Tell me how come?

Re: [spiers] Tell me how come?

Wow! What a great message Malcolm. A lot of wisdom in
those words. Thanks for sharing your experiences;
I’ll definitely save the message.

As a kid growing up in Missouri, I had quite a few
entrepreneurial experiences. I sold eggs, shoveled
snow, cut grass, I made and sold crafts, washed big
rig trucks for a couple of local moving companies
(built my own mobile pressure washing truck and almost
flunked out of my Sr. year in high school keeping the
biz going. There were several months during the year
I was making more money than my father). But
somehow, as I grew older, I was shanghaied by several
of the poignant reasons you listed in your message;
fear, educational brain washing, being a sheep,
unsupportive spouse, the tire kicker trap…..and I’m
also one of those who “Has an idea”.

I’ve learned to play the “un-entrepreneur” game pretty
well. Currently, I’m a state employee. I feel
comfortable and safe in my position. If I hang on for
another 20 years, I’ll probably live OK on my state
pension and a few other investments. However, I
constantly have a persistent, gnawing, grating thought
that tells me to get out and build a business. It’s
a tug of war between staying in the comfort zone vs
overcoming my fears and other obstacles, and going for
it. In fact, I keep trying to figure out ways to
hang on to my day job while trying to get something
else going. I don’t know if hanging on to the day job
is wise or possible. Have you or John known anyone
who has?

Anthony


--- Malcolm D wrote:

> > Anyway, I am curious why people start businesses,
> rather than why not.
> > I'm sure there are all the obvious reasons (hate
> job, need money). Am I
> > the only wacky one that derives the above kind of
> satisfaction from the
> > activity? Since you are in a polling mood,
> perhaps you could find this
> > out, as well.
> >
> > Regards, Paul
>
> Hi, John,
>
> Sorry I did not respond earlier to your request for
> reasons on why people
> don't start businesses. As someone who has been a
> small business trainer,
> and is a certified (NxLevel) business plan
> instructor, I felt the issue was
> so big, and my outlook perhaps a bit jaded, that I
> opted not to play. But,
> since you are still interested in hearing from the
> other 792 of us, I will
> submit a few thoughts.
>
> First of all, I completely do NOT understand why
> everyone does not start a
> business. I am glad they don't... leaves more
> opportunity for me. However,
> since I don't understand why they don't, I may not
> be the best person to
> suggest the reasons why not. I have been a 'serial'
> entrepreneur (not
> 'cereal' entrepreneur like William Kellogg;-) since
> grade school in the
> 60's, when I trapped pocket gophers which were
> damaging alfalfa fields in
> southern Idaho. The local irrigation district paid
> 25 cents per tail as a
> bounty to reduce their numbers, as the loss of water
> to their burrowing
> tunnels was very costly. I made a few dollars a week
> with a trap line before
> and after school, and had more discretionary income
> than a lot of farm kids
> (and we were mostly farm kids in southern Idaho
> schools back then). Over the
> years, when I was guilted into day jobs by parents
> who valued security (and
> died poor) or a spouse and family obligations, I
> still always looked for
> small business opportunities on the side, e.g.
> starting a real estate guide,
> selling at craft shows, organizing BBQs, or running
> a weekend mobile country
> DJ business.
>
> Since I am a classic entrepreneurial personality I
> really do not understand
> why, John. One of the great mysteries of life for me
> is that most people
> claim to want the independent lifestyle of the
> entrepreneur, but so few
> jump.
>
> But to try and answer the question, I guess first I
> would say that while
> anyone CAN start a business, natural entrepreneurs
> are people who see
> opportunity, and do not fit into the slow pace of
> improvement found in a
> "job". We feel constrained by the limits set by the
> dweebs most often
> promoted into supervision and management. Natural
> entrepreneurs leave
> employment for self-employment because the phrase
> "It's hard to soar with
> eagles when you are surrounded by turkeys" is their
> subconscious mantra. We
> see opportunities to do things better and faster and
> with more effectiveness
> and using fewer (or re-applied) resources, while the
> most popular word in a
> typical supervisor's vocabulary is NO! To someone
> who lives under the curse
> of a brain that seeks constant improvement, always
> better ways to do things,
> the reality of management for the sake of control is
> horrifying. (While my
> negative profile of a typical management person is
> not necessarily true, it
> often FEELS true, to a natural entrepreneur.)
>
> I guess the corollary then, is that people who don't
> start businesses often
> work well in the typical organizational system, or
> at least more comfortably
> than they would if they started a business.
>
> Peter Drucker, perhaps the most recognized
> management guru of all time, had
> a wonderful discussion in one of his books on
> management vs. leadership. The
> role of management, he said (if memory serves me) is
> to create order. The
> goal of leadership is to create positive change.
> Both are necessary, but
> also are in natural conflict. True entrepreneurs are
> often great leaders,
> and mediocre to seriously bad managers. However,
> American business,
> according to Drucker, is seriously overmanaged and
> under-led. Hence the
> typical organizational environment does not fit, at
> least in the long term,
> for someone with a leadership compulsion. Also,
> Drucker discusses the
> difference between efficiency and effectiveness.
> Efficiency, the backbone of
> management and corporations, is to "do things right"
> or by the book.
> Effectiveness, often a rare commodity -- and rarer
> as size of the business
> grows -- is to "do the right things". These two
> concepts are also in
> potential conflict, but again, the entrepreneur is
> the rebel who sees an
> opportunity and wants to do the right thing, but not
> be slowed down by doing
> things "right" (a term often mis-used by people in
> management to become
> "doing things the way we've always done them" or to
> just "avoid doing
> something wrong", instead of DOING something right.)
> The 'effective leader'
> and the 'efficient manager' are two VERY different
> personalities, and the
> world of organizations - which is dominated by the
> second type -- leaves
> little room for the first personality to grow. Those
> individuals often leave
> (except among the very best companies) and start
> businesses of their own.
> Usually happier whether successful or not, they most
> commonly reach success
> via a training period of failures as they learn the
> nuances and complexities
> of business, and that a business is simply a system
> of integrated
> sub-systems. The successful business creator is a
> system designer.
>
> Statistically, a person is much more likely to start
> a business if one or
> both parents are entrepreneurs. If both parents
> worked day jobs till they
> died, the children are much less likely to branch
> outside the safety and
> security of a regular paycheck. Much of the reason
> is what is discussed
> around the dinner table. If your parents were
> talking at meals about the
> nuances (marketing, taxes, hiring, firing) of a
> logging business, or a
> baking business, or an export company, this is what
> programmed your young
> minds. If the discussions were resumes, bad
> managers, best companies to work
> for, attending college to get a good job, then the
> programming was
> different. Brian Tracy, a motivational speaker, says
> on one of his audio
> programs that the reason we have fifth and sixth
> generation welfare families
> in this country is because the thoughts of the kids
> are directed from birth,
> on how to milk the government and qualify for food
> stamps, NOT how to be
> productive. It takes work to break the cycle, due to
> the relative
> information void on alternative choices. In the
> 1800s, most of the populace
> were small business owners (or their spouse and
> kids), whether farmer,
> shipper, shop keeper, or whatever. The industrial
> revolution of the early
> two-thirds of the 20th century was when we lost the
> table talk about
> entrepreneurship, and led to the big lie of
> corporate social responsibility
> taking care of you for the rest of your life, if you
> give them 40 years of
> sweat. But those carrots and promises, which mostly
> did not materialize,
> destroyed the entrepreneurial lineage normally
> passed from generation to
> generation. The dot com boom has re-awakened
> entrepreneurship among younger
> people, but as we saw in 2000, the loss of mentors
> in the parental

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