So WHY do we want to Embark on an Entrepreneur’s Adventure?
You don’t have to. Becoming an entrepreneur should be an informed and crafted choice
“Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career!”
Earl Nightengale
This particular adventure is not for everyone, a theme I will return to again and again. I will also continually emphasize ensuring that people make a mindful choice and execute correctly to get what they really want. I should make clear that I have a particular definition of what an entrepreneur is, which I will discuss more extensively in a future article. Simply, I mean creating and growing a business that involves more than just one person.
I emphasize these critical points as nearly everything else you will read will be unbridled exhortations to “just do it” as the aging Nike adage says. There is a surfeit of engaging encouragement for people - everyone evidently - to become entrepeneurs. I read variations of the echoism “Hardly any jobs are secure any more so you might as well work for yourself” everywhere. Here an example of this type of entreaty from one of my favourite observers of modern work life, Scott Galloway (2019)
I think Scott is feathering the bed here, but his comments are the tip of an massive marketing iceberg emboldening you to take the leap, it’s so easy, just follow my models and ideas, et al. Of course, there often is a pretty price to be paid for all this “advice”. Just click here to receive my discounted rate to newcomers and join us…. You know the rest. Entrepreneurial corn is what I call it. I will have my take on the insidious deception of this corn soon.
I’m not ignoring the variety of existential threats to work in our current digital era: the changing nature of jobs and business organizations, automation and digitization of many job categories, older people over-staying in senior positions and the wholesale creation of entirely new job types. What can you do? In my experience, you shouldn’t become an entrepreneur solely because of external societal or economic factors, or that you watched a compelling series of video clips on Youtube or TikTok. As per the quote at the top of this article, if one is anxious in terms in vocation and income, there are many other things besides being an entrepreneur to consider in finding the calling or career that is right for you. Maybe you really do want a regular job. Maybe a change in type of employment. Maybe it is a different vocational direction. Maybe a change in employers.
Depending on your age and life responsibilities, you can follow Scott and just try it. I know several of what I call one shot entrepreneurs. They tried it, didn’t like it and successfully went back to the standard world of work. And that’s OK.
A quick break for me to recommend my absolute favourite publication on Substack: The Free Press. I love the range of independent viewpoints on today’s news. Click here to give it a try. Now back to the Entrepreneur’s Adventure
Early morning, where I have writing for the past week or so - my current adventure - our annual refresher to San Pancho, Mexico.
But a subset of people really love entrepreneurship and spend most or all of their vocational life as entrepreneurs. I did. My perspective is that the entrepreneurial adventure is unlike any other type of human adventure in that - if you do it right - you get to custom craft your adventure, tailoring it to just how you want it. If it isn’t then why are you doing it?
Consider people’s motivations for becoming entrepreneurs. Illinformed social commentators assume that people only start businesses for one reason: to make outsized incomes. That can be true if you are really successful and, for some, income is a primary motivation. But most of the entrepreneurs I know - myself included - started and continued for many other reasons, usually several together. Here are just a few:
To be independent to focus on their creativity
To be autonomous and make their own decisions
To work with friends and/or family
To follow their own values and norms
To create a certain vision they want to bring to the world
To capitalize on a certain trend in products and services that they want to be involved with
To control their own or their business organization’s work lifestyle and work / life balance
To help make a certain societal change(s)
To challenge oneself
To work broadly across business functions, instead of being specialized
You can also add whatever core elements are important to you. For instance, I like to be continually challenged intellectually so I kept changing the services my consulting firms offered. Let’s use starting a restaurant to exemplify further what I mean. One person, who loves creating new dishes, might open a bistro that does nothing but daily fresh sheets, or offers menus that change with the seasons. Another person likes getting the ambience and dining experience just right, so opens a high end grill that emphasizes its décor, lighting and outstanding service. A third wants to feature their mother’s home cooking at a diner, ensuring each dish is perfect and the same quality every day. The variations are endless.
So the answer to the question about WHY should we embark on the entrepreneur’s adventure is inside each one of us. It is about YOU. Your ability to know yourself. What type of vocational adventure do you want to create for yourself, as the adventure is as much inward as outward. I have named this process the Sorting Out stage of becoming an entrepreneur. I use a stage model of an entrepreneur’s evolution, easily remembered as Verbs that all start with “S” : Sorting Out, Starting, Stabilizing, Sustaining, and Succeeding on your terms. Sorting out is critical in my view, as what is frequently ignored is that becoming an entrepreneur is a major life change process. You need to start right to get it right. These stages are the focus of TRUpreneur.
The next set of blogs will cover issues that I consider to be important in the sorting out stage, including:
What type of people are usually unsuccessful as entrepreneurs
What is an entrepreneur and what about solopreneurs, subcontractors, etc.
Tell me about Start Ups and other tales of myth from Silicon Valley
What do you mean by Entrepeneurial Corn and why is it important to avoid
The persisting myths about Passive Income and its relationship to successful entrepreneurship
The pros and cons of Side Hustling
My take on the personal characteristics that makes a successful entrepreneur
Join me on this particular adventure of mine which might help you with yours.