Questionable reasons to become an entrepreneur #1 – My friend did it, so can I

By Rajesh Setty on Wed 19 Dec 2007, 6:05 PM - View Comments

When you watch someone you know take the plunge and become an entrepreneur, it seems like may be you can do it too. What is “visible” is only the “actions” taken by this person (like writing a business plan, meeting with investors, raising money, incorporating, creating product, getting early customers, getting media attention…). It may be tempting to see that you can “copy” the actions taken by this person and repeat the process and you can be successful too.

However, upon close observation you will also notice that there are a ton of things that are “invisible” about this person. These may include but not limited to the person’s

* history
* network
* knowledge
* skills
* support (especially family and friends)
* drive
* self-esteem

and so on.

While the actions can be copied, the “sort of invisible” attributes are hard to copy.

These attributes are not exclusive to the other person. You probably have all these attributes and a healthy dose of them too. However, the make-up of these attributes in that person’s case may be “right” for life as an entrepreneur and in your case they may not be.

The wisdom is to recognize this early enough so that you can avoid suffering later.

Happy holidays to all of you.

Note:

Next in the same series: #2 – You want to get out of the box