A Job Description for the Business Owner - стр. 3

Two Types of Business Owners

In coming to understand the true role of a business owner, it is important to be aware of the two most common types of owners. The ancient works of Indian literature known as the Vedas help give us a way to describe them. Vedic religious traditions, including various characters and philosophic concepts, became a part of such religious and philosophical systems as Brahmanism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, all of which were based on the Vedas. The Vedas are a source of socioeconomic and cultural information about ancient Indian history.

According to the Vedas, every person achieves his own level of spiritual development and has the traits and abilities inherent to someone at that level. Ancient Indians called these social levels varnas. The Vedas maintained that during his lifetime a person progresses up the levels while forming and developing particular personality characteristics. A person on the highest stage of spiritual personality development is called a Brahmin. Scientists, artists, and religious figures fall into this category. The stage below Brahmin is called Kshatriya. Kings, military commanders, leaders, and all people who devote their lives to service achieve this stage. Then there is the Vaishya stage, mostly represented by merchants and craftsmen. Those at the Vaishya stage can create groups as well, but due to their particular traits, they are fundamentally different from the Kshatriya. The Kshatriya serve their own group and have the group’s benefit as their main goal. In contrast, someone at the Vaishya stage needs a group to achieve his own personal success and enrichment. I am not claiming that this classification is very scientific, but it seems to be an apt way to assess different types of leadership. If you study various companies carefully, you will find that particular aspirations and traits inherent to the Kshatriya and the Vaishya are dominant in certain business owners.

A group’s achievements depend on its leader. And it is quite valuable to know that any group has a much greater chance of becoming successful if a Kshatriya is the leader, rather than a Vaishya. In contemporary terms, it can be said that a group whose leader does not have a genuine desire to ensure the prosperity of the entire group will never be truly successful. This is not based on conjecture, but on empirical evidence.

In Shanghai, I met the founder, owner, and manager (all one individual) of the B&Y Marketing Agency. At the time, B&Y employed twenty-five people who produced wonderful TV commercials and outdoor advertisements, in addition to designing shopping malls. For the previous few years, the company had stalled out and its yearly revenues had remained at about $1.5 million. I was interested in the discrepancy between the company’s high-quality products and its lack of growth, given China’s rapid economic development. During my conversation with the owner, I found that his main motive when starting the company was to provide an affluent lifestyle for himself and his family. This business owner was a perfect example of a highly qualified professional Vaishya who was trying to surround himself with assistants just to produce a quality product and enrich himself. It quickly became apparent to me that unless he changed his viewpoint about the way to run his business, his company would never advance.