STARTING YOUR OWN BUSINESS
A wise woman once said that "All of us can take steps--no matter how small and insignificant at the start--in the direction we want to go." This woman is Marsh Sinetar, author of the book Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow. How often do we give up on the things we love for security, taking a job for the paycheck, coming home at night exhausted from a job we don't even enjoy? What keeps us from taking that leap?
In a book called Pencil Dancing, Mari Messer asks the question "Why take risks at all? Why not just curl up in your sleeping bag by the toasty fire at base camp? No one says you have to climb Mount Everest, and if you tell anyone you want to, they'll try to talk you out of it anyway. Each of us has an Everest, a creative mountain we're itching to climb...You feel if you don't try to climb your mountain you'll miss something important. You will.
"Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com said to be worth ten billion dollars or so, operates within what he calls a 'regret minimalization framework.' He says he doesn't want to look back with regret someday over what he hasn't done." You can see Bezos and other Dot Com giants in a new commercial in the US for NASDAQ on CNN.
It's the small, yet ambitious entrepreneurs who become successful, the ones not afraid to climb that mountain one step at a time, no matter how high it is. You don't always have to drop everything in your life to start a new career. Start small. Take the first step, the one causing you a reasonable amount of anxiety. Afterall, "if you have no anxiety, the risk you take is probably not worthy of you." so says David Viscott in Risking.
If you're not sure whether to take that first step towards entrepreneurialship, understandably the hardest one to make, read about others who have made it through the hard times. Fortune Small Business knows just what people need to know to ease the anxiety of going it on your own. Lack of funding, management skills, and knowledge of small business etiquette are common problems in starting a new business. Read up on today’s giants and how they were once "small" and struggling. For example the seemingly endless struggles one young entrepreneur faced while starting one of today’s largest chains of delicatessens, this youngster is Fred DeLuca, cofounder of Subway. Read the Fortune Small Business article on Fred DeLuca, "Fred DeLuca's Recipe for Success".
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