You might be an entrepreneur if…
Yesterday I spent the afternoon helping a friend with some manual labor related to a business endeavor she has next week. The work didn’t require much thought – we were describing and pricing items. But I had a lot of fun. We giggled, we laughed and we talked, talked, talked as we worked through the stack of items.
Afterwards, sitting in my favorite coffee shop waiting for my next appointment of the day, I found myself reflecting on how important people are to business. And I’m not just talking about the various business experts needed at each stage of development in a business’s life. Those people are important too – and are worth another blog entry someday in the future.
But today I’m focused on the friends, family members and acquaintances that help out at some point with your business simply because they love you and/or they like being a part of building something new.
I’ve been on both sides of this equation and, when it’s my business, I’ve felt incredibly grateful, lucky and honored. When I’m helping with someone else’s entrepreneurial venture, I’ve also felt these same three things – but in a different way.
I’ve given it some thought and I think the most similar feeling I’ve had is when a friend’s small child or teenager asks me to do to something with them. What the child, teenager and new venture have in common is that they’re all still in their early stages of development when the foundation of their characters is still being developed. It is an honor to be asked to be involved at this stage. You do feel lucky and grateful for the opportunity.
At least I think you do feel honored, lucky and grateful to be involved in the business venture if you are a developing entrepreneur yourself. That‘s right, I said it. I think an individual’s willingness to devote time and energy to the entrepreneurial endeavors of others is a useful and fairly reliable indicator of whether that person is going to grow into a entrepreneur themselves sometime in the future. I concede that it might just be an indicator that you love someone enough to devote hours to a cause you think is futile and doomed. Which means you really love that person.
So how to tell the difference? Well blood and marriage for starters. But other than that:
- Are you interested in hearing about other’s business adventures (even people not related to you)?
- Do you jump at the opportunity to help out with other‘s new ideas and ventures (whether for-profit or non-profit)?
- Do you follow through and actually show up when it’s time to do the work?
- Do you wish you could be as creative as the person with the new venture?
Congratulations, I think you’re a future entrepreneur!
