Transcript
Today, I’m going to talk about something that is near and dear to my own heart because of my own experience with it. I’m going to talk about the simple fact that entrepreneurship or being an entrepreneur isn’t actually for everyone.
There is a huge push right now in the world to do your own thing and start your own company and be your own boss, and as an entrepreneur and as an entrepreneurial person, I love that idea, and I think it’s absolutely right for some people.
However, for a lot of people, it’s not the right choice.
They’re not going to be happy in it, and that’s something I want to talk about today because I think you can get kind of drunk on the possibility of being an entrepreneur and not really think about the reality of it.
I’m just going to use for an example here my husband. He is a very smart person. He has his MBA and his PMP, Project Management Professional certification. He has about 15 years in IT. He’s a super-smart guy.
About not quite ten years ago, I was really pushing him to start a business where he was helping small business owners work on their computers because he is so techie and he gets it. “That’s what he should do, and then we could both have our own businesses, and it would be amazing. We could go on vacation whenever we wanted. It would be awesome, right?”
We did it, and I pushed because, frankly, that’s who I am. I see an idea, and I push and push and push, and my husband is very nice and agreeable for the most part.
Finally, after several months of us not really getting anywhere, but me not letting it go, my right-hand person – every entrepreneur knows and loves their right-hand employee – Erin called me into her office.
I actually got called into an office of an employee. That’s the way I roll.
She said, “Hey! I want you to think about it. Is this your dream or Chris’ dream?”
It’s my dream, but I’m like, “Well, I think it’s our dream.”
And she’s like, “Really? Really, you think you’re both having the same dream?”
I’m like, “No, not really.”
When you flat-out call me on it, of course, I can own that it’s me pushing him into it.” You know, he has ambitions for certain entrepreneurial things, but it’s like he is not the guy who wants to strike out and create something new and have everything riding on him. That is not his wiring.
He is way better at a million things than me, but I am way better at taking risks than him, and I’m way better at being pretty sure I know everything, which is kind of a big part of being an entrepreneur because you make a lot of decisions. And you have to be comfortable making those, because at the end of the day if you make a bad decision, you’re the one paying for it – not anyone else. A little control freak can happen.
I just want to say you can be a smart, wonderful, capable, intelligent, super-dynamic, awesome person and you don’t need to be an entrepreneur.
There are many companies that want to hire entrepreneurial-minded people. Many, many companies. Many of my Rikka Brandon clients want to hire entrepreneurial-minded people who don’t actually want to start their own thing.
Don’t become an entrepreneur if it’s not truly your passion. You can find companies to encourage & support you and let you have those ideas. One of my clients said, “I love this company. They give you enough rope to hang yourself twice.” You have to be entrepreneurial-minded to find that to be a good thing!
Anyway, I just wanted to do this public service announcement. There's nothing wrong with not being wired to be an entrepreneur – don’t fit a square peg into a round hole unless it’s what you truly want.
I hope this helps!
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