Successful entrepreneur

Successful entrepreneur:

1. You come from a line of people who couldn't work for someone else. I don't mean that in a negative way. People who are successful at establishing their own business tend to have had parents who worked for themselves. It's usually easier to get a job with a company than to start your own business; people who strike out on their own often have the direct example of a parent to look to.

2.
You're a lousy employee. No need to sugar-coat this one. People who start their own businesses tend to have been fired from or quit more than one job. I'm not saying you were laid off for lack of work or transitioned from one job to a better-paying one — you were cut loose, or you quit before they could fire you. Think of it as the marketplace telling you that the only person who can effectively motivate and manage you is yourself.

3.
You see more than one definition of "job security." I'm truly envious of the few people I know who've stayed with one employer for 25 or 30 years. They look incredibly secure. But how many people do you know who are able to stay with one company for that long? In a rapidly changing economy, job security can be frighteningly fleeting.

Here's how one self-employed person I know puts it: "If I work for someone and my boss screws up, or decides he doesn't like me, or runs the company into the ground or any number of other things, then I'm out of a job. My security is tied to that one guy, that one company. But if a client decides they don't like me, or they go out of business or whatever, I've still got the security of all the other customers I have."

Or, to paraphrase one business observer (I think it was Dilbert), "It's way better to have 100 idiot clients than to have one idiot boss."

4.
You've gone as far as you can go, or you're not going anywhere at all. Sometimes the motivation to start a new venture comes from having reached the top of the pile where you are, looking around, and saying, "What's next?" Early success can be wonderful, but early retirement can sometimes drive energetic and motivated people totally batty.

On the other hand, the drive to build something new can also come from deciding that you're stuck in the middle instead of at the top. Fear of stagnation can be a powerful motivator, especially if you have an idea for something that could be at least more interesting and potentially more lucrative.

Speaking of which . . .

5.
You've done the market research already. Don't even talk to me about your great business idea if you haven't put the time into figuring out if there's a market for your product or service. As the people behind any number of failed Internet ventures will tell you, "cool" doesn't necessarily translate into "profitable." Don't bother building it if you haven't figured out whether there's a good chance the customers will come.

6.
You've got the support of your family. Starting a business is stressful under the best of circumstances. Trying to do it without the support of your spouse or other significant family members or friends would probably be unbearable.

7.
You know you cannot do it alone. You might excel at promoting a business. Maybe you love running the financial end of the enterprise. You could be someone who starts a business because you have unique creative or technical know-how to create a product.


Successful entrepreneur