In the current age of successful entrepreneurs being treated like rock stars, who wouldn’t want to be an entrepreneur? Today it’s “cool” to be an entrepreneur and it’s a big part of popular culture, but it wasn’t always that way.

There was a time when many people looked at you funny and thought you were a misfit unable to “make it” in the corporate world if you even mentioned “self-employment” or entrepreneurship. It sure wasn’t a badge of honor to call yourself an entrepreneur and not a choice that parents wished their children would embrace.

How times have changed. Today entrepreneurship is looked upon as an admirable career goal, not only by would be entrepreneurs, but also many parents. People willing open their bank accounts to send their kids off to learn about entrepreneurship.

There are high school clubs and college classes focused on entrepreneurship. There are even universities whose whole focus in on training students to become entrepreneurs.

The current reasons touted to embrace entrepreneurship as a career path include everything from the opportunity to manage your own time, the ability to say goodbye to “working for the man”, to the potential to become wildly wealthy.

Posters of Mark Zuckerberg and the Holstee Manifesto replace rock stars and sports heroes as the decoration of choice for dorm room walls.

Tales of nomad tech entrepreneurs working remotely from beaches around the world have replaced the office cubicle in a high rise on Wall Street as the ultimate dream job.

The potential to build a company, sell it and “make it big” replaces the decades old dream of a steady paycheck.
Entrepreneurship is everywhere but is it right for you? Not everyone needs to leave their job and start their own business to be successful in life. Quite frankly, many of us shouldn’t even think about it.

It’s not for everyone and here are a few signs that might warn you that you’re not cut out for entrepreneurship as a career path.

You prefer predictability, certainty and order in your life.

Entrepreneurship can be great, but it is often unpredictable with little certainty for what tomorrow will bring, especially if you are starting a new venture. You will spend much of your time validating your idea, talking to potential customers, gaining information and then making constant adjustments to your product or service in an effort to spiral in on a solution that your customer’s want to buy.

The process is iterative and although certainty can be gained over time, there is a long path to get to that point. If not knowing what tomorrow brings makes you a little queasy then you might want to work for someone else, where there is at least the appearance of certainty. You’ll sleep better at night.

On the other hand, if you see life as an adventure with lots of exciting twists and turns, then entrepreneurship is a great choice.

You prefer working alone and are not a big fan of teams.

Entrepreneurs aren’t solo practitioners. Almost every successful venture has been started by a team, not an individual. We often recognize and remember the public face of a company and forget that there was a team behind them. The best companies usually have at least two founders, one often is on the technology side and the other on the business side. It is a rare founder that encompasses both.

Think about some of our current tech giants and their founders. Apple had Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Microsoft had Bill Gates and Paul Allen and Google had Larry Page and Sergey Brin. This holds true for most successful startups. Teams matter and are an important component of success.

So, if you prefer to work in isolation and do everything yourself, entrepreneurship may not be the best option and you will likely struggle. Instead consider a career where you can be part of a larger organization with a role that doesn’t require a ton of collaboration.

If you recognize your own shortcomings, love to work in teams and get jazzed by accomplishment through teamwork (including strategic partnerships for the free-lancer world), then entrepreneurship might be a game you want to play.

You prefer working 9 to 5 (or less), knowing you have your weekends off.

Although it is true that you may have freedom and ultimately create a lifestyle of leisure as an entrepreneur, I’d be lying if I told you it wasn’t hard work. Entrepreneurship is hard work. Period. Exclamation Point. Long hours can be the norm and you need to recognize that when choosing the entrepreneurial path. It is a rare entrepreneur that starts a company by working a 30-hour work week with set hours, six weeks of vacation and weekends off.

Entrepreneurship will be hard work. There is no question about that. In the end you may build something great that enables you to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle where you can control your hours and spend lots of time on a beach enjoying life, but that’s often just a dream when starting out. Don’t fool yourself and be disappointed. Success requires hard work and many hours of dedicated effort.

