The secrets to their success

The 2006 WA Business News 40under40 Awards program was launched at a breakfast forum featuring four high-profile past winners.

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Western Australia. It has emerged from a near dormancy following the excesses of the 1980s, with today's entreprenuers a very different breed to their predecessors who gave business a bad name.

The new entrepreneurs are as concerned about their health and achieving a work-life balance as they are about building their bank balances.

At a breakfast forum last week to launch the 2006 WA Business News 40under40 awards, four modern entrepreneurs, all previous 40under40 winners, shared their thoughts on what it means to be a modern entrepreneur.

Azure Capital managing director Mark Barnaba, State Opposition leader Matt Birney, Sally Malay Mining managing director Peter Harold, and Western Australian Institute for Medical Research foundation chair in genetic epidemiology, Professor Lyle Palmer, addressed a range of issues at the event.

Of the four, Mr Barnaba has a direct tie with WA’s most famous failed entrepreneur, Alan Bond. His first job after finishing an MBA at Harvard was as Mr Bond’s executive assistant.

“Times have changed since then; there was a degree of cultural and regulatory acceptance in the ’80s about what was going on,” Mr Barnaba said.

“Perth has grown up a lot since then and is far more sophisticated, both in terms of the quality of professionals and what acceptable business behaviour is now.”

While Alan Bond was considered by many to be “the entrepreneur of the ’80s”, Mr Barnaba said Michael Chaney embodied the modern entrepreneur and what entrepreneurialism stood for today.

With a background in small business, Mr Birney said the ability to understand human nature was the guiding principle to being in business.

“There is an old saying in business that you should sell yourself first, your business second and your product third, and that is a philosophy I always implemented in my business,” Mr Birney said.

Asked what he would do to assist entrepreneurs if he became premier, Mr Birney said it was almost impossible to get a project off the ground at the moment in WA and that he would look at regulation.

“I would get rid of department shopping and look at a lot of regulations and see which ones are necessary and which ones aren’t,” he said.

All four emphasised the importance of achieving a work-life balance.

Mr Harold acknowledged the difficulty many young business people had finding the time to exercise, but said there was no question as to its benefits.

“You have to do some exercise, spend time with your family and take the opportunity to have time out. I take off three weeks every January, and come back fired up for the year,” he said.

Mr Harold said being an entrepreneur was a combination of vision, people and luck.

“You have to have a vision, get people around you fired up about it,” he said.

“Luck, of course, plays a part. With Sally Malay, we had some blank paper and a project that everyone said was a dog; now we are generating $10 million a month out of it.

“You can’t teach entrepreneurship; it is about getting into a job and getting the experience in a lot of different areas. To begin with you have to listen a lot and not say too much, and then the point comes when you step out from that.”

Mr Barnaba agreed that being an entrepreneur was not something that could be taught, but said there was value in teaching it as a bona fide topic at university.

Professor Palmer said entrepreneurs weren’t necessarily always positive, and all had moments of self-doubt, particularly with big, ambitious projects.

“It is not necessarily about being positive but the ability to push your way through when other people don’t believe,” Professor Palmer said.

Mentors played a vital role, according to Mr Barnaba, who stressed the importance of finding someone whose opinion you valued and trusted, and who had relevance to your business.

“They don’t necessarily have to be older, but it is important to have someone to share issues with, and there does need to be an element of friendship in that to engender an element of caring,” he said.