Being entrepreneurial

Well here I am sitting on my balcony looking out over the stunning turquoise Mediterranean sea. Yes, I’m trying out working from a hot country! Well, relatively hot – we’re on the south coast of Spain, and although there’s a cool wind, when you’re in the sun it’s hot! Very different from a cold winter in the North of Scotland. So a holiday-cum-working. Only been here one day, and I promised myself I’d do nothing today, but in a conversation I’ve just had with Philip, my husband, I just had to blog about it.

‘You know that meeting we had with Collin before we left?’ I said.

‘There were two things in it that really stood out for me’.

“What were they then?’ asked Philip.

‘Well, firstly I was inspired by the story of the King of Shaves (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Shaves), who went from redundancy to a multi-million £ business, with first year sales of only £300, but even more importantly, he asked me where RichThinkers was this time last year’.

‘And where was it?’ Philip knew the answer but I think he wanted to hear me say it.

‘Wasn’t even born! At least not in it’s current incarnation. A lot has happened since then. What I realised, though, is that it’s easy to compare myself with other entrepreneurial types who’ve built a business faster than me, in some cases, much faster. But it’s unfair on myself to do that’.

‘Very true’, Philip said.

‘Many successful entrepreneurs have had that streak in their blood since they were born – you know the story, starting a business as a child making money from returns on bottle caps, or renting out their stack of comics for a profit. Even if it wasn’t in childhood, it’s something that can happen at a young age. Look at Alan Sugar for instance!’ I said. (We’d watched a programme about Alan Sugar, and he operated a boiled beetroot business in his youth).

‘Yeah – and what about Robert Kiyosaki (of RichDad, Poor Dad fame). He rented out his comics from his bedroom when he was only about nine or ten!’ Philip laughed.

In my childhood I didn’t do anything like that. Nor in my teens – or even my twenties. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I became even self-employed. And becoming more entrepreneurial to the point where I am now has taken time, if for no other reason than I had to learn about it and change my thinking and actions. And what that brings with it, as I’m sure you know, is a concomitant learning at an emotional level. And I’m pretty sure that’s the thing that takes the time.

At a practical level, anyone can learn what actions to take to become an entrepreneur. At an emotional level, it takes much longer to integrate the effect the changing actions and behaviour have on the person. The real proof of the pudding is whether or not the individual can actually do the actions and manage the emotional changes at the same time. Watch this space to see my reflections on this! And what about your thinking? How entrepreneurial is it? What about the emotional challenges that brings?