If you prefer a 9 to 5 job, you are best suited to work for someone else.

If you are willing to be flexible with your time, put in the extra hours when necessary and love the accomplishment that can come from hard work, then entrepreneurship may be for you.

You prefer a world where everything is black or white.

If you live in a world where everything needs to be right or wrong, black or white, yes or no; you won’t be comfortable with entrepreneurship. Although we see more and more of what I’ll refer to as the “I’m right, you’re wrong” type of thinking on our social media feeds, the news and especially in politics; the reality is this isn’t the world we live in. The real world is full of uncertainty, partial information and lots of grey.

If you really hate ambiguity and prefer a career with clear right or wrong answers, then entrepreneurship probably isn’t a great choice and you’d be better pursuing a field where there are clear answers with little flexibility.

If you like asking lots of questions, digging for answers, A/B testing and solving complex puzzles then entrepreneurship may be just what the doctor ordered.

You prefer clear goals and checklists to drive your work day.

If you prefer that your boss gives you a “to-do” list in the morning and you get jazzed by being able to check off the boxes as you complete a task, then entrepreneurship is likely not something you will enjoy.

If you like solving complex problems and discovering what the next step is by gaining information and validating assumptions, then entrepreneurship is a career you may joyfully embrace.

You prefer to give your time and talent away at a discount.

There is a saying in entrepreneurship, “You don’t have a business without a paying customer.” I might expand that to include the word profitable, “You don’t have a business without a paying customer that is profitable”. Much of being a successful entrepreneur is understanding markets and people’s ability to pay for your product or service.

It involves market segmentation, supply and demand, cost of customer acquisition, understanding overhead and cost of goods sold. Success demands that you find a price point that allows there to be demand for your product in a crowded world of alternatives while leaving you enough left over at the end of the day to show a substantial profit.

In order to do this, you have to understand your product or services value to your customer. You’re selling value, NOT hours if you are in a service business or cost-plus priced widgets if selling a product. If there is a single reason entrepreneurs fail it is the inability to place the proper value on their product or service in the marketplace. Many under charge and it becomes the demise of their business.

If you are willing to do the hard work to determine the true value you are offering your customer, understanding the true costs of doing business and willing to endlessly test your pricing strategies in an effort to find the sweet spot that maximizes sales volume and profit then entrepreneurship will be an interesting and fun riddle to solve.

If you are not willing to learn basic finance, then don’t become an entrepreneur. If you feel bad charging people for your time or product, don’t start down the path to becoming your own boss. Unfortunately, way too many people carry their personal experience and relationships with money into their pricing decisions and woefully underprice their offerings.

There is no right or wrong. You decide.

These are just a few of the more common warning signs that entrepreneurship might not be the best path for you to follow. They are not the only signs, but if you notice any of these six in your life then you should at least sit up and pay attention before starting your own venture. Consider your decision carefully.

At the same time, entrepreneurship can be an amazing experience that enables you to build wealth, gain the freedom of being your own boss and creating jobs and opportunities for others all while pursuing your personal passions and dreams.

There is no right or wrong. You decide!

The real secret to be a successful entrepreneur lies in listening to your entrepreneurial heart.  It can be a powerful force to drive you forward through the dark valleys that every entrepreneur will experience at one time or another along their entrepreneurial journey. It is important to find, embrace, listen and nurture your entrepreneurial heart regularly. Unfortunately, as we move along our entrepreneurial journey from startup to scale-up many of us lose or bury this powerful and personal guide.

Finding your entrepreneurial heart.

First, find your entrepreneurial heart. It’s that little voice inside of you that guides you through thick and thin. You might think of it as your inner compass. We all have it, but we often lose it in the craziness of our daily lives and the myths the world pushes on us about what it means to be an entrepreneur. The world whispers a constant stream of false stories that lifts up the rare multi-billionaire twenty something entrepreneur as the norm.  Nothing could be further from the truth. The entrepreneurial journey can be a long winding road with many ups and downs along the way and it is your entrepreneurial heart that will see you through.

