Being an entrepreneur is the best job. You’re under your power, creating your vision and organizing your own team. There’s nothing like creating a vision for a product, service, or charity; it doesn’t matter what it is. Whatever you are passionate about drives the effort. When you can design, model, and engineer it to address or function in areas you have a high degree of passion, then going to work doesn’t feel like a job. It’s a challenging dynamic, and it requires a constant effort of reinvention, growth, and self-learning. Being an entrepreneur is a mission, and it’s a purpose. But, is it a good job?
Loving What You Do
You’ve got to reach out and find mentors. Hopefuls will have study and research. And typically, in the beginning, before you’ve raised capital, before you have a big team to help, or before a small group expands to become a larger team, it’s never a dull moment. You’re never bored.
Imagine, you’re leaping from one side of the business to the other. And as you become more proficient in more areas and aspects of the company, you start to discover things. As you delegate further and expand to a larger team, you begin to find the things you love to do. You’ll recognize those things you have a natural aptitude for, a high level of interest. And you get to hold on to those things and continue working in those areas of the business. You will learn to delegate to others the other things you are not as passionate about.
Not Loving What You Do
You’ll also discover things you hate or are against your natural hardwiring. Some people want to do something fast-moving and promotional. Or they love the sales side; they’re selling their dream and marketing their dream. What could be more exciting?
But then there are things like bookkeeping, a detailed functioning requirement that can take you days, weeks, or months as you complete a product specification. And it may not be what’s natural for you. It is in these moments when you will rethink whether being an entrepreneur is a good job for you.
You didn’t go to school to be an engineer, but you’ve got to develop a good framework for the spec before you had it off to an engineer. Consistently there may be things you are not much interested in. They may not be natural to you. Some of these things might be tedious and require a lot of painful data crunching. Others take time and an incredible amount of focus. Some entrepreneurial people don’t like that kind of stuff. However, some do! They might not like product marketing at all, though. Know your strengths. And know your weaknesses.
You Get to Be the Boss in the Job as an Entrepreneur
Many like to be entrepreneurs because they can put themselves in the CEO’s seat and be a product, brand, or technology evangelist. They are always presenting, always speaking, and always selling. Well, there’s a lot of painstaking hard work and details behind the selling. You can’t sell only to find out you failed to plan and execute once you get the order.
A good boss must have a good and steady vision from the beginning. The boss must have a kind of spatial thinking to imagine all the inner dependent of the components to bring this vision together. And they also must be able to put all required pieces in place so they fit perfectly. Some of the pieces are pretty big, so putting the pieces all together can be like solving an enormous and complicated jigsaw puzzle. “The boss” might be a great title, but the boss must have the vision.
Know the Risks in Your Entrepreneur Vision
You’ve got to have a clear vision, but you have to be able to see all the independent components that merge in perfect time and sequence to manifest that vision into a reality. Britannica.com has one of the clearest definitions, including all the pieces involved in this lifestyle. Its definition as “a person who organizes, manages, and assumes the risk of a business with the goal of generating economic value,” in a nutshell, is a perfect reflection of what we do.
Moreover, boundless energy is a must because you can never lose momentum. Enthusiasm has got to be driven across to your backers, investment bankers, or your stockholder’s network. Pro collaborators, vendors, and customers need to be enthused. So do the people you may want concessions from. You may need, as an example, specific volume-based pricing earlier in the cycle to help you better manage the economics and reserves.
Know Their Risks in Your Vision
I did a deal once where we made a product that, in the past big six companies had attempted and failed to get consumer adoption in retail. Therefore, investors didn’t want to back a deal they knew didn’t work in retail.
Retailers didn’t want to write purchase orders for a product they knew didn’t work out well in retail. And the manufacturers knew we could have trouble with the backing and the retail, so they didn’t want to take any risks. Extra concessions like payments far in advance were anticipated. They wanted me to take all the risk away from them. It worked out in the end, but it was a fight all the way through.
Being an Entrepreneur is a Good Job, But Know that You Know
The short and long answer to the question, “Is being an entrepreneur a good job? Is, “Yes!” It may seem glamorous, fulfilling, and exciting, but be there no mistake; business is hard.
So know what you’re getting into before you jump in so you can be wise to minimize the work-life balance risks you will inevitably come up against.