Think of being on the deck

                                                   

of a boat in a storm

                                        

in the ocean. 

     Can ever there be a more challenging career than owning and running your own business? 

     You start out with an idea.  You add soil, sunlight and water.  POOF!  You take the idea and run with it.  You start to innovate by mapping your idea all the way through to completion, execution, implementation, activation.  You think it.  You plan it.  You do it! 

     You follow your idea and push your innovative thinking until others actually start to buy or buy into your product(s) and/or service(s).  At some point, presumably when startup or take-it-to-the-next-level funding is needed, you become convinced of the need for a formal business plan.

     Ah, the business plan.  Separating the dreamers and wishers from the realists is the almighty business plan!  If you’ve prepared one or more of these, you can stop reading here; you know what comes next! 

     If you’ve never done a business plan, don’t think, first of all, that you’re going to knock one out over the weekend.  Good business plans (i.e., those that succeed at stoking investor wallets) usually take months, some I know of have taken years. 

     Why?  Because when you are starting a business, you find out in a hurry that you must make constant, typically daily (sometimes hourly) changes in direction.  Costs change.  Suppliers change.  Facilities change.  Human, technical, and equipment resource needs change.  Regulations and legalities change.  Funding sources change.  The weather changes.  The competition changes.  The marketplace changes.  The economy changes.  Your personal life changes.  So, guess what?  Your idea has to change too!

     Entrepreneurs—not corporate, political or government gurus—are the only true agents of change!  Think of being on the deck of a boat in a storm in the ocean.  You want a captain who does things by the book or the way they’ve always been done or in order to gain the crew’s devotion? . . . or someone who knows how to go with the flow?

     Other people, places and events will shift the dynamics of your pursuits.  If you disregard, disrespect, gloss over, or ignore these shifting sands and tides, you do so at your own peril.  And you increase the odds of your great venture becoming one of those five hundred trillion brainchild businesses that open every week in every town and inevitably end up choking on their great idea because the owner(s)/founder(s) failed to adapt to the changes happening around them. 

     But, hey, that’s part of the excitement of entrepreneurship, yes?  Show me a business that has that ability to stop and turn on a dime, and I’ll guarantee you it’s not an established corporate or government entity.  But having the ability and using it are two different things.  Not unlike having a creative idea but not doing enough homework to innovate and actually see it through. 

     So what’s the magic ingredient that sets entrepreneurs apart from corporate and government types?  Attitude.  A burning desire kind of belief in one’s own self and ideas and goals.  Receptivity and open-mindedness, but with tunnel vision.  Self-motivation and stick-to-it-iveness.  Willingness to take reasonable risks.           halalpiar      

____________________________________________________________

BE A CO-AUTHOR!  ENTER YOUR OWN 7-WORDS OR LESS TACK-ON to the “billboard discipline” story started 22 posts ago. The next 7 words could be yours!