Entrepreneurship: Traits and Success of Jon Tarrant

This report discusses the entrepreneurial traits and success of Jon Tarrant, the founder of LeisureCom Travel. It explores the company overview, uniqueness of ideas, entrepreneurial approaches, opportunity recognition, personality traits, risk-taking attitude, goals, and adaptability skills. The report concludes with a justification of Jon Tarrant as an entrepreneur and provides recommendations.

Running head: ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Entrepreneurship
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors note

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Executive Summary
Entrepreneurs stand apart from the crowd because of their new business ideas and calculated
risk-taking abilities. This report is written at the base of the interview of an Australia based
entrepreneur Jon Tarrant. This entrepreneur is the owner of a travel company named as
LeisureCom Travels. With respect to this entrepreneur, the traits of entrepreneurship are
discussed in the main part of the report. Company overview and uniqueness of the ideas have
been explained in the first part. The next part consists of the entrepreneurial approaches of the
entrepreneur Jon Tarrant. The report ends with a conclusion and recommendation part.

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Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................4
Company overview........................................................................................................4
Entrepreneur and Idea....................................................................................................5
Entrepreneurial Approaches...........................................................................................5
Opportunity Recognition............................................................................................6
Personality traits.........................................................................................................7
Approach and Attitude toward Risk...........................................................................7
Goals and Aspirations................................................................................................8
Adaptability Skills......................................................................................................9
Justification of Jon Tarrant as an entrepreneur........................................................10
Conclusion and Recommendations..............................................................................11
Reference List..............................................................................................................12
Appendix......................................................................................................................13

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Introduction
An entrepreneur is a person who has set up a new business, taking most of the risks
and enjoying rewards. The entrepreneur believes in taking financial risk in order to create
new business ideas, products, services and procedures in the business. Entrepreneurship has a
prime role in building the economy of any country. The financial advancement of a country
depends on these people as they are the innovators and initiators of any field. The skills of the
entrepreneur not only provide success to the individual but also contribute to current and
future demands and needs of the market. The risk in these ventures is high, but those also can
result in a high amount of profits. An entrepreneur has to combine land, capital and labour to
provide services or manufacture goods. In this report, there is a discussion and analysis of the
entrepreneurial traits of the LeisureCom Travel company founder Jon Tarrant. The data were
collected in the primary method by personal interview of the entrepreneur.
Company overview
LeisureCom Travel was founded by Jon Tarrant along with his partner Rebecca
Tarrant. The company is based in Queensland, Australia. The innovative ways of travelling
management have established the company as one of the most trusted travel agency in
Australia. This company was founded in March 2006. The booking and services are managed
with hi-Tech facilities. This group have two distinctive ventures in it, one is Discover
Queensland, and the other is High Tide Holiday. The company earned a revenue of $25.00
Million, and a total number of employee in this company in present time is 125. A number of
hotels work as the partner to avail travelers with rich and satisfying experience
(leisure.com.au 2019).

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Entrepreneur and the Idea
The innovative and customer-friendly business model has given this company a
distinguished identity in online travel platform. The entrepreneurship of Jon Tarrant and
Rebecca Tarrant stands apart from all their competitors in the market. This duo has never let
slip any opportunity they get. The idea started with a schoolies program that was arranged by
this entrepreneur and got a huge success. The entrepreneurial instinct of Jon Tarrant then has
its outcome as the LeisureCom Travel Company. There are certain unique features that Jon
introduced in his travel arrangements. He enhanced the business through the partnership with
hotel and resorts. The idea is that through the Travel bookings by the customers, they could
also sort out the marketing and advertising of partner companies. This is the reason that some
of the popular resorts and hotels came into partnership with Jon’s company.
Jon has enlarged his venture by introducing some of its new brands and making the
business open for international consumers. The uniqueness of their brand Discover
Queensland is that the consumers are provided with a personal travel expert who helps them
get the best of their Queensland holiday. This company's other venture is called High Tide
Holiday that offers a discount to its members. Operations of this venture are based on fast and
flexible responsiveness. All these features make Jon Tarrant advanced and different in his
entrepreneurial approach and profitability.
Entrepreneurial Approaches
Entrepreneurs take risky decisions in order to gain higher profit. This decisions
making ability and other traits make a business stand apart or fail. There are some
entrepreneurial approach and thinking process that mark the characteristics of a successful
businessman (Terjesen, Hessels and Li 2016). The following sections will discuss the

