3

Entrepreneurship Is Not One Size Fits All

WE’VE TALKED A BIT ABOUT the faulty entrepreneurship-fits-all assumption. Doesn’t it make sense that if not everyone was meant to earn a living as a singer, race car driver, web programmer, astronaut, or chef, then not everyone was meant to run a business? Why do so many people ignore this perfectly logical conclusion? Why are there thousands of business-success books and virtually no materials (until now) on why you may not be the ideal candidate for entrepreneurship? Why hasn’t there been a screening process for entrepreneurship?

My first theory is that people like to give and receive uplifting advice. Let’s face it—our society is built upon blowing smoke up each others’ asses (in layman’s terms, giving gratuitous or insincere compliments or general good feelings). Sunshine, cupcakes, and puppy dogs create warm, fuzzy, good feelings, and more importantly, sell! Reality checks are sort of a “buzz kill,” and downers don’t sell nearly as well as uppers. However, our collective unwillingness to engage in a reality check has gotten us into deep doo-doo.

Our willingness to believe each others’ B.S. is easily evidenced in the recent 2008–2009 U.S. national economic meltdown. This was triggered, in part, by credit card companies extending credit to people to buy things like flat-screen televisions and designer handbags that they couldn’t afford. A second trigger was mortgage lenders who extended credit to a whole lot of people to buy houses that they also couldn’t afford. The mortgage lenders told the homebuyers not to worry, that the value of the homes would go up as they had in prior years and that this gain in equity value would allow them to be able to afford the otherwise out-of-reach homes. Homebuyers bought into the hype and took on debt that they had no business in taking in the first place. It was one giant smoke-blowing fest. Nobody had the balls to do a reality check (i.e., step up and say maybe you shouldn’t buy crap you can’t afford), and the entire U.S. economy suffered for it.

Now that we have gotten into trouble from listening to the feel-good stuff, I believe we are more ready and willing to hear and accept a reality check. I don’t know why so many advisors don’t give reality checks; maybe because the advice is uncomfortable to give and receive, maybe because then they can’t take their “37 Secrets to a Successful Business” book and supercharge it a couple of years later to be the “39 Secrets to a Successful Business—with Two All-New Groundbreaking Secrets That Are Critical to Your Success” and so on. For whatever reason, most don’t deliver, like I am doing here, a reality check that says, “Hey, 90 percent of you probably shouldn’t own a business.”

With no screening process and hundreds of gurus focused on giving success advice, nobody has been telling you and the other aspiring entrepreneurs that there is a chance that owning your own business isn’t the right path at all. If you haven’t been given the tools to evaluate whether or not you have the appropriate personality, mindset, timing, or opportunity to be successful with a start-up, it is easy to understand why smart people like you continue to take the plunge at an inopportune time. You may not realize that your core competencies and experience don’t match up well with entrepreneurship, or that your current circumstances make focusing on a new business today less than ideal.

Without the screening process, or the encouragement to “test drive” entrepreneurship before buying it, how would you know if you should take a risk? How can you decide if your passion is best left as a hobby instead of a business? Entrepreneurial successes are certainly glamorized by the media, so it is easy to see how it would be alluring. Not enough is done to spread the message that, just because you are passionate about something or excel at making an item or performing a service, you might not be so excellent at having it manufactured, finding customers for it, or managing the cash flow in between.

Plus, there are a lot of urban legends and general misinformation about the biggest successes. We talked a bit about eBay and YouTube’s PR stories in Chapter 1. What about the widely held beliefs about Bill Gates? The story that most people believe about Bill Gates’ success is that he took a huge risk, dropped out of Harvard and founded Microsoft to become one of the richest men in the world. That story misses a lot of facts. The following is a summary of Bill Gates’ story, as told in The Leap by Rick Smith:
 

• Bill Gates was born to a wealthy, influential, and well-connected family.
• He went to prep school, where he was introduced at an early age to computers.
• While in school, Gates, along with Paul Allen (Microsoft’s co-founder), spent a lot of time learning about computers, including hacking into security systems.
• Due to Gates and Allen’s hacking abilities, the system providers offered them unlimited computer use if they would find system bugs—something that generated even more experience for Gates and Allen.
• Their experience led the prep school to offer Gates and Allen a job writing a computerized scheduling system.
• After graduation, Gates enrolled at Harvard.
• Based on an article about a new microcomputer in a magazine, Gates called the manufacturer and bluffed, saying he had written a computer program that could be used on the computer.
• The company bought the bluff and invited Gates to present the program—only then (once interest had been gauged) did he and Allen start writing it.
• Gates stayed another year at Harvard before he left to form “Micro-Soft,” and he didn’t drop out right away, either. He took a leave of absence as a contingency plan in case things didn’t work out.
• Gates’ highly influential mother created an introduction to IBM for Gates via IBM’s former CEO John Opel, a crony of hers, which happened to be looking for an operating system for its computers.
• Gates was contracted to develop IBM’s system, negotiating a deal where his company (Micro-Soft) would retain the rights to the software (cha-ching).
• So, Gates had around a decade of experience, limited downside risk, awareness of the huge potential of the upside, the right connections, and many other items that balanced his risks and rewards and stacked the odds in his favor.

The reality is quite a bit different from what most people know and believe about Bill Gates’ entrepreneurial journey. What is clear, after reading the backstory, is that Bill Gates went through a number of screens along the path to becoming one of the world’s most recognized and successful entrepreneurs.

The Entrepreneurial Match

Before we jump into the assessment, I want to talk about outcomes. I want to emphasize that it is perfectly fine not to be meant for entrepreneurship. The prevailing attitude is that anyone can do it. However, not everyone can succeed in doing it; it is hard work.

I’m here to say it is okay to be cut out for a career path that doesn’t involve being an entrepreneur. As Dan Pink writes in Free Agent Nation, “Some discover that they lack the skills, the savvy, and the desire to make it on their own—and like it or not, they’re better off inside the corporate cocoon.”¹

I liken matching someone with an entrepreneurial career path to matching two mates. Sometimes you meet a dream guy or girl who looks amazing on paper, but after you’ve spent time with him or her, you see that there just isn’t the right connection. Or perhaps you have known two people who have been dating, and upon hearing about their breakup, your reaction was, “I could never figure out why they were together anyways.” It likely wasn’t that either one of them was a bad person—they just weren’t a good match. If they had looked past the initial fascination with each other (and been honest that there is no “happily ever after,” just reality), they would have realized that they would never make it.

That’s why, outside of some instances in Vegas involving a lot of alcohol, most people date each other for a while before getting married. They want to find the right fit and partnership. The same thing goes for many careers and should apply to the owning your own business path, too. Everyone has at least one, and usually several, core strengths and skills, and running a business is not going to be a fit for everyone. In fact, given the number of different competencies required in successfully running a business, it is not a fit for most. You can’t say across the board that it is better to be a country singer than a pop singer, an NBA player than an NFL player, or a consultant than a chef. Being an entrepreneur is empirically no better or worse than any other option you may be considering; it is just different and needs to be a solid fit for you in order for it to work. So don’t feel bad if you dreamed of being an entrepreneur and that isn’t your best option. You will shine more brightly when you are doing something that is a natural fit for you.

So, now you need to start assessing if you are a good fit for entrepreneurship within the area of motivation. To begin, you are going to evaluate what is driving you to want to start a new business.

ENDNOTES:

1. Daniel H. Pink, Free Agent Nation (New York: Business Plus, 2002), 213.