Is it too much to expect that anyone who goes into business ignores the business of doing technical work, and instead focuses on how the business delivers that work?
The sine qua non of entrepreneurship:
working on the business, not in it.
You see it all the time – people who become so obsessed with doing the work that they forget why they went into business in the first place. Is it any wonder they are tied (tired) to (of) the business?
But hold on.
What about you?
who are You?
The problem is that if you replace the process of the work with working on the business, you may find that you replace one paradigm with another but obscure the most important question:
Is this business capable of allowing you to become the most of you?
Entrepreneurship is a process of self-discovery more than it is about building a fortress of systems to hide behind. Your passions, whatever they are, won’t go away even when you see a trajectory of upward growth.
Stand back.
Stop.
Think very carefully about the journey ahead.
Why this business as opposed to any other business?
Yes, you might know a lot about the technical work but that doesn’t mean to say that you are locked in to only building a business of this type.
If you recall the story of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc was a salesman of ice cream machines, not making and selling hamburgers. But it was the enterprise that fascinated him not the product.
What about you?
If there is a point to this post it is this. Before you spend the next few years of your life working on the business, will it give you everything you want in life, or will it still leave a gaping hole?
It’s never too late to change direction.
The Internet has seen to that in abundance. It removes boundaries and opens up a vista that a few years ago would have been out of reach to all but the biggest and brightest.
But make sure you square your circle with the person you were born to be and not just what others expect of you.
[Thank you to Michael Gerber for reminding me what it is to think; and if you have time I recommend that you read the E-Myth Revisited one of the best business and life books I have read.]
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