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entrepreneurial traits like opportunity recognition and goal setting traits, individual
personality traits and others in respect of Jon Tarrant.
Opportunity Recognition
According to the theory of Opportunity based theory in Entrepreneur theories, the
entrepreneur has to excel in seeing the opportunities and taking advantage of it. The changes
in social, cultural and technology could hail great possibility for the creative mind of the
entrepreneur. This theory was put forward by Peter Charles. The changes are continuously
occurring in the market because of the demands and attitude of target customers. The
entrepreneur needs to be open to all the challenges that could be there in the market. Taking
the right decision for adopting the changes in the work frame is necessary to enhance the
business dimensions (Dimitratos et al. 2016). An entrepreneur should understand the
possibilities and never stay behind for the risk factors. Therefore, it becomes the fact that the
entrepreneurial process starts with discovering the opportunity and using it properly. The
steps of the process include recognition, evaluation and utilization of future services and
goods (Yitshaki and Kropp 2016).
Recognizing the opportunities has always been a positive trait of Jon Tarrant. The
business venture was started with his partner, and from the beginning, this company has
expanded its scope recognizing the opportunities. The entrepreneurs have never missed out
any opportunity that comes in their course of work. The venture was started as a small
schoolie project which ultimately became a renowned travel agency. Jon has understood that
offering membership to the consumers could make the process easier as they would show
their interest in booking with this company with relatively low wages. Partnership options
were explored by this company as the entrepreneur recognizes the possibilities of business
development if he could provide the travellers with a range of accommodation options.

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Personality traits
Some of the theories of entrepreneurship dictate that there are certain mental and
social traits that define the features of an entrepreneur. People with the ability to lead and
influential characters are successful entrepreneurs. As opined by Wry and York (2017), there
are psychological and social behaviour theory that narrates how some specific personality
traits of an individual could be the mark of a good entrepreneur. The first trait that an
entrepreneur should have is the passion towards the venture. As stated by Mishra and
Zachary (2015), the decision making ability is another important aspect of the entrepreneur’s
character. To start a new business, there have to be efforts and tough decision making traits.
The entrepreneur may have to face various financial and management problems for his new
ventures. Confidence and resilience is the only way out to control the situation. Another trait
that an entrepreneur should possess is creativity and open-minded attitude.
Jon Tarrant is quite confident and passionate about his work and company. Self-
confident of this young entrepreneur helps him manage all adverse situation in his business.
LeisureCom Travel is a company that understands the cultural factors influencing their
customer behaviour. According to Jon, the main purpose of their company is to provide
consumers with maximum travel satisfaction, and their team makes it sure that they enjoy the
cultural sides of Queensland. The hotels and resorts and foods are offered according to the
demands of their consumers. Jon is quite creative in his approach, and he believes in using
technological interventions for better results. This entrepreneur believes that his leadership
could influence the mindset of the employees in his company.
Approach and Attitude toward Risk
Risk-taking could be titled as the main part of any entrepreneurial ventures. There are
many types of risks in establishing a business idea other than only financial risks. One might
have to face many challenges while giving shape to their entrepreneurial thoughts. Now the

