I was reading a piece on the New York Times Business Page the other day about the so-called Plan B careers, and I couldn’t help staring at it in disbelief. I recalled vaguely hearing about an increase in small business start-ups during the past year, as the economic crisis in America worsened and more people began looking toward self-employment as a way to stay afloat. What I hadn’t realized is that apparently a number of people had also left really high-paying jobs and were starting small ventures because they wanted to. Now, I don’t have anything against small entrepreneurs; I was one myself, once, and I’ve consulted for and taught seminars to literally hundreds of others. But half-way down the first page of the story was a single sentence that told me that both the author and the entrepreneurs being described are complete lunatics: “Many are surprised to find the hours and work grueling…”
My immediate reaction to this was so completely sarcastic that I hesitate to recount it here. Yes, work is hard, and starting a business (of any size) from the ground up takes more hours than you would believe, and even if you do everything right there is no guarantee that you will succeed. In recent years we’ve seen a whole succession of articles talking about the high rate of failure in entrepreneurial start-ups (some authorities put the failure rate as high as 90%), and the fact that even if the business itself makes a profit you might still find yourself working for less than minimum wage. We’ve also seen a vast number of articles talking about business failures, the amount of time it takes to do the parts of a business that aren’t creative and fun (e.g., accounting, inventory control, maintenance, and so on), how anything you do for a living is, by definition, no longer a hobby, and how hard it is to make a living (let alone a profit) in the food service industry in general. And apparently, every one of these entrepreneurs completely failed to read a single one of those stories…
Now, I really don’t mean to be insensitive – or cruel – with this reaction. The truth is that almost all of us have wanted to quit our crummy, soul-crushing corporate job and go into business for ourselves at one point or another. “Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” we’re repeatedly told by the people who make money off of inexperience entrepreneurs. It’s not the risk, and it’s certainly not the courage needed to take that risk, that irritate me so much; it’s not even the obliviousness of people who are changing careers and yet make no effort to research the new industry into which they are moving. What gets on my nerves is the arrogance; the blind, pig-ignorant assumption than anything that you don’t know about MUST be easy, and that failure is something that only happens to other people. Nine out of every ten new entrepreneurial businesses fail, and even the most successful entrepreneurs in history have at least some failures in their past, and yet some people think that just because they were highly successful professionals in completely unrelated fields they can excel in my profession without the slightest effort to educate or prepare themselves…
The fact is, being a businessperson is hard. Management is a science, leadership is an art, and running a business (even one you genuinely love) is a job, not an adventure. With hard work, determination, talent, skill, education, training, efficient preparation, careful planning, good budgeting, excellent timing and vast amounts of luck it is possible to start your own business; you might even be blessed enough to end up with a career you can both enjoy and prosper doing. But running a coffee house is not like setting up a child’s tea party; running a bakery or restaurant is not something you can do from 9 to 6 (or even from 6 to 6); being a wedding planner is not like planning parties in college; and making any sort of consumer goods is not like being an artist doing studio work. Help is available, often for less money and effort than you would believe, and no one should ever be ashamed of asking for it. But if you come to grief because you assumed that something you knew nothing about HAD to be easy, don’t come crying to me…
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