“Conflicting Goals” is the third type of entrepreneurs resulting from the expanded research. But since I decided not to elaborate more on the second type due to its close similarity to “Make Me Whole” entrepreneurs, in this post, “Conflicting Goals” will fall under the second category.
“Conflicting Goals” lives on the battleground between external and internal motivation. This means that respondents belonging to this category suffers tension of motivation between financial profit and passion for excellence. These entrepreneurs perceive a connection between spirituality and entrepreneurship, but can’t or won’t express it for fear of alienating customers or staff. Connection to the spiritual is seen as personal and private and segmented out of integration into business life. There are three sub-types within the “Conflicting Goals” type of entrepreneurs. These are:
- Entrepreneurs who delayed startup until they were financially stable enough
- Those who had strong family entrepreneurial backgrounds
- And those driven by external factors such as termination, layoff or divorce.
As in the previous two types of entrepreneurs, the “Conflicting Goals” type of entrepreneurs was asked questions about integration of spirituality and entrepreneurship, sources of joy and disappointment, personal values, and understanding of success.
Integration of Spirituality and Entrepreneurship
This type of entrepreneurs hesitates to impose personal religious beliefs on others.
One typical response is: “You have to lift yourself up and let your inner ‘self’ guide you in your decisions. This may or may not be business related, but nonetheless it is important.”
Another type of response: “I think that my spirituality is very personal to me. I’m not one that likes to give my opinion, if you ask me if I believe in God, I believe in the afterlife. I believe that living a good life will give you a good afterlife but that’s my belief. That’s what I believe and I don’t push it on people, you know. I don’t walk around with a Bible and tell people to live right, that’s just how I am.
Sources of Joy and Disappointment
The source of joy for this group seems to come predominantly from customers. Throughout the interviews customer satisfaction kept appearing as the source of happiness. However, helping the customer seemed to be less about doing the right thing and more about the customer returning to buy again. A customer’s positive perception of the entrepreneur is the basis for their business achievement.
On the other hand, sources of disappointment are centered on fear of failure and might indicate lack of self-esteem.
Personal Values
Personal values are based on responsibility, dedication and hard work. They feel joy from constituent’s achievements and stand by their word even in the face of great expense.
One respondent stated, “I don’t know if this is necessarily a value but this is something that I think I bring to my business. It is what keeps people referring business, continually referring business to my company or to me; is that I’m very passionate about what I do and I think people see that and they can hear the excitement in my voice sometimes. . . .treating people the way you want to be treated, going above and beyond, following through on your word, whatever you say is what you do, I mean whatever we say as a business we’re going to do, we’re going to do. I don’t care if it costs us money.”
Understanding of Success
This type of entrepreneurs seeks both internal and external motivation for success. Success is centered on one of two ideals: financial security and working hard to provide for families, or pursuing personal passions in work. One entrepreneur summed up the dichotomy, “I think there are two ways to define it. One is people who have achieved monetary success and can support themselves, and the other is the person who may have not achieved that, but may have achieved gratification by building something and completing something and following his dream.”
Christian Entrepreneur 