On Entrepreneurship

Seth Kravitz (2010) offers the following list of questions that every perspective entrepreneur should ask themselves before embarking on an enterprise of their own:

1. I am willing to lose everything.
2. I embrace failure.
3. I am always willing to do tedious work.
4. I can handle watching my dreams fall apart.
5. Even if I am puking my guts out with the flu and my mother passed away last week, there is nothing that will keep me from being ready to work.
6. My relationship/marriage is so strong, nothing work related could ever damage it.
7. My family doesn’t need an income.
8. This is a connected world and I don’t need alone time. I want to be reachable 24/7 by my employees, customers, and business partners.
9. I like instability and I live for uncertainty.
10. I don’t need a vacation for years at a time.
11. I accept that not everyone likes my ideas and that it’s quite likely that many of my ideas are garbage.
12. If I go into business with friends or family, I am OK with losing that relationship forever if things end badly.
13. I don’t have existing anxiety issues and I handle stress with ease.
14. I am willing to fire or layoff anyone no matter what how good of a friend they are, if they are my own sibling, if they just had a baby, if they have worked with me for 20 years, if their spouse also just lost their job, if I know they might end up homeless, if they have cancer but no outside medical insurance, or any other horrible scenario millions of bosses and HR people have faced countless times.
15. I am OK with being socially cut-off and walking away from my friends when work beckons.
16. I love naysayers and I won’t explode or give-up when a family member, friend, customer, business associate, partner, or anyone for that matter tells me my idea, product, or service is a terrible idea, a waste of time, will never work, or that I must be a moron.
17. I accept the fact that I can do everything right, can work 70 hours a week for years, can hire all the right people, can arrange amazing business deals, and still lose everything in a flash because of something out of my control.
18. I accept that I may hire people that are much better at my job than I am and I will get out of their way.
19. I realize and accept that I am wrong ten times more than I am right.
20. I am willing to walk away if it doesn’t work out.

My personal experiences with being my own boss over the past 18 years causes me to endorse all of the above questions as pertinent considerations. In the mean time, I have no regrets with my decision back in 1992 to go out on my own. You can learn all about what I do in private practice by clicking here.

Source: Kravitz, S (2010, February 25), Part 7: Is this Worth It? (Updated), SecondCityCEO.