The recent economic downturn has found highly-skilled professionals on the unemployment line. With employment options limited, inventive professionals exercised their ingenuity and launched their own business. In fact, the US Census Bureau states that small businesses without payroll – those who classify themselves as free lancers, self-employed, or solopreneurs – make up 70% of America’s 27 million companies with annual sales of $887 billion. To you we say, Welcome!
And, as someone who has been on both sides of the equation as a business owner/entrepreneur and a strategic business coach working with entrepreneurs, consider this a PSA (public service announcement): Don’t Grow it Alone!
Don’t grow your business alone. Not only is business increasingly complex today, you also want to unlearn the employee mindset and learn the entrepreneurial mindset. Working for an organization, no matter what size, doesn’t prepare you for the topsy turvey world of entrepreneurship.
You’ll love the freedom and flexibility and will, simultaneously, need some structure. Don’t grow it alone!
You’re highly skilled in your core competency and will need to learn an entirely new and different industry and all it involves – entrepreneurship. Really – don’t grow your business alone!
You’ll thoroughly enjoy the peace and quiet of your home office and will need an objective opinion and a safe place to further develop your thoughts and vision free from judgment and criticism. Your friends aren’t that person. Seriously – don’t grow it alone!
As an entrepreneur, accidental or not, what advice would you share with those just entering into the wild, wacky, wonderful world of entrepreneurship? (Beyond not growing it alone.)
