Entrepreneur wake-up call . . .

Stop trying to please

 everyone in the world!

Let’s face it, Entrepreneur: You’re a fire-in-the-belly person, and that’s enough heat for any body; you don’t need heartburn too! You’re in business because you believe in your ideas. You’ve stayed in business during this pathetic excuse for an economy because you want to make your ideas work.

Lately, you’ve been getting yourself caught up in trying to please too many other people, and your ideas are taking a hit. You can’t start a fire with a magnifying glass if you keep moving the magnifying glass. Well, you also need the sun. Maybe that’s why rainforests are not exactly a hotbed of entrepreneurial expression and innovation? 

The suggestion bandied about by leading motivational gurus and schools of entrepreneurship that anyone who starts or owns a business must set the world on fire in order to succeed is totally false. Anyone who seeks to succeed as an entrepreneur must have a burning desire to succeed. Period. Here’s a good translation of that point: 

To Thine Own Self Be True!

                                                                             –Shakespeare          

Once you’ve pleased yourself by getting your business idea off the ground, you need to please your customers, employees, partners and financial backers, in order to get your business idea into orbit. Next, you need to please your community and industry or profession, to stay in forward motion.

Oh, right, and please let’s not forget about your family! Without some kind of strong family support, you’ll never be likely to get past the rough spots you’ll bump into along the way. Now, right there, in those last three sentences–look again! There’s enough to fill the lifetime of any entrepreneur. Isn’t that enough? You’re a masochist?

I mean, if you want to torture yourself, go ahead, but I can’t imagine that you would feel you need to please the Chinese Communists, Mexican drug lords, the White House, al-Qaeda terrorists, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Mafia, Lybian and Cuban dictators, “Gangs of New York” or gruesome novelist Stephen King. Whew! Some list, huh?

So if that’s the case, why do you need to please your in-laws? Your teachers? Your neighbors? The shelf-stocker at Staples (“That was easy!”), your dentist (well, okay we really do need to please our dentists!), but you get the idea. Every time you step outside your inner circles of influence, you risk your ideas losing energy and attention.

Nothing kills an entrepreneurial venture quicker

than trying to be all things to all people.

 Be Your Own Hero!   Reality Rules.

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116

  Open minds open doors.

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