Entrepreneurship is making real what only you can see.
Everything we buy, see, eat, and even talk about is the result of entrepreneurship, venturing, risk-taking to make manifest what was just a dream. But for some reason we see entrepreneurs as fringe risk-takers who live crazy lives. Those of us who don’t consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs, then, are carrying out other peoples’ visions, in a way.
Most of the things that make it to the market don’t exactly reflect what the dream once was, but that’s just the reality of how a good or service bounces along and gets refined on its way to the market.
I’ve had a few entrepreneurial ventures in the strict business sense; I sold school supplies with a friend when I was in middle school, aggressively took over someone else’s paper delivery route, and went door to door to shovel driveways in Connecticut. Then I started a coffee roasting company in 2009 called Epula, which is Latin for “banquet”. I learned lots and lots from its failure. The sequence of planning, setting up, selling, and fulfilling orders, and finally closing up shop, was a great learning experience and it was really what I wanted.
This is a valuable lesson for entrepreneurs: failure is a relative concept. You might stop earning a profit; but an introspective and humble owner will scrutinize what happened, get back off the ground, and do it differently next time, thus learning valuable lessons that become a wise investment.
The major challenges for me are twofold: getting the courage to articulate some proposition so people actually buy it; and then seeking the external funding needed to market the proposition and scale up operations. I’ve never really sold anything in my life. I guess I always figured I’d outsource that responsibility. I am not sure if that is all that wise, though. And as for getting money to make it happen: back to the fact that I’ve never really sold anything. For a new venture, you not only have to sell the product to customers, but you also have to sell the entire package (vision, operations, prospects, management team) to investors.
I live with the assumption that I will soon lead my own organization. I have given up on the corporate ladder. So, after Epula, I have started to bake many pies at once, to see what actually sticks. I am doing business consulting after the likes of Alan Weiss; I am planning a not-for-profit wine education school; I am planning a web-based group buying tool that is sustainable for both buyers and retailers—this will be my project for this class.
Having multiple unrelated projects going is a bit of a shotgun approach, but I have realized what many entrepreneurs realize at some point: the ideas keep coming, and you just have to start doing them.
That’s the key to ventures in today’s market: just try it, see if it sticks; if it doesn’t, try again. If it does, ask how it can be improved; improve it; then see if it sticks more or less. Then repeat.
