Friday, November 30, 2012

No Perfect Time to Start a Business

KEVIN COLLERAN: Many potential entrepreneurs never actually follow their dream of entrepreneurship because they get stuck waiting for the perfect time or circumstances to start their business. And then a dream deferred becomes a dream denied.

The truth? There truly is no uniformly perfect time. Perfection is in the eye of the beholder and perfect timing is as unique as the entrepreneur and his or her idea. Some entrepreneurs get started during or directly after school while others wait until they have years of business experience working for somebody else. Others do something entirely different.

From my experience there are two types of entrepreneurs:

1. Those who have the desire to start their own company but don’t have the specific business idea; and

2. Those who have a burning passion to solve a recognized problem and realize that they are the best ones to do it.

I believe that the second type of entrepreneur has a better chance to succeed.

The first, the one with the desire to start a business but is not passionate about a specific market need, runs the risk of rushing into an opportunity for the sake of quickly getting down to business.

Rarely is this first business opportunity the successful engagement of their dream…and therefore the risks of starting a business can be greater.

The first questions an entrepreneur needs to answer are: Am I sure that I have what it takes to start a company that is created to solve a specific, critical business problem about which I am passionate? Moreover, is there a clear need for this business to be started and is there good reason why I am the right one to solve this problem?