Kibbe on Marketing: Born or Made?

The question, of course, is whether entrepreneurs are born or made.

That was the very discussion I had with Mary Ann Kristiansen, executive director of the wonderfully successful Keene business incubator, Hannah Grimes Center and its affiliated Hannah Grimes Marketplace.

Over a delicious lunch at Luca’s Mediterranean Café overlooking the preparations for the Keene Pumpkin Festival, we tackled that question. I’ve never thought of myself particularly entrepreneurial; starting a business always seemed like a job for someone with more backbone that I. You know the type – since they were children, entrepreneurs always seems so clever, so common-sense smart, so quick to pick things up. They just seemed to see the world through a different set of eyes.

While Mary Ann agreed there are certainly those preternaturally gifted people, “entrepreneurship” is something that can be and is created by the rest of us, perhaps even more often than I thought. She used herself as an example, and her current position at the incubator. More times than not, our life circumstances change and we find ourselves propelled in a direction we would have never considered in our wildest dreams (or nightmares, for that matter).

But at what point to the scales tip? When do we nascent, even fretful, entrepreneurs take that huge leap forward to becoming our own boss and start our own business?

I’ll be honest, I don’t know the answers. For me, at this point, I love to use my strengths and creativity to not only do better the things I excel at, but to try new things and create a shared success for myself and the organization I’m a part of.

However, there is something hugely appealing in having a second revenue stream based completely on my own skills – namely writing and desktop publishing.

How about you? Where do you stand? Were you born or are you being made?


On Thursday, Oct. 27, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Hannah Grimes Center in Keene will be presenting “Four Things to Consider Before Starting Your Own Business Workshop.” Visit www.hannahgrimes.com for details.

Cindy Kibbe, an editor for a New England business publication for nearly a decade, can be reached at cindykibbe@comcast.net.