Build Your Own Business: What Drives Entrepreneurs? By Rod Kackley

What is it with these entrepreneurs who want to build their own businesses, be their own bosses, by their own bootstraps? Are they  nuts?

 They all think they have a better idea, a better way, or perhaps even the best idea or the best way.

Here’s the reality: Most of them aren’t going to make it. They know it. They are also sure, at least 80 percent sure, that it is the other guy who is going to fail.

Believe me it happens. Entrepreneurs fail. But some continue. They are the entrepreneurs who never lose the dream of building their own business and being their own boss

Kevin McCurren, the executive director of the Grand Valley State University Family Business Institute’s Center for Entrepreneurship told me, while I was working on an article regarding the Jandernoa Entrepreneurial Mentoring program in Grand Rapids, Mich. for Crain’s Detroit Business, there are plenty of early stage or startup companies that, are born and die every year.

Some entrepreneurs will learn from their failures. They might not get back in the saddle immediately. But they will try again. These are the serial entrepreneurs.

The rest will not. It is one and done for them.

The life of an entrepreneur, especially the life of a bootstrapping entrepreneur is not for everyone.

However for some there is no other life. They are the entrepreneurs we will be concentrating on, those who want to build their own business, be their own boss, by their own bootstraps.

I have been talking to entrepreneurs for more than 20 years who bootstrapped their way into business. Some of them crashed and burned. Others walked away. A few of the entrepreneurs spent nights sleeping in their cars and dining by dome light in those vehicles on a tasty plate of Ramen Noodles.

I also know they wake up in the middle of the night. They are scared to death, wondering not how they will meet payroll like they would if their business was in its second stage and they had to be concerned with employees. These entrepreneurs are worried about how they will put food on their own tables. 

Sometimes they might be wondering how they are going to explain to their life partner lying beside them they have to go to the bank again, or why their credit cards are maxed out again, or explain why they will be eating Ramen Noodles for one more month, again.

These are the bootstrappers.

At some point in their journey, they decided to tell their life partner that the entrepreneurial life was the one they had chosen, the only one that would satisfy them.

Do they talk to their partners at the beginning of their journey? They never do. They made the decision. Their plan is set, maybe not on paper, but it is set.

Their journey begins in their own minds, in their own hearts. They convince themselves that they can do it, that they will do it, and they will be glad — at some point — that they did it.

Entrepreneurs — with or without funding — stand at the abyss, look, and leap. 

They decide on the way down.

They can’t help it.

What is it that drives them? Is it money? I don’t think so. I have found the best of the best are never driven by the dream of riches. They don’t turn it down when money comes their way, still cash is not the force that drives them. 

What could possibly be more important than money? The overriding factor that gets them out of bed every day is an overwhelming urge to persuade.

They all have it. That’s the driving force. It is the urge, the desire, even the addiction to proving they have the best idea, that they know the best way, that they really are the smartest one in the room.

How do those who are successful become successful?

How do those who fail bear their pain?  What do they learn? How do they start over, or decide to go home?

What can the rest of us learn from them?

Build Your Own Business, Be Your Own Boss, By Your Own Bootstraps is devoted to the entrepreneurs who all believe they have a better idea, or a better way.

Some will succeed. Many will fail. We will tell their stories, all of them.

So let’s begin. Please read on. I will be adding new stories as often as they come my way on the free Rod Kackley app that you can download for iOS and Android devices through the App Store and Google Play, as well as on my website, www.rodkackley.com and here on the Build Your Own Business blog.

And please join the conversation. Feel free to add your comments to the app, the website and the blog, or simply shoot me at email at rod@rodkackley.com

Rod

© 2014 Lyons Circle Publishing Inc.