With it, you can move mountains. Without it, you will accomplish nothing. "It" is persistence. David Lorenzo thinks it's your personal competitive advantage. Well, not quite, at least not persistence alone. But if you have everything else and lack persistence, you'll give up when things get rough. And yes, you can count on it, there will be rough times. Hang in there, and you'll overcome most every obstacle.
Via Ken Dyck.
Keith McFarland, remarking on the new Jared Diamond book, "Collapse", points out that the mistakes Diamond cites that cause societies to collapse are invariably shared by businesses that fail:
You don't think businesses "choose to fail"? Read McFarland.
Via Ken Dyck.
Jeff Cornwall aka The Entrepreneurial Mind posted an excellent reminder today that work-life balance doesn't come easily.
"During the first couple of years of your business you often can't take much time off. Even if you do, you are thinking about the business. You are running on adrenalin, excitement, and fear. And even with all of this, it is still fun.
But, at some point what was necessity can become a bad habit. And that is the dark side of entrepreneurship. When the business can take over your life and cost you much more than you ever anticipated: your family, your friends, and your health."
Read it in full for his thoughts on how to avoid the "dark side",
All Business, an online magazine, recently ran an article, "Do You Have the Right Stuff to Be an Entrepreneur". Qualities they listed included:
I know people from high tech who, when the job market was unfavorable, went into consulting. Quite a few of them were ambiguous about their independent status and secretly longed -- for personal or family reasons -- for an opportunity to return to the stability of full-time employment.
There is an attitudinal difference between entrepreneurs and these people. I believe that if your preference, were everything rosy, would be full-time employment, in the long term your business won't succeed. Why? Because entrepreneurship is not for the faint-heared. It demands a strong sense of commitment to being your own boss. When the going gets rough, entrepreneurs don't experience "setbacks", they just view it as another way that didn't work and doggedly move on to alternatives. Entrepreneurial success is rooted in the profound belief that you can and will make your business work.
