A lot of people talk about starting their own business. A small percentage of those people actually work towards it, and an even smaller percentage actually manage to start something. Why is this?
I was recently in a meeting for my company (Fortune 10) where another group within the company was working to recruit new members to their auditing team. The pitch went something like this: Work for 2 years and have an opportunity to be promoted. During this 2 years, 95% of people will quit (average week is 100 hours, travel near 100%) or be forced out (the work is demanding and boring – it’s auditing!). Pay is slightly more than the group being pitched to makes today (less than 10% by my guess). When the Q&A period came up, I pulled out a pen and jotted down the questions people were asking, as a social experiment. A few of my favorites:
Q: “What about this job is interesting?”
A: “You’ll have an opportunity to view business processes. You’ll get to know the business product lines. And you can see the business work from the inside”
Q: “If a family member dies, do I get time off?”
A: “Yes, you can take a leave of absence”
Q: “How much time do you usually take off every year for vacation?”
A: “Me? Well, I usually don’t take any. I take about one weekend a month off to visit my family.”
This seems to explain why so many people want to start their own business – a personal business frees you from having to make a decision about such a job, and gives you the power to decide the direction of your success. For many of us in large companies, turning down a job like this is not a good career move.
So how come so few people actually go out and start something? Humans are by nature risk averse. We don’t want to take leaps of faith into the unknown, scared that we might not come to a safe landing. Consider this: The average American is in debt, has house payments and car payments. They may have kids to support, they have retirement to save for, and health care tied to a job. Leaving a job which allows them to float along for the unknown is an incredibly risky proposition. How many people could survive without any additional income for a single month? For the year it takes to start a business?
Thankfully, with the massive opportunity being created every day by the internet and the global economy, we no longer have to choose between a full time start up, and a full time career. For instance, I work nights and weekends on my own startup, an internet site which will be going live in January. A friend of my brother started a highly successful business buying very old suitcases for pennies on the dollar, and customizing them for customers, selling for $80+ a box. He made so much money that he dropped out of college and is entering into manufacturing deals with foreign manufacturers. A woman I worked with taught for the company I work for, then used her training skills to teach night classes and weekend workshops. She then started a consulting business and now consults with my company for 10 times her previous salary.
The point is, modern corporations will demand much of you, and try to force you to take jobs which don’t make personal sense building products you may not care about. You can choose to do well in this environment and also start a business on the side, then watch it grow to success before deciding to leave that security.
All you need is willpower, and time.
Working 100 hours a week for a salary is crazy (borderline illegal in some places too). If you are the type who can give their all for that amount of time you should be working to make yourself rich, not your bosses shareholders.
My thoughts exactly!