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Do you want to be an Entrepreneur?

You’re thinking about starting your own business, but are you really sure you want to be an entrepreneur?

The dream sounds good. Start with nothing, and create a business known the world over and retire next year when you’re brought by the large corporation worried about your pesky business, or maybe you’ll have an IPO instead and keep running your business to world domination.

You probably know the the stories of Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs and many others starting with nothing to create successful businesses. Gates & Dell dropping out of school to pursue their dreams, why not you?

Running a company is not for everyone. There I said it. That should not be a surprise, but people often appear offended when I say that, like I’ve stolen their dreams.

Not everyone is able to be a NFL quarter back, or to play shortstop for the the New York Yankees, and similarly not everyone has the skills and personality it takes to be a CEO.

There have been many articles published about what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur:

Many business fail, not due to an unworkable idea, but because people under estimate what it takes to run a business. Here are something things to keep in mind if you are thinking of starting a business.

  1. It is a lot of hard work

    Even if you’re not doing the GaragePowered thing, don’t think you’ll be putting in an 8 hour day, 5 days a week. As an entrepreneur you’ll be working late into the night and weekends too, and forget about holidays. It won’t be like that all the time, but there will be times you’ll go far beyond what you would do at a regular job, but if you’re passionate about your business the time will pass very quickly.

    If you’re doing the GaragePowered thing, then you’ll be putting in a full days work with your current employer and working on our own business in the evening and weekends, which can be very draining.

    It is important that you have the support of your friends and family, and they understand the demands on your time. The last thing you need is problems at home, when you’re building your business.

  2. Get used to ‘No’

    You’re essentially selling an idea or a dream, to potential investors, employees and customers. Some people won’t get it, or share your vision. That is okay, but get used to hearing ‘No’ you’ll hear it a lot. No I don’t want to invest. No I don’t want to come work with you. No I don’t want to buy your product. Even the most successful business have to go through rounds of rejection.

  3. It’s okay to fail

    Working in cubicle the mind frame is often to avoid making mistakes at all costs, you can’t be right all the time. If you’re never failing you’re not taking any risks, in business as in life there are risks every day. As long as you know the risk and potential reward and make a calculated decision, it is ok to fail sometimes.

  4. Ask for help!

    You’ve built up an extensive network of friends over your career and now that you’ll out on your own make sure you tap into it. Whether you have to pay for the help or call in some favors, there are some things other people will do better than you, and even if you think you can do everything, there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

  5. It’s your business

    You can listen to all the advice you want, but at the end of the day you have to be willing to make a decision and standby it, whatever the outcome. You can only make decisions based on the information at hand, and if the decision is wrong, that’s okay as long as it was the best decision with the information you had.

    Remember deciding to do nothing is actually making a decision, and often worse than taking one of the other options.

  6. You can succeed

    Despite the tough road, you can succeed as many before you have done, but you must believe that you can, otherwise there is little hope of success.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Entrepreneur. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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