This heading seems rather odd. If it is true, then where would that leave the rest of us? Some people do start their entrepreneurship way early in their age. As young as pre-school they are already at it looking for opportunity to make some pocket money. According to Matt Heaton (mattheaton.com), CEO of bluehost.com, 5-10% of the people that he met would qualify as the ‘entrepreneur type’. He said, “These are the people that stand in the line at the bank or at McDonalds and look at inefficiencies and say to themselves, ‘I can do this better!'”
So where does that leave the rest of the 90% of people? No chance at succeeding in doing their own startups? Not really. It is just that they have not been on the lookout for small business opportunities perhaps due to various factors. It could be their current job and pay is already very high and to startup their own business requires too much effort that they find it is not necessary. They would rather enjoy their free time with the high pay they are receiving. Ok, that’s all and well if you are getting a very high salaried job.
But if your pay is mediocre, or worse subsistence level, enough to scrape by on a daily basis, or your job environment is not a happy one with always somebody playing you out with office politics or picking you to put you down in front of your colleagues; then is about time you should take a hard look at yourself and see whether you have what it takes to become an entrepreneur.
For somebody who has been an employee all their life, to change your mindset of that of an employee to an entrepreneur takes some doing. It requires unwiring many of the negative thoughts that were put into your mind, an optimistic attitude will help keep it going and with good judgment it will move on smoothly. To unwire your mind takes some doing because you have been swimming in a swimming pool and now you are pluck out from the relative safety of a control environment and now thrown into the deep blue sea. To tread water on your own in the raging sea of running your very own business enterprise seems rather risky with many things to consider, and in some case you are like leaving the comfort zone of a monthly fix salary.
That’s perhaps why most people take the easy way out. Get a job that gives you a fix pay, do your job as best as you can. Get reprimanded for making mistakes sometimes made by you, sometimes through no fault of yours, and sometimes get blamed for other people’s mistake. Is that the easy way out of getting your comfortable fix pay?
I think not.
But it takes a sudden change in your situation, a sudden jolt of enlightenment when you wake up from your so called comfortable slumber and tell yourself, “Hey, I don’t have to live and work like this. I can do something about it; I can work for myself instead of for my boss. I can do things better, I have the skill, the knowledge, so what’s keeping me from taking off?â€
In truth working for yourself is no less the riskier than working for somebody. You can get fired from your job; you can get laid off if the company doesn’t do well. After all, who started the company in the first place? Some entrepreneur, who had some great idea, saw some opportunity and took advantage of it and after some years of growth and business development became successful. Along came you, and you decided the company looks good with its shiny polished exterior, and with its good reputation, you decided to sign up with them to get a regular paycheck.
And so you make the owner of the company to become richer as you become part of their cog in their business machinery. But now you need to uncog yourself and take charge of your own life and your own vision. You will need to set yourself a goal. Objectives are good because it gives you a sense of direction. Without a compass in your life, it is like walking aimlessly lost in the Amazon jungle, not knowing how to move on and get out of the corporate jungle.
So take some time off to think, as you take your next coffee break and think about your life direction. Set up a definite plan and checklist and find out what you can do for yourself. There is no more such thing as loyalty to the company anymore these days as the number of companies that really look after their employee is getting less and less, most of the loyalty program they are doing is only for their own benefit and not so much for their employees. The only loyalty now is to your family and yourself. But of course as long as you work for them for their paycheck, you are to follow their every rule, but you know where your life direction stands.
So look around, and explore your options. And when you are ready to make the big step onto the brave new world of entrepreneurship, don’t look back, only forge forward. Entrepreneurs are not just only born, they are also made too, only if you want to. Onward, ho!