial performances, I still believe that this trait is the extension of “extraversion”, these are the specific features of a good skill of sociability. Everybody likes to communicate with a gentle person, it’s the magic to attract new friends. Everyone meets someone that is agreeable in life, when you talk to them, the feeling is like a breath of fresh air, which makes you discard the heaviness of the stress that twists your mind. Who would refuse to work with people like this?
Third, conscientiousness describes the behaviours of planning, following rules and thinking before implement (Oswald, 2). This is the core of the leadership, opportunity only waits for those who are fully prepared. According to Michael T Deane’s analysis in the article “Top 6 Reasons New Business Fail”, errors in business planning making are able to kill a new business. He suggests that a company should determine the goal, the method to achieve the goal, potential problems and their solutions, cost and timetable. The whole planned should be implemented seriously once it’s decided, try to avoid big troubles and fix every problem in time. It represents failure if you change it, because the following modifications cost more time and money. If the changes unfortunately happened, the leader should find out the problem and fix in short time, then follow the new plan. “The more mistakes you make, the more expensive your business will become and the greater the chance of failure.” (Deane, Investopedia).
Fourth, Openness to experience is to have positive attitude toward the imaginative, innovative and creative ideas and experience (Oswald, 2). The market is extremely competitive with high “morality”, every company never stops to seize market share as much as possible. The percentage of small business’ failure rate grows as time goes on, “approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% failed during the first five years, 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more” (Deane, Investopedia). Also, according to Deane, one of the major problems that cause the failure of new business is that they don’t investigate the market. He indicates that an enterprise should find an unmet need and fill it, it’s not effective to create something that is not that useful to the people and push the product or service in front of them and convince them to pay the unnecessary money. (Deane, Investopedia) The numbers shows the cruelness of the market, that’s why the outstanding enterprises have the ability to sense people’s newest needs and wants, and response it with innovation as early as possible. My interviewee Mr.Chen said that “Information collection is crucial for a businessman”(Chen). Always remember that people’s needs and wants form a market, it’s easier to fill it than creating a new market, and your creativity is your effective tool to compete with others in the same market segment. A business stands more stably when it has excellent creativity to draw attention and be popular among its target consumers.
Finally, neuroticism. It is the “darkness” and “contrary feelings” of the personality, such as anxiety, worries, anger, depression, etc (Oswald, 2). Neuroticism has negative impacts on the development of a enterprise, because bad emotions influence a leader making a decision, especially in those cases that the enterprise is facing difficulty, and every wrong decision could be lethal to it. In the end, the result shows that people who are influenced by these negative emotions tend to be passive in business operation (Oswald, 2). A good leader should be able to minimize the impact of emotions.
Up till now, I bet that you’ve been evaluating yourself if you have the traits to be a good businessman/businesswoman, then you should come up with a new question, which field can I step into and start a business? This is a broad topic and I’m afraid that I can’t list every available choice for you. However, it is fortunate that no matter what program you are studying, there should be a place in business for it. The most essential thing is to observe people’s need and want, what product or service you can provide them to make their life better. Always remember, where there is a need, there is a market.
It’s necessary to study entrepreneurial concepts when you are still at school because you can’t guarantee that you are a rare commercial talent. Marta Machín-Martínez and Carmen de-Pablos-Heredero are from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain. In their paper “Innovating And Entrepreneurial Initiatives: Some Cases of Success”, they analyze the development of some successful new companies, whose business scope covers travel planning(Waynabox), veterinarians consultation service (Barbiku), hotel service(LockUp), delivery and private chauffeur (Uber) , etc. The finding shows that it’s necessary to apply new internet technology to the business; outstanding services, competitive prices, creative strategies and clear target market are the key factors that them achieve their goals successfully. They list the development of the business year by year, also introduce some problems and loss, and how they overcome. At the end they suggest that although students should have master the entrepreneurial concepts at schools, sometimes it’s inevitable to fail, but “the key thing for an entrepreneur is to be able to overcome difficulties, face problems, and keep on going on” (Martínez & Herder, 156).
Many of us have been dreaming of making big money one day, but for most people it’s just a daydreaming which is far away from the reality. The most straightforward way to explain the business start-up process is to observe your daily life, think about the defect of the market and come up with an idea of a product or service to fix it, it’s the bridge that connects you and the consumers. But life is not that easy, everyone could be a boss if starting a business is as simple as my description. I always believe that the old saying in my culture can be applied to most people in this world of limited resources, but I also firmly believe that the children from the “humble families” can make themselves a nobility.
Works Cited
Clifford, Catherine. “The Majority of Billionaires in the World Are Self-made.” CNBC, 10 May 2019, http://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/wealthx-billionaire-census-majority-of-worlds-billionaires-self-made.html.
Machm-Martmez, Marta, and Carmen de-Pablos-Heredero. “Innovating and Entrepreneurial Initiatives: Some Cases of Success.” Issues in Informing Science & Information Technology, 2017, p. 139. EBSCOhost,
Oswald Mhlanga. “Identification of Personality Traits Affecting Entrepreneurial Performance in the Hospitality Subsector: A Five-Factor Personality Model.” Acta Commercii, no. 2, 2019, p. e1. EBSCOhost, doi:10.4102/ac.v19i2.651.
Robehmed, Natalie. “How 20-Year-Old Kylie Jenner Built A $900 Million Fortune In Less Than 3 Years.” Forbes, 23 Dec. 2019, http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesdigitalcovers/2018/07/11/how-20-year-old-kylie-jenner-built-a-900-million-fortune-in-less-than-3-years/#64331eb0aa62.
“Top 6 Reasons New Businesses Fail.” Investopedia, 27 Oct. 2010, http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1010/top-6-reasons-new-businesses-fail.aspx.
Yifei Chen-Nonfiction writing 