Having our own enterprise enables us to pursue our own dreams and goals. When combined with a stake and personal responsibility, this can become a powerful motivating force. The more motivated we are, the more likely we are to succeed. Often, people who are in business love what they do, enjoy a higher quality of life, and worry less because of the personal feeling of purpose, progress and success.
There is also a tremendous amount of self-pride. Humans are all about ownership. We like to own material goods. We like to own companies through stocks. Owning our own business can be very satisfying because it makes us feel as though we have made something of our life and have been successful.
As businesspersons, we should be confident and thoroughly convinced that our concept will meet with success. Our gut feeling should spur us on, even if our friends are cynical and experts are skeptical. There will always be the risk factor to impede us. We must learn to live with risk and find ways and means to get around it.
We must recognize opportunities and make the most of them even before anyone else does. Our intuition must be supported with a meticulous survey of customer needs and make sure that the market is ready for our product. If a market already exists for our product, we need to research our competitors and find out the problems faced, so that we can steer clear of the pitfalls.
We must learn to ‘think out-of-the-box’ and step outside our comfort zone. We all have places we like to go, people we want to talk to, foods we like to eat and music we like to listen to. But by trying new things, we gain the ability of seeing things from a different perspective.
We will see old things in a new light, and if we open our minds we are able to broaden our horizons. What would life have been today if the Wright brothers (airplane), Thomas Edison (electric light), Alexander Bell (telephone) and Sir Isaac Newton (laws of gravity) didn’t think out-of-the-box?
We must dare to dream. As Vincent van Gogh said, “If you hear a voice within you saying, ‘you are not a painter’, then by all means paint … and that voice will be silenced”. If you dream of having your own business and you succeed in doing it, you will not live a life of quiet desperation. And, as you grow old and look back at your life you will not have to say, “I wish I took the chance when I was twenty-five”
Keeping the dream alive will be difficult when the phone occasionally stops ringing, the only mail you get are bills and your salary is zero. The dream of what can be may be the only thing that keeps you going when reality looks gloomy. For the dream only dies when the dreamer stops dreaming.