Your entrepreneurial heart is that little voice of confidence that says…

“You can do this!” even when things just don’t seem to be going your way.  It is the entrepreneur’s main source of strength to enable them to push through with dogged determination when others simply quit and go home.

“You are good enough!” even as the questioning gremlins bombard your brain with a million reasons why you are not yet ready or good enough to enjoy entrepreneurial success.

“That’s a great idea!” even when the world around you says you are crazy. Don’t forget, every great business in the world was just a crazy idea before it became a wildly successful company.

Consulting your entrepreneurial heart.

Once you’ve found it, listen to your entrepreneurial heart.

There have been times in my own entrepreneurial journey when I’ve lost my way and failed to listen to this powerful voice. It often happened when I lost my passion for the work that I was doing. This happens to all of us at one time or another and it’s important to immediately consult your entrepreneurial heart when you find yourself lost, drained of energy and finding it difficult to get motivated to push on.

You will hear it when you sit and listen. When you remember why you started your business and the excitement of the dream that was in front of you at that time.

You will hear it when you remember the incredible impact your business is having on your community and the important problems you are solving every day with your product or service.

You will hear it when you remember that your choice to be an entrepreneur gives you great freedom to live the life of your choosing and to pursue work you are passionate about.

You will hear it when you stomp out and crush the negativity.

Crush negativity to feed your entrepreneurial heart.

Let’s just be honest with each other. Entrepreneurship isn’t easy. It takes endless hours of hard work; sometimes significant financial investment and your big dreams are constantly being buffeted by things you have no control over like the economy or any of the other hundreds of things that are beyond your control.

When something isn’t easy you can quickly lose hope. This is true of many businesses that I’ve seen spiral into the ground unnecessarily when the lead entrepreneur lost hope…slow at first and then suddenly.  The negativity blinded them to the point that before they even recognized they had a problem it was too late to recover.

It is critical that you focus on crushing negativity. Don’t let it near you and recognize you are not alone in the hard work of being an entrepreneur.

Support for your entrepreneurial heart.

Many entrepreneurs I work with are isolated and feeling like they are alone on an island. The truth is that every entrepreneur faces similar challenges while scaling their business at one time or another during their careers. You are not the only entrepreneur that struggles. Every one of us has…

• experienced cashflow problems at one time or another in our career
• wondered where the next customer was going to come from
• felt like our business owned us, instead of us owning our business
• was frustrated at finding, building and keeping a great team
• sometimes wasn’t sure where our business was heading
• struggled with holding our team accountable
• were scared to death to invest in that much needed new piece of equipment or key employee
• …and the list could go on and on

The point is that you need to build a support system around you that includes other entrepreneurs that understand what it means to be an entrepreneur. Consider joining an entrepreneur’s mastermind or a group where you can be with other entrepreneurs that understand “the heart of the entrepreneur”.

The key to finding, consulting, feeding and supporting your entrepreneurial heart is in entrepreneurs supporting entrepreneurs.  In my experience, nothing else will work. The “heart of the entrepreneur” is the key to your success and you won’t find it at school.   

It is not to say that professional business education in the areas of finance, marketing, HR and the many other important areas of running your business day to day aren’t useful to learn or important. They surely are, but they are not enough for the entrepreneurial business owner.

Entrepreneurial success requires so much more than purely executing on the “nuts and bolts” of running a business.  Over time I’ve learned that entrepreneurs are a very special breed that put their hearts and souls into their life work that is often intimately linked to their personal passions and supported with their personal blood, sweat and tears along the way.

Seth Godin said, “Studying entrepreneurship without doing it… is like studying the appreciation of music without listening to it.” 

The same can be said about the “heart of the entrepreneur”, you must find it, then nurture it for the powerful guide that it is. You won’t find in a book or a class.  You will only find it by using it each day and by sharing your entrepreneurial heart with those of other likeminded entrepreneurs.

Enjoy your entrepreneurial journey!