Like anything else in life, there is both good and bad to being an entrepreneur.  The key is going in with your eyes wide open and fully prepared.


REALITY CHECK 3.0

• Unless you are either brilliant or lucky with V.C. or Angel funding, be prepared to manage your business on a cash basis, as credit lines have been slashed or closed across the board.
  • Other financing options are community banks, credit unions, and more creative options you will need to assess with great care (see the February 2010 issue of Entrepreneur "Bankology" article for details).
• Successes like Tatto Media are still more the exception than the rule.
  • Beyond a great idea, what generally facilitates such college student start-up success is:
    • No business experience baggage/major preconceptions
    • High energy and fewer life distractions
    • Team bonding virtually unparalleled in the business world
    • Luck and great timing

For more pedestrian small businesses, if you will, owners on a daily basis must balance huge workloads with family matters, cash flow constraints, employee issues, not so flashy business ideas and models...all while pursuing new business and managing operations.  FYI, just because this is the case does not make your business any less important than that of the likes of Tatto.  

While so-called experts like to refer to Entrepreneurship 3.0 as the true blend of lifestyle and business, the reality is that has always been the case.  You live and breathe your start up.  It becomes woven into the fabric of your life.


THE BOTTOM LINE 3.0

At the very least, entrepreneurship gives you a chance to divine your own destiny.  It provides the means to pursue a passion or a different lifestyle.  You can redefine who you are.  And whether you succeed or not is in both your and fate's hands, not someone else's.  At best you succeed to the point you have gained control over your destiny and no longer have to worry about money from month to month.  You create a new paradigm in your own existence.  And perhaps along the way you manage to make others' lives better in the process.