Birmingham Small Business.com

Courtesy of Alex Lindahl of BC Heights.com:

Beethoven’s teacher called him “hopeless as a composer.” He held his violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions, but he became known as one of history’s greatest composers.

Walt Disney was fired by his newspaper editor who said he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” He went bankrupt several times, but finally built Disneyland.

Babe Ruth held the record for strikeouts (1,330), but later held the home run record with 714.

Thomas Edison’s teacher said he was “too stupid to learn anything.” He was fired from his first two jobs for being “unproductive,” made eventually 1,000 unsuccessful attempts, but invented the light bulb.

The director of Blue Book Modeling Agency once told Marilyn Monroe that she “better learn secretarial work or else get married.”

You may call them composers, athletes, actresses, inventors, or visionaries; I call them entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is defined as a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.

However, its origin stems back to 1828 when it meant “one who undertakes or manages,” from the original word, “entreprendre,” which means to “undertake.” I consider these people not only by their professional labels, but also by their entrepreneurial character to live an “entrepreneurial lifestyle,” developing their specific skills and undertaking their dreams while they develop themselves as individuals.
My business partner and I are frequently asked why we want to be entrepreneurs, why we are taking time off from school, or why we are taking a “risk.” It’s not always easy to convey our reasoning or explain our burning desire and passion to follow these dreams. I bring up these examples to make an analogy that the core of entrepreneurship isn’t only about starting a business from scratch, but that it’s more about actually living an entrepreneurial lifestyle.

What I mean by this is that entrepreneurship is really about developing and building yourself while undertaking a dream, project, goal, or business that doesn’t have a specific recipe or process one can follow. I define an entrepreneur as anyone who partakes in any such activity. As people engage in these “undertakings,” they start living an entrepreneurial lifestyle. In order to start a business or become a professional athlete, singer, composer, or inventor, these entrepreneurs must make specific commitments and sacrifices that affect all other aspects of their lives. In most cases, they must change many of their living habits to achieve their goal - this is why I believe that entrepreneurship can be better defined as a type of lifestyle.

We aim to live an entrepreneurial lifestyle because it allows us to build and create not only a business, but more importantly, to better define ourselves. People are so focused on the financial aspect of entrepreneurship, the risk of losing money, and the opportunity to create large cash flows that they lose sight of the underlying importance and value of undertaking the actual experience, learning process, and lifestyle.

I love entrepreneurship more and more every day. Already, I have been forced to learn a broad spectrum of different skills. The startup of my comapny, Textworks, has enabled me to develop new passions: I used to hate reading, but now I spend an average of three hours every day reading blogs and various news sources; I used to not be able to write a single coherent sentence, now I am learning how to write a column for a newspaper and thoroughly enjoying it; I used to be shy, now I reach out and network with new people on a daily basis; I used to fear speaking in front of large groups of people, now I’m overcoming that fear and learning how to give professional presentations; I used to waste time incessantly and not care about it, now I love and strive to be productive throughout the day; the list goes on, but you get the point.

People consider our positions as entrepreneurs “risky.” But is it? We may lose money, but how can we consider it risky if we are learning so many skills throughout the process? There is substantial value added that many people don’t consider at first. I know that I will be able to use these skills in any other endeavor, whether it is at a job or just in raising a family.

I am confident that whether the business succeeds, or whether we finish school now or later, that our time invested will pay off. Throughout the process, we will make mistakes and have our small failures, but failures and mistakes are part of any process.

People shouldn’t be overly concerned with whether something is “successful”; we all know the successes of Michael Jordan, but he once said, “I’ve failed over and over again in my life. That is why I succeed.”