Thoughts on Entrepreneurship
A few weeks ago I came across an article that profiled a well-known entrepreneur – they were quoted as saying “The great thing about entrepreneurship is that you only have to be right once.” The essence of the article was that you can have many failures, but if you hit it big that one time, it will be all worth it. The quote and article stayed with me, so I decided to share my thoughts, my perspective and who I believe are the true heroes of entrepreneurship.
Let me start by saying that over the course of my career and personal life, I have had many setbacks and failures. I try to learn from each situation and it was actually those setbacks that eventually prepared me to start a business. When my business partner and I made the decision to start CompTrak over seven years ago, we knew that to scale and make our business vision a reality, we needed people; good people who would challenge us and bring insight and knowledge we didn’t have. When we hired our first employees, we asked many of them to leave good jobs at established companies to come work for our startup. They were all very excited about the opportunity to create something new. To this day, and with many of those original employees still with us, I am very humbled by the risk they took. We feel obliged to do everything we can as owners to make this company work. This wasn’t about one attempt in many and hopefully getting it right, but we felt an obligation and responsibility for the people that took that shared risk with us.
Real Heroes
We live in an era of mega-celebrities and entrepreneurs who are adored more than ever before.
From my experience, the real heroes of entrepreneurship are not the entrepreneurs, but the employees that bring to life the product and service that you envisioned – the ones that make it better and run the business every day.
They are the ones who adjust strategies and bring energy to the business every day.
Another hero in entrepreneurship is the clients, especially the early ones who saw something and gave you an opportunity to demonstrate your value. Without clients, there is no business. The advice, advocacy and partnerships will never be forgotten.
Maybe we do live in an era where it’s normal for billionaires to go back and forth about how successful and smart they are. Taking credit is seen as a strength, but I for one would like to see some more humility and gratitude. Let’s acknowledge that success comes with a lot of help including mentorship, great employees, and timing.
Eight years later, to the true heroes!!