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basic difference between an entrepreneurial and other persons lies in the attitude and
approach for risk-taking (Read et al. 2016). There could be an economic risk as one is trying
to introduce something new in the market. The venture may fail, and that may cause huge
financial loss. Other than that, an individual might have to put his reputation at risk for his
entrepreneurship efforts. In spite of all these, the success of an entrepreneurial endeavour
depends on the risk calculation. The entrepreneurs have to present himself as a calculated
risk-taker. It is the task of this person to apply figure out how he can reduce the risk in each
step. The entrepreneur must not be afraid of taking the risk.
The business ventures of Jon Tarrant shows his positive attitude towards work and
risk. He believes that the entrepreneur is a calculated risk-taker. To improve the business
scope, one has to accept challenges in their field. Therefore, risk-taking is necessary though it
is not possible to resolve every risk positively. Reducing risk could help the company
operations to gain more feasibility. According to Jon's perception, the risks are the factors
that give a chance for a company to grow. All the good leaders are risk-takers, and the
entrepreneurs have to have leadership traits. This entrepreneur has announced developing
another brand of its own named as "Global Explorer." Through this project, the company is
taking a risk in expanding its business to the international market. Jon says, "As a company,
we've spent the last 10 years building our business to where it is now, and to take it to the
next level we've taken on a major overseas investor" (goldcoastbulletin.com.au, 2018).
Goals and Aspirations
Aspirations and goals setting are necessary for any business venture. The entrepreneur
must have a clear idea of his aims and missions. This is the thing that will keep him moving
towards a specific and right direction. Targets should always be set at high so that there
would always be an upward movement. Business goals are defined before starting any
venture. One's aspirations are the medium for choosing the right business. According to

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Wang and Chugh (2015), the entrepreneurial goals need to meet personal interest to make it a
success and stay motivated throughout. The framework of a business is set according to the
target the entrepreneur sets. Company goals are set by the owner and that is communicated
with the employees so that they could work towards the set objectives. The aspirations of the
entrepreneur should not be confined to financial profit gaining. The work should influence
the lives of other people related to the business or company.
As an entrepreneur, Jon is very specific about his future goals for the business. The
company has already launched a number of brands of its own. Now Jon is going to expand
his business is a larger platform and go international. This company is using advanced
technology to achieve its targets in less time. The CEO has the aspiration of making the
company a one-go platform for travelers all over the world. Till now it has been organizing
travel arrangement within Australia. Recently the company is arranging trips to Africa and
Los Vegas. This new venture by Jon Tarrant is a step towards the goal of business
internationalization. The company also targets to provide ultimate comfort and convenience
to its customers. They could have their personalized travel guides in the site who provide
them schemes according to their budget and interest. Company revenue has increased in the
past few years as Jon has been able to set realistic short and long term goals for his company.
The company is now trying to use artificial technology more into its business.
Adaptability Skills
New interventions in various fields and changing lifestyles of people causes a change
in the nature of demand and supply chain. For an entrepreneur need to have adaptability skill
to achieve competitive advantage. These adaptability skills enrich the outlook of the
entrepreneur towards new innovations. Changes may happen in the market, customer
demands or other environmental factors in the business world. Adaptability actually helps the
entrepreneur keep on going irrespective of the adverse condition (Wach 2015). Most of the

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time, it is seen that a business venture starts well but could not sustain the success for a long
time because of the lack of adaptability skills of the owner. Specifically, the changes that
happened after social media popularization has influenced the marketing aspect of business
the most. Some of the entrepreneurs find it difficult to adapt to the It and social media
advancements in their ventures. That has resulted in some adverse situation for their business.
But this is not the case with Jon Tarrant as his company has always welcomed the changes
with a strategic solution. LeisureCom is the company that could challenge any other
organization in its market in technological adaptation. The company is also going to
introduce new brands that would address the newly developed need of the customers. In the
age of the internet and information, the consumers want a more personalized experience, and
that is provided by this organization at its best.
Justification of Jon Tarrant as an entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship, as a trait, encompasses a number of qualities and challenges in it.
After understanding the business attitude of Jon Tarrant, it could be said that he has most of
the traits of an entrepreneur in him. The first trait is the ability to take risks in business.
LeisureCom was established by the duo at the time when the tourism industry was quite
competitive. Jon and his partner Rebecca took the risk of founding an online platform for
travelers with unique facilities for their consumers. Another trait of this man is recognizing
the opportunity and working on it to give it higher perspectives. Jon Tarrant has analyzed the
scope of his business expansion at an international level. The Leisure group has launched
their brands that would deal with international clients and arrange tours in places other than
Australia. Jon is also an influential leader to his employees. It is because of the
entrepreneurial traits of Jon and Rebecca that this company, with all its innovative business
process, has gained such high results in the market.

