Myths and Reality of Entrepreneurship (What you should Know and What you are Being Told)
Have you ever seen a Billionaire or Millionaire, and then you asked what they do for a living, only to be told that they are entrepreneurs? While some children grew up fantasizing on becoming a doctor, lawyer, architect, and so on, I grew up fantasizing about becoming a Business Person. My reasons were very clear actually, I knew entrepreneurs could solve a lot of problems both for their customers by providing services and goods as well as providing jobs for the unemployed. It is no doubt that the ratio of unemployed in your region is high. While I had this goal actually, I one day asked someone, what it looks like to be an entrepreneur and I got something different from the reality.
If you have read books by Robert Kiyosaki, you will realize that Robert never said his rich dad who was at the other side of the table had hard times or days, all he said was he had businesses, he was responsible for employing, taught him about the quadrant Employed, Self Employed, Business Owner and Investor. The entire book, talked about the kind of life his rich dad lived, having a house beside the beach. If Robert could say this kind of things in his book without stressing the reality of being into the Business of being your own Boss, saving a company, keeping people's jobs, as well as providing good products or services for their clients. Actually I love Robert, but I am not going into giving you only the good part of being an Entrepreneur, but I am going to give you a very simple reality.
Forget about the fancy cars, and the private jets or the beach houses and luxury foods and chef, or the expensive travels, these things are very true with entrepreneurs as it is no doubt that the top 50 CEOs in the world travel with a private jet, Warren Buffett said in an interview that he flies more than he drives and has more meetings in the air compared to in cars. Former Chairman of Steemit Ned Scot was seen in Private Jets more time than he was seen in cars and you wish to just be an Entrepreneur, start a business so can have such luxury of life and make enough money for both yourself and your family. In fact you do not want to miss the red carpet PDA, as well as the Forbes Recognition.
When you see CEOs, it looks like they are not always busy because they are always in major places making speeches or it looks like they have all the help they need in the world, but you are wrong. Have you heard of the phrase Fantasy over Reality? Well, I will help you explain this very clearly.
Starting a business is a very serious deal. It requires lots and lots of preparations, registrations, getting the right team, funding, and then doing the business it's meant to do. It becomes more complicated when you have to look for funds, do new projects, pay debts, make losses and even file for bankruptcy. This will be attributed to be Big entrepreneurs but then, we have the small entrepreneurs who just started a business because there was no job, or because there is a broken system, only to start a business with almost zero capital making it very difficult for them to stand. While the entrepreneurs you actually imagine do exists, it is good to ask them if everything is always rosy for them especially when they have external auditors auditing or when they have the banks foreclosing on them.
An entrepreneurial journey is a quite interesting one but for those who see failures as a chance to stand again, those that can fall over and over and over and still will not give up. People who can cry in their closet but still keep their heads straight without having to lose focus. As an entrepreneur, you will have competitors, large organizations willing to swallow you, people after your position when you are big and people who want to step on you when you are still small.
When next you think of entrepreneurship, do not think of it as a ticket to the Cayman Islands for holiday or the opportunity to sleep in a 7 star hotel in Dubai, maybe a ticket to not going with public airlines any more, see it as an adventure which is isn't sweet all the time but worth taking part in.