Why Becoming An Entrepreneur is the Answer to Your Failed Job Searches

Young Entrepreneur Council via Foxnews ^ | July 14, 2011 | By Scott Gerber

[jboot]

When I was 17 I tried to start a lawn care business. I was a natural at it and I had a great client base, but I was using equipment rented from a family member at a very low rate. When the summer season was over the equipment owner decided not to rent to me any longer. (My fault entirely-long story.) The cost of buying the equipment was more than I could afford, borrow or finance, so after my senior year I went to work for "the man".

But it was grand while it lasted!

[RJS1950]

Yeah, it split at least 5 times in as many years from what I remember. It would have become worth millions. Oh well. The professor I worked for at the time didn’t have the money available either and we both agreed that it was way too risky; bad call on our part. Genentech today is a huge biotech business. Another could have been that isn’t worth worrying about at this point in my life.

[Blue Ink]

This guy’s mindset is the curse of young people today (and I’m not that old; I came up with people like this guy.)

They get out of college and think that means never having to fetch coffee while they learn something about their chosen business.

Unless you have a professional degree — doctor, lawyer, engineer — you are NOT a professional when you graduate college.

What he considers “underemployment” is really just starting at the bottom, learning the ropes, and working your way up. He can’t start at the top, so he thinks he can opt out by just saying, “I’M the boss. I’m an entrepreneur!”

He is a child.

[reformedliberal]

Your experience is like ours. We began as craftspeople, doing street fairs. Finally, we made the products that had wholesale appeal, so we went to wholesale trade shows.

People need skills and tools. Today, with the Internet, you can market online and to targeted markets.

I know someone with a business similar to yours. She began making re-enactment clothing for herself and friends and now sells at a couple of large Western or Rendezvous-type shows, on the Internet and out of her own shop.

Yes, you live out of the cash box and maybe have no employees except one or two other talented folks to help out when there is a rush job or one too big for one person. But you can make enough to live on or to supplement a day job and if you are good at what you do, the clientele will follow, mostly through word-of-mouth, which is the best and cheapest advertising in the world.