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Conclusion and Recommendations
Entrepreneurship is defined as the process of Launching, designing and running a new
business. The entrepreneurs are the calculated risk-takers. Risk being an integral part of
entrepreneurship, a successful entrepreneur must have a positive attitude towards the
challenges. They recognize the opportunities in the risk and turn them into high profitable
business ideas. Jon Tarrant and Rebecca Tarrant jointly stated their business venture
LeisruCom in 2006, and they have developed it quite impressively in short time span. The
discussion examines the entrepreneurial ability of Jon Tarrant with respect to entrepreneurial
theories. The goals and targets of the entrepreneur keep him going for higher achievements.
The creativity and innovative approach is another important aspect of entrepreneurial
characters that is undeniably present in Jon’s personality. Customers of this company enjoy
facilities like having discounts in hotels, personalized suggestions for trip activities and
online solutions of their quires and demands. Some recommendations for further
development of entrepreneurial traits could be suggested.
Jon has tried his entrepreneur skills to start and develop a single company. Therefore,
this entrepreneur could start serial entrepreneurship. In serial entrepreneurship, the individual
with competence could come up with frequent and new business ideas to invest in different
industries. LeisureCom Travel Company is expanding its business at the international level,
and it has implied modern technology in its operations. Therefore, Jon could invest his
creative ideas in developing a business related to IT or any other stream of business. In this
way, he could be able to reduce the cost for his present business and as well as could achieve
profits from other businesses as well.
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Reference List
Dimitratos, P., Johnson, J.E., Plakoyiannaki, E. and Young, S., 2016. SME
internationalization: How does the opportunity-based international entrepreneurial culture
matter?. International Business Review, 25(6), pp.1211-1222.
goldcoastbulletin.com.au (2018), Gold Coast tourism company LeisureCom prepares to
launch a global brand, available at
https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/news/gold-coast/gold-coast-tourism-company-
leisurecom-prepares-to-launch-global-brand/news-story/
98138fd04dad5a59b0d9190400bd392b
leisure.com.au (2019), leisure.com, available at http://www.leisure.com.au/
Mishra, C.S. and Zachary, R.K., 2015. The theory of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship
research journal, 5(4), pp.251-268.
Read, S., Sarasvathy, S., Dew, N. and Wiltbank, R., 2016. Effectual entrepreneurship.
Routledge.
Terjesen, S., Hessels, J. and Li, D., 2016. Comparative international entrepreneurship: A
review and research agenda. Journal of Management, 42(1), pp.299-344.
Wach, K., 2015. Entrepreneurial orientation and business internationalization process: The
theoretical foundations of international entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial Business and
Economics Review, 3(2), pp.9-24.
Wang, C.L. and Chugh, H., 2015. Entrepreneurial learning: past research and future
challenges. In Entrepreneurial learning (pp. 11-44). Routledge.

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Wry, T. and York, J.G., 2017. An identity-based approach to social enterprise. Academy of
Management Review, 42(3), pp.437-460.
Yitshaki, R. and Kropp, F., 2016. Motivations and opportunity recognition of social
entrepreneurs. Journal of Small Business Management, 54(2), pp.546-565.

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Appendix
Questionnaire for the interview of Jon Tarrant
1. What according to you, is Entrepreneurship, and what are the traits of an
entrepreneur?
2. What is your attitude towards taking a risk in business?
3. What is the opportunity that you have used in your business in the past few years?
4. What are the new ventures in your business?
5. What makes your venture different from others in the travel industry?