SECTION ONE

The Issue—
The Assumptions, Myths, and Realities of Entrepreneurship

BEFORE YOU CAN PROPERLY BEGIN to evaluate entrepreneurship, it is critical for you to understand why such an assessment is necessary. In this section, I build upon the introduction and discuss how the American Dream has contributed to delusions about entrepreneurship and how the misconceptions about entrepreneurship, coupled with the absence of a screening process, have led to staggering statistics regarding success and failures of business (hint: there are a lot more of the latter). I also introduce you to the basis of the evaluations you will be performing in this book—a two-way evaluation where you assess both your fit for entrepreneurship as well as its fit for you—as part of your Entrepreneur Equation.