3 or 4 things I have learned in my short time as an Entrepreneur…
Many people come out once they have “made it” and say things about entrepreneurship that inspire us all to want to quit our jobs and run out and start businesses. Well, here’s one from the other angle… Not to discourage, but just to balance the information scales with a dose of realism…
Firstly, a disclaimer: I have not “made it” – YET, but I believe success is around the corner. (At that point 20% rolled their eyes and left.) And that is one of the first things I learned about Entrepreneurship: 1) Your belief-system has to be able to conceive of results that have not materialized yet – this we knew already. However, what I would like to add to the discourse – and this often goes unsaid – is that you must be the type of person who is able to survive in an environment where at times you do not even have a clue where or how a solution to your immediate challenge will emerge from. The human brain does not deal well with uncertainty, so it takes a specific kind of person to be able to thrive in a setting where, at least at the beginning, there is cosmic-sized uncertainty – DAILY. “Cosmic” in the sense that it can tank your business. “Uncertainty” in the sense that you literally don’t have any solution today, but are somehow sure that there will be one tomorrow. Personally, growing up Christian hard-wired me to be able to see what is commonly termed “risk” as an opportunity for the “unimaginable to occur”, because isn’t that what “faith” (“the evidence of things not seen”) is all about?
2) The second thing I realized (a little too late for my own purposes, but anyway, *sigh*) is that there is NOTHING WRONG WITH EMPLOYMENT. In the city were I live, on the continent actually, when asked “What do you do?”, it seems to have become immensely popular to be able to lift one’s nose in the air – ever so slightly – and respond: “I run my own business” or (even better) “I’m doing my own thing”. Then, just being able to watch the waves of admiration role into the other interlocutor’s eyes, makes all the stress and hardship of entrepreneurship worth it, right? Wrong! It’s a trap people. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being an employee. When did working for a company become less desirable than being self-employed? I suppose with beating the old “1-in-3-businesses-fail-in-the-first-5-years” statistic comes a certain amount of bragging rights – and deservedly so. BUT you have to get past 5 years first, and those 5 years can be both very rewarding as well as frustrating – oh, not to mention poverty-stricken (*hand-over-face*). Furthermore, those 5 years can actually end up being 7, 10 or 12 years.
3) Thirdly, a strong support system is critical. Now we all know support can take on many forms – which is the most important? They are ALL important: Moral, emotional, strategic, financial, etc… I would even say that going into business alone is tougher. I am fortunate to have a like-minded, “like-principled” business partner that has become family (not ‘like family’ but ACTUALLY family). I have often noticed a phenomenon over the years where we will take turns “propping each other up” and engaging in positive self-talk, kind of how good hype-men get an artist and an audience psyched and then go right back to our insurmountable challenge and conquer it. Obviously having a partner, requires trust and all that stuff and no person is perfect therefore no relationship – business or other – will ever be 100% drama-free. But, in my in case, the value has out-weighed the drama a hundred-fold. I suspect I may have given up, had it not been for that support. There is other support I have enjoyed, from my wife, from my mom, my family and in-laws, from friends, all of whom I probably owe money – I can’t thank everyone enough…
4) The successes are short-lived. The other day I found myself wallowing a little bit (yes there is room for that) and asking myself WHY every day seems to be so difficult. I quickly snapped of it because a thought came to me: “that is the life that you have chosen”. While life is already unpredictable generally speaking, it is even more so in entrepreneurship. It seems the bigger the victory you win today the greater the hurdle you will have to overcome tomorrow. At first, this was difficult to grasp – that there are no “rest days” – but eventually it became tacitly understood until we even started to relish the bad hands we were dealt. Employment does not prepare you for entrepreneurship, unfortunately, and I found that my ability to cope with self-employment had been greatly hamstrung, by years of schooling, university and jobs which prepared me very well for being on a company payroll, but not this. A lot of what I thought I knew had to be unlearned.
If you are thinking of quitting your job to start your “own thing”, I hope I haven’t rained on your parade, that wasn’t the aim. I don’t think I can go back into employment now, the rewards of venturing out are great but there is nothing wrong with employment.
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