I have Jim’s article about the 10 reasons some entrepreneurs underperform saved in my bookmarks since a few days now and I wasn’t quite sure if it’s missing something or it’s good as it is. However, I have decided to comment on it this evening and see if I come up with a reasonable point of view to offer more guidance to entrepreneur wanna bees.
As always I will list the reasons below and add my comments.
- Passion. Most entrepreneurs that I’ve got in touch and are successful in their businesses are passion driven, so I agree. However, maybe we should define “passion” as passion for running a business. To explain, I’ve met wonderful technology driven persons with a great passion for their work falling miserably in business. They simply know very well their professions, but when it comes to business (and this always includes marketing/sales, people skills, dealing with customers, suppliers and basically plenty of their non core abilities) they are unable to perform. On the other hand, most entrepreneurs that are passionate about spotting opportunities and turn them into businesses even if they are not in their core professional skills have most chances. They might not know all the details of the technology or whatever the business is based on, but their entrepreneurial approach identifies issues and find solutions.
- Physical and mental strength. Here Jim refers to long business hours – something that I always experienced in my entrepreneurial life, I agree again. I don’t think that it has something to do with working a lot more than 50 hours a week – the actual number of hours doesn’t really matter. What’s important is to have the strength to perform when there is nobody else could. Maybe it means answering support emails at 3 AM in the night. Maybe it means working 16 hours per day. But mostly means doing whatever nobody else is able to do when it needs to be done. You need to have the inner power to push yourself over the limits and get outside of your comfort zone.
- Self-doubt. At times you will be the only one who believes in you. Agree, but we need to make some detailing. First, if you have time to look through the list of entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed in the last 2 years you will see that some of their businesses seem highly improbable to succeed. And still some of them have made it big, with business ideas that “couldn’t” work. On the other hand, running a business in a despotic model and doing things because “I said so” regardless of the opinion and suggestions might not be so successful. So believe in yourself but stay alert to what other people are saying, advising or thinking.
- Belief. I haven’t seen a single entrepreneur yet that doesn’t believe in the business they are creating. Even if times are rough, they do believe in their passion, vision and path. Agreed.
- Foresight. I’m not sure about this one. Not because I can say an entrepreneur can be really successful without exploring unsighted opportunities. From my experience, some just get lucky (and luck is always important in entrepreneurship) and some don’t get that much out of the regular boundaries but still do a good job in creating a business. But not all entrepreneurs need to make it big.
- Guts. Most people are actually afraid of starting a business so running it on the long term is out of the question. Agreed, most people fear of failure stop them becoming an entrepreneur, so you need guts to be one. We could talk here about fear of not getting an innovative business idea, fear of not getting customers, fear of not having enough money to pay the bills at the end of the month. But you know what? Even most successful entrepreneurs have passed through these fears at least once in their path. I simply don’t know any entrepreneurs that started a business and went from 0 to success in a straight line.
- Failure. I’m probably one of these entrepreneurs that like to play things safe because failure is not an option. Missed a lot of opportunities along the way so I had to learn the hard way that failure is part of an entrepreneur life. So how can entrepreneurs start something that might fail? How do they have the guts? I will write a separate article about this, because it’s an interesting process. Is not that they don’t fear about failure, it’s the way they are thinking about failure.
- Self-discipline. I think this is one of the hardest things to learn as an entrepreneur. After all some people think that the entrepreneurs can make their own schedule and do anything they want as they own the business. Right? You will be amazed that an entrepreneur has more restrictions, more self-imposed rules and limits than the regular employee. Simply because there is nobody else higher in rank to say when they need to start working, to take care of their health and most of the rest of the things it means the entrepreneur must run his life through self-discipline.
- Fairness. Jim says: “Are you hung up on the belief that life is fair? If so, forget being an entrepreneur. The strong survive.” Well yes, life is unfair mostly. But if you don’t run your entrepreneurial life on moral and “fair” principles you are most likely to fail on the long run. But I think Jim agrees with me on this because his last point is:
- Integrity: yes, some creeps are big successes but in general those who keep their commitments no matter what, are more likely to succeed than the creeps. Agreed. Although there are plenty of entrepreneurs that become rich in shady ways, I don’t think that having money made them successful entrepreneurs. Successful entrepreneurs measure their success in many other ways than money: feeling of accomplishments, giving back to the community, creating jobs or improving life in any way.
I know that Jim’s list was not a “top 10 reasons for underperforming entrepreneurs” and I don’t think his intentions were to create a complete list either. But if we are talking about performance, I would like to add some of my own.
- Power to delegate (or wrong delegation). My own entrepreneurial experience says that doing things that are outside your core abilities are better off delegated. I know, I know, sometimes you just have to do things on your own, but you know what? Your time costs money! And instead of focusing on growing your business, you do a poor job doing things you are not good at. And even worse than non-delegation is the wrong delegation. Give away things you should really be doing and you will end up loosing control. Seen both happening, first one stops you from growing, the second one might kill your business.
- Being a business owner instead of an entrepreneur. Well, actually you are a business owner all the time, but when you stop being an entrepreneur you somehow become an employee that pays his own salary.
- Fear of not loosing what you have so far. You know, usually you fear most in the beginning, because you don’t know how things are going to perform. But if things go well, you actually have more to loose in the next few years than in the beginning (and I’m not talking about the money). I’m mostly referring at loosing something that you know it was running. And if you fear this and stop being an entrepreneur and looking for opportunities you better have an exit point because you’re dying as an entrepreneur.
- Becoming self-sufficient and out of focus. Sounds like a no-no, but entrepreneurs can become out of focus. It comes mainly from 3 changes: changes in their private life (getting married, having children), self sufficiency (I have enough for a nice retirement) or focusing on new ideas. Either way, an exit for a while might save your soul and entrepreneurial spirit. No shame stepping out of the business, finding out what’s important in your life and get back (or not) to being an entrepreneur from the bottom of your heart.
