The odds are against us.
You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it. We’ve all heard it.
80% of businesses fail within the first five years. Things don’t necessarily get easier after that. Of the battle-hardened survivors, 80% of those businesses will fall on their faces before we pop champagne at to celebrate year 10.
This stuff is hard.
Really hard.
It takes work. Lots of work. And I know for sure that I personally haven’t figured it out quite yet. There’s still so much to learn.
There’s still so much to fail at.
Different flavors of entrepreneurship.
One of the trillions of reasons a business might flop is because the business owner doesn’t know what type of entrepreneur he is.
Here’s what I mean.
The vanilla of entrepreneurship is the small business owner.
These are the folks who set up bakeries. They start web site design companies. They build the type of business that provides them with what they need to support the people who need them.
They’re small, but they can be mighty good at what they do.
Then there are more trendy flavors. The last couple decades have been dominated by the “give me a hoodie and a laptop and I’ll show you a billionaire” flavor. Yum.
To me, the trendy flavor reminds me less of a single flavor and more of an ice cream eating challenge.
Eat a couple gallons of your favorite flavor, do it in less than an hour, and you’ll get to hang your picture on the wall. It seems like a great idea at first. So you sign up, grab a spoon, then chow down.
There’s a reason why there are only a few pictures of winners on the wall: few are crazy enough to try, and fewer are good enough to win.
And the losers always get a tummy ache.
Re-framing entrepreneurship.
Since when did a million become the “I made it” figure?
Why do we constantly want to reach 7 figures?
When will we realize that the ice cream challenge isn’t healthy?
The number of scoops are up to you.
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Photo: Flickr/frankieleon