Entrepreneurship Defined

I spend much of my time working with entrepreneurs. Many are successful, and many are wannabes. I’ve come to believe that so many new businesses go belly up in just a few years because the owners want to be entrepreneurs but have never taken the time to understand what it means.

Here is what it means to be an entrepreneur.

1. NO ONE CARES: No one cares what your title was or what you used to do in corporate. All they care about is how you can help them.
2. IT’s ALL ON YOU: As an entrepreneur, no one will get your coffee. There are no huge sales teams to work for you or big marketing departments to create for you. It’s all up to you.
3. SURPRISE, you don’t know everything. If you’re not willing to make mistakes and learn from every one of them, then you should not become an entrepreneur.
4. LEARNING NEVER STOPS: You need to learn every day. You must be committed to adding new skills and improving old ones. This leads us to,
5. THE WISDOM OF MISTAKES: You will always underestimate the time, money, and effort required to roll out your idea/product. Your progress will never move as fast as you think it will. You will always be tight on money and initially never work as focused or complex as you should.
6. BUSINESS PLANS: Write a business plan. All successful entrepreneurs have taken the time to write a business plan. Do some research, look for loopholes in your idea, and always be on the lookout for potential changes and improvements. It should be your roadmap for success. And know this. If you go to a potential investor or bank today, one of the first things you will be asked is, where is your business plan? Investors want to know that you’ve put some time into your idea and thought it through.
7. EXPECT CHANGE, and MORE CHANGE: Be flexible and be ready to change. The idea you start with will seldom be the idea/product/service you end with. If your ego won’t allow you to be flexible with your plan, then get a job at a convenience store.
8. BE READY FOR CRITICISM: You had better grow a thick skin. In other words, be ready for the naysayers, the critics, the doomsday orators, and particularly negative family members. You have to believe in your vision passionately. No matter what anyone says, believe in it. Again, how can you expect anyone else to be if you are not passionate about it? Believe me, if you are the least bit doubtful yourself, potential investors, bankers, advisors, board members, and spouses can see, feel and smell your doubt.
9. LEARN TO SELL: To some of you reading this, you might say that sales are a dirty word and that you’re above being seen as a salesperson. No matter how you feel about being called a salesperson, you had better get over it and learn to be one. If you don’t like it, tough. Shut up, stop whining, put your entrepreneurial idea on the shelf, and be happy that you once had a good idea.

Every phase of being an entrepreneur includes selling: selling partners, selling bankers, selling investors, selling customers, and family. An investor just won’t talk to you if you don’t have a business plan. Do whatever you must to learn to sell or to hone your sales and communication skills.

Look, the world doesn’t owe you anything, but you owe it to the world, yourself, and generations to come to bring your idea to the light and work very hard to reveal its value.

Make it happen, and maybe—just maybe—you will change the world, or at least your world.