When taking an entrepreneurial leap, studies show that you have a greater than 50% chance of failing within the first five years.
Eek!
Many factors go into succeeding or failing. Learn about them in Entrepreneurial Leap: Do You Have What It Takes to Become an Entrepreneur?
The one I want to focus on in this message is your choosing the right business for you. It’s important to know that, as an entrepreneur, you can’t succeed in every business and every industry. I can’t count how many times successful entrepreneurs got into another business and failed. Just because you’re successful in one business doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to be successful in another.
It’s vital that you have a passion for your industry, business, product or service, and customer or client. If you don’t, your odds of failure increase. So, let’s look at your options.
How to Decide What Business is Right for You
You have to decide what business, what industry, what offering (product or service), what type (B2B or B2C), what size ($1 million to $1 billion), how big (10 employees or 100,000 employees), and high-end/low-volume or low-cost/high-volume? What are you drawn to?
I love high-end/low-volume, service-based, small companies in the training industry. I’m never going to start a toy manufacturing company. It’s not the right business for me, and it’s highly likely I would fail.
One entrepreneur-in-the-making I interviewed knows that his passion is in providing in-home services. This means that someday he’ll have a fleet of trucks with technicians providing services to homeowners. A friend of mine loves accounting software implementation and has built and sold two companies doing that, and is now building his third in the same industry.
For a list of industries, ideas and thoughts, read chapter 6 of Entrepreneurial Leap. Just wanting to start a business and make money aren’t enough to grow a startup into a successful business.
If you want to be an entrepreneur because it’s cool, you’ll probably fail. True entrepreneurs don’t chase becoming an “entrepreneur.” They instead chase their passion, ideas and dreams, and work hard to make them a reality. As a by-product, they’re considered entrepreneurs.
Next Steps
Take 30 minutes to narrow down which business is right for you using the above factors.
