excerpt from Entrepreneur’s Companion, volume 1.
Being an entrepreneur isn’t about your personality, but what you’re willing to do, and what you enjoy doing.
Many people ask, “Am I the kind of person who can become an entrepreneur?” Contrary to popular belief, there’s no one “entrepreneur” personality type. Some are energetic, some sedate. Some have grand, world-changing vision, while others are happy just getting by. But whatever your personality type, you'll have to deal with the realities that make being an entrepreneur different from being an employee.
You’ll have less free time, not more. People won’t work harder than they see you working. If you want them to put in their all, they need to see you putting in at least that much effort. So you’ll often arrive before everyone else and leave later, if only to be a visible example.
You’ll do lots of scut work. You certainly weren’t going to have the employee you’re paying $50,000/year take out the garbage! That would be a waste of his/her time. All the little maintenance jobs you can’t afford to farm out will become yours in the early stages. Let’s hear it for cleaning toilets. Not too glamorous, eh?
You won’t be rich. In fact, you may not even get paid when you’re just starting. And most startups never make it. If you do “make it,” you’ll be rich. But most likely, the first several years will involve much more belt-tightening than you currently do.
You’ll get no direction or feedback. If you need someone to tell you what to do, it won’t happen. If the business feels stalled, it’s because you haven’t taken the next steps. You’ll have to provide your own direction, your own goals, and your own feedback.
Failure will reflect on no one but you. When you’re the founder, the buck stops with you. The upside is that you’ll understand exactly why the bozo running the shop makes those absurd decisions. The downside is that you’ll be that bozo.
It can be scary to be the final decision-maker. When things go wrong, it’s tempting to blame “the market” or “the economy” or other things outside the walls of the company. But face reality: you’re the founder. If you don’t anticipate and respond to “the economy” problems, you’re still out of business. Even if the blame is external, the consequences fall squarely on your shoulders.
You will still have a boss, but not a helpful one, and one you can’t escape. You won’t have a boss in the formal sense, but if you take money from banks or investors, you are legally obligated to give them a return on their money. And unlike a normal job, you can’t just decide to quit if the going gets too rough.
You’ll do a lousy job. You’ll be doing everything at the beginning. And unless you’re good at everything, some things, you’ll do poorly1. So even if you’re an overachiever, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll regularly come face-to-face with your own incompetence.
So consider just a few of the things you’ll be responsible for and ask yourself where your incompetence will come to the fore:
- Managing the books
- Raising the money to start up
- Filing payroll taxes
- Hiring employees
- Motivating employees
- Firing employees
- Attracting and selling customers
- Delivering your product or service
You’ll have to trust others. You may be lousy at many of the things on that list, but you will make up for it by hiring people who are good at them. However, you’ll have to trust those people to do their job, especially when you disagree with them. Sharing control with a management team is hard for those of us used to having control.
You’ll be responsible for many others’ lives. Far from being free, you’ll become responsible for the lives and careers of your employees. You can try ignoring the responsibility (“If they don’t like my style, they can leave”), but you’ll discover the cost of low morale and turnover will eventually force you into the responsibility. You thought raising a family was a lot of work…you’ll be raising a family and a batch of employees and their families.
Have I discouraged you, yet?
If so, entrepreneurship probably isn’t for you. I’ve just given you words. The real world will throw much more at you. Well-meaning friends will tell you what you’re doing is impossible. Customers won’t buy, or will cause so much trouble that sales are unprofitable. Competitors will appear from nowhere with more money, better products, and salespeople with whiter teeth and bigger smiles than yours. But if you’ve made it this far, let’s look at what you’ll enjoy.
No more performance reviews. If you’ve had a lifetime of report cards, performance reviews, and other evaluations that have measured you with the useless yardstick of an incompetent boss’s opinion, celebrate. As an entrepreneur, the market will be your performance review. It can be cruel, but it’s honest, impartial, and always gives you the feedback in real time. No more waiting six months for an overdue review. (Of course, if you’ve a history of superb performance reviews by thoughtful bosses, you may want to find a way to keep that feedback in your life.)
You get to keep the rewards of your achievements. No business would ever pay you what you were worth; otherwise, it wouldn’t make financial sense for them to hire you. But when you’re an entrepreneur, you’re the one who gets the winning end of that stick. You collect the lion’s share of the reward when the company succeeds. You’re working to make yourself rich, not just some faceless shareholder.
The chance to fly full-speed ahead, unfettered by the mediocrity of others. If you’ve been held back by bosses, or made to jump through hoops to get recognition for the smallest achievements, that’s all behind you. As an entrepreneur, you’ll be able to move as fast as you’re capable. Of course, you want to be sure you’re moving in a worthwhile direction, but you get to set the direction, so at the least, you’ll believe in your destination.
You can think Way Outside the Box. If your ideas fly against conventional wisdom, you can try them anyway. Of course, your staff may well wonder why their boss is so off-the-wall, but if you hire other visionaries, you can reshape the world.
It’s fun! It’s life! Creating a dream and bringing it forth into reality is just a total blast. When you stay connected to your passion, you can work your butt off, get paid nothing, and feel you’re living more fully than you ever dreamt possible! Being an entrepreneur is a form of pure self-expression. Give it a try. The worst that can happen is you’ll fail and go back to your old job. But if you plan well, start with a safety net, tap your passion, and take the plunge, you may well find never again want any life except that of the entrepreneur.