“Americans are starting businesses at the fastest rate in more than a decade. By September of 2020, applications for the employer identification numbers (EIN) had surpassed 3.2 million for the year, up more than 500,000 compared to the year before.”
Many of these ‘want-trepreneurs' are in for a rude awakening. Entrepreneurship is hard! It is certifiably predictable that most will fail. Entrepreneurial success is the product passionately overcoming failure and proving the resilience to keep up the good fight. You will fail many times before you grasp success. A William Churchhill famously said, "Success is not final, and failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
Why anybody would attempt this without Jesus as their CEO, is unfathomable!
Wanting it is not enough. It requires real passion. By ‘passion’ I don't mean “enthusiasm’ which is what many really mean when they assert they have passion for something. Passion literally means, “to suffer.” To succeed at entreneurship one must be willing to suffer successive learning days, and trudge through the arduous learning process with the unshakable hope that it will compound into a winning day. The willingness to suffer missed meals, ramen noodles, long, hard days, and missing out on leisure are often but a few of the costs an entrepreneur must sow.
Accepting the entrepreneurial calling to take the risks to organize a system that produces value for others is the first gigantically essential step. It should not be taken lightly. Taking this big step should be lauded and encouraged. You are already heroic! Next, a good dose of Godly fear at the recognition that you don't know what to do nor how to do it. This will send you to your knees to beg for wisdom.
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men liberally and without criticism, and it will be given to him. James 1:5 MEV
Our Heavenly Father promises that he will give us wisdom, and liberally, when we ask for it. Wisdom is the confident understanding of what to do next. It puts us in motion.
Motion is the “what we do”-the work. It's the sowing of our physical capital of time and energy. Get moving! Put yourself and the long list of things in motion. The to-do list of an entrepreneur is long and dynamic. It's said that most CEOs have at least 15 priorities each day and must constantly satisfice the urgent over the important. Yet, so much of an entrepreneur’s work is learning and practicing the right methods.
Methods matter most. You might bake the best cakes and pies in the county, but to run a bakery business, you gotta learn the methods of sourcing supplies, keeping inventory, baking in multiple quantities, marketing, sales, making payroll and paying taxes, etc. Many of the motions you need to make you’ve never done before. How are you gonna get the right methods?
Mentors! Get the know-how from someone you know who has done it before. This is where you sow some relational capital to acquire intellectual capital. If you don’t know someone who knows how, ask somebody you know, (who do they know?) who can help you learn how to do it. This passionate pursuit of wisdom is what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Nobody got there on their own, and nobody will. The proverbial, and iconic “self-made man” is machoistic myth. You need mentors!
All 3.2 million of the persons starting businesses this year need the right Methods, Mentors and Motions in order to manifest their entrepreneurial dream. If you are one of them, you do too!