Skip to main content

Week 10 - Interview

The thing that made the deepest impression on me this week was conducting the interview with my chosen entrepreneur. Again I find myself more firm in the belief that I am not well suited to solo entrepreneurship, but must have one or more solid partners to work with.
I have also discovered an interesting idea. I thought that in order to strike out on my own I would need to "risk it all," meaning my savings, in order to survive while I started something up. After speaking to my interviewee entrepreneur I discovered that his office is filled with entrepreneurs of various degrees of success. I spoke for about 10 minutes with one who failed. He doesn't regret that he went out and did his own thing. It's almost like it was another job for him, other than the extra time and stress of it all. What I mean is it didn't totally derail his life to fail. He told me why it happened, and it was simply just that the market wasn't as lucrative as it needed to be to support the work that was required. The other thing that he shared with me was that it's really pretty easy to find enough money to get you started and keep you eating. There are grants, investors, and other means of obtaining enough starting capital to make it possible to start out without consuming all of your savings.
I'm ok putting SOME in, but I can't justify going "whole hog" when I've got a family to feed. This is comforting in so many ways and wedges the door open a bit further for me to overcome my fears and make the leap.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not what you're expecting, probably.

Well, this probably won't be what you're expecting. A big part of my goal in taking this class was not only to learn about entrepreneurship, but to determine if it's something I want, and something I'm capable of. I've been learning so much, and I know things about myself that I didn't before. I feel more capable, more ambitious, and more self aware. It's that last one though that's tripping me up right now. I know that I can become whatever I want to be, but the truth of the time commitment to starting a company is evident in every reading and every video we watch. I'm not sure if I'm on board with that. My entire goal here is to attain greater use of my time. Yet, everyone I read about talks about how these insane numbers of hours worked nonchalantly, like it's nothing to them. I suppose that could be because they've found a calling, and I haven't yet, but I don't want to work late into the night and on Saturdays. I want to p...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is this right for me? I still don't know.

I really appreciated the readings this week. They have directly addressed my primary concern with operating my own means of business and income, that of time away from home. I also appreciate how honestly that subject is dealt with. As I've learned about all the things we've been studying I have discerned that there is a type of personality that is actually driven more to work more and more and more chasing their dreams of success that often become entrepreneurs, and often quite successful ones. I think these are natural businessmen and businesswomen. Unlike me, they have to be reminded and cautioned about not putting in too much work. They must be reminded that there are more concerns than business success. It's clear from the way each of these authors/speakers address their audience that there are assumptions about personality that simply don't match me. I'm an oddity in this pond. Again, I am left with questions about whether this path is really for me, but wh...
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 9 - Leadership

Leadership. Something I'm not super good at I'm afraid. At least, not naturally. I usually inspire some praise and even occasional admiration, but I would be surprised to find someone call me a natural leader. I tend to be too odd to inspire others to follow me, or perhaps just too difficult, haha. I don't mean to be, honestly! I'm just not great at communicating with groups of people. I'm fine one on one, with the right personality mix. I still don't know all the reasons for this and it's an ongoing project. I'm trying to learn to lead others to think as I do through Socratic teaching, but it's hard to remember to do when you're in the moment and excitedly trying to teach something. The listening that was talked about several times in this lesson is a real kicker for me. I get so excited by some thought or idea during a conversation that I have a hard time staying on track and not interrupting. I've been that way since I was a kid. A lot...
Post a Comment
Read more