THE ONE THING THEY DIDN’T TELL ME
It has been suggested that today’s entrepreneurs and small business people are the twenty first century equivalents of the explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They are the Columbuses and Magellans of our age, exploring and conquering new worlds. People who may risk everything that they have, for the chance of fulfilling a dream. I must admit, however, that this grandiose description of being an entrepreneur was not something that I envisioned when I decided to embark upon this path.
Like many entrepreneurs and small business people I got my start when the subdivision of the corporation I had been working at for over a decade was sold to a competitor. Our new owners came in and assured us that it would be business as usual, except that our subdivision would now have a few new people in the organization. That was true for nearly six months, until they closed down the company and put us all out on the streets.
Sensing that something was in the wind, I had been preparing for the company closing. Unlike many of my friends, however, I decided to try my hand at starting my own company. My experience in corporate America had given me a good education in what was required to make a company run. During the six month transition to unemployment I had read a few books and attended a few seminars on the actual process of starting a small business.
By the time the fateful day arrived, I had assembled the requisite items that the “how to” books had told me I would need, and assumed there would be a smooth transition. After my first few months, however, I discovered something that neither the books, nor my experience had prepared me for. It is something that I am sure that all small business people and entrepreneurs reading this will identify with. While you may encounter many people in the course of the day, being a small business person is very isolating and lonely.
I was surprised at how isolating being an entrepreneur can be, but there is a reason for this. There are very few entrepreneurs in this world. Most people work for someone else, in some capacity. Even large corporation CEO’s are employees of the organizations that they work for. They still report to someone else. This really limits the number of people that you can commune with, people that you can share your thoughts and feelings with. While employees certainly have their problems, they are not the problems encountered by small business people. How does one explain not being able to sleep at night, because the back ordered supplies you need for your major project have still not shown up; to someone that is getting a paycheck every two weeks whether those supplies show up or not? How do you explain your frustration that sometimes you can’t schedule an appointment with the dentist twenty four hours in advance, because some last minute emergency will keep you from showing up; to someone that has the ability to schedule a vacation six months in advance? How do you explain the risks you have taken to start and grow a business; to someone whose biggest risk is that they may lose a job and have to find another one? The isolation of all of this was something that while I have learned to deal with was certainly not something I had heard about.
Embarking on a new path or risking what one has, in trying to pursue a dream, has been with us for all of history. As I said earlier, it was certainly true of the explorers hundreds of years ago. These were people who risked their lives to take journeys into regions that in some cases didn’t even exist, and many times they were not successful. Columbus really didn’t find a shorter sea route to India, and Ponce de Leon, never found the Fountain of Youth. They too must have felt the isolation, though. As Columbus’s first voyage pressed on and land was not in sight, who could he have shared his doubts about ever finding land, or of even surviving the voyage, with?
Machievelli’s wrote of his admiration for the risk taker in his book “The Prince” published in the early 1500s.
“And let it be noted that there is no more delicate matter to take in hand, nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success, than to set up as the leader in the introduction of changes. For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off”
Even Machievelli, over 500 years ago, recognized how lonely it must be for people who tried to carve their own paths in society.
For me, I have dealt with the isolation, by trying to seek out other small business people and entrepreneurs. This is not an easy thing to do, because they are always working. In addition, they are by nature individualist who usually don’t like attending public forums. In addition, many of these forums turn out to be meetings where someone is trying to sell something. Occasionally though I do find events that only small business people attend, because they are coming to learn and to commune. We will sit around a table listening to others and maybe even discussing our problems. You will know when you are at one of these meetings, because someone will discuss an experience that you thought had only happened to you. As you look around the table you’ll notice a familiar look in the eyes, and the empathetic smiles. For a brief moment, the loneliness is shared.
Lorrence Green, PhD.
President
Westbury Diagnostics
http://westburydiagnostics.com/
