From the time I started realizing the real sense of being an entrepreneur, I have been reading, sharing and re-looking at what exactly entrepreneurship takes you through. It’s a ride, the one very much like a roller-coaster. The only difference being, it’s a long journey cut short into many small yet rejoicing milestones.
Unlike any other person for whom a milestone achievement could be a remarkable event in his/her life, an entrepreneur encounters milestones every month, every day, every moment.
From a successful product, an appreciation mail from a happy client, a timely pay check, a satiated customer, a perfect hire and to those defining moments of being happy with your entrepreneurial self; you live a life of milestones every day.
Recently I said to myself and then to the world (read ‘Facebook’), one of the most significant fact associated with being an entrepreneur – which is “it doesn’t favour any gender”. No matter who the hell you are or from where do you belong, remember it’s none of ‘its’ business.
Whether you are He or She, keep your insecurities, habits and confinements to specific zones of life, all to yourself; while the entrepreneur in you will make you go through hell and heaven – all in the same way. You can neither stay out nor keep yourself into things which are a misfit for you in general. While ‘He’ would need to handle a girl issue at his work place, ‘She’ would need to deal with the humiliation of chasing pending dues by visiting offices and hearing to everyday NOs.
Leave your own impression of who you are behind and you are ready to be an entrepreneur. From wiping your office floor to cleaning your employees’ tables, you would do that all for yourself with no regrets at all. You would need to take the biggest decision of continuing with a client or the silliest judgment of where the dustbin should be placed, all in that entrepreneurial zeal.
I am not saying that every start-up or say an established venture deals with everything said above (which in a way it does, except deciding on that dustbin placement), but keep your ego, disagreements and impression of you being the boss, completely outside – may be across a lane so that it never crosses your office boundary, or more precisely your thoughts.
You are an introvert or an extrovert, talkative or mute, outgoing or withdrawn, strategist or doer, or whatever, you need to be everything which entrepreneurship demands for. Nurture yourself everyday, be a learner, overcome your fears, come out of your comfort zone – it’s quite nice over there too, leave your cocoons and surprise yourself everyday. You may not be an accounts person, but keep account of things that matter for your firm’s good, excel sheets may scare you, but just open a document and see if it’s really that scary. Don’t always do things because you ‘need’ to, but also because you ‘want’ to. Think of what you are afraid to do and then smile back to it saying “I got to do this.”
Entrepreneurship simply means you have no status to define for yourself, yet you keep chasing for dream positions for your employees. And believe me, it’s one of those things you would always carry a smile on your face for. Entrepreneurship comes from deep humiliation and highest standards.
You would soon realize that in entrepreneurship few things go hand in hand – power and poverty, exhilarating experience and extreme pain, perfect moments and pissing ones, impressive status to depressing loneliness, and you can do that word play all day long. You may try to balance it out, but it’s going to weigh on the side you least expect it to.
So while you take pride in being one, be humble too to deal with this ride in a successful and modest manner.
Best Wishes!
