The Death of an Entrepreneur

Here we are coming to the end of a hard, dirty, bullet ridden road. Blood has spilled and the last breath of air enters our lungs. Guess what? This is not the end of the story.

An entrepreneur never dies. They just some how continue to rise from the dead. I know this first hand because I died yet here I am. I am taking yet another breath of air and blood is some how getting to my brain, at least enough to write this post.

What I would like to do is describe the things that lead up to my death so you can avoid following in my path.

1) Your family is #1, #2, and #3. If what you are doing is putting their well being or roof over their head in jeopardy, do not do it. You must be ready well beyond any doubt before you risk the financial pressure and struggles of being an entrepreneur. If I ever strike out again, I will have more money than myself or my family knows what to do with.. with that being said...#4

4) Have so much money in your back pocket that you can not sit down. You better freaking have a mint saved up. Either that or an extremely low requirement for money each month. I had no business starting my last venture. I had no business starting my first venture for that matter because then I had no money and no experience. At least this last time I had one of those two things. One extremely important factor is money. You have to live, eat, and have shelter. You need money for that. Either have a source of revenue prior to starting your venture or have it saved up. Your run way will end if you don't way way too soon. The key and secret to success is runway. You must allow yourself the time you and your business requires to grow and develop into what it was meant to become. A short runway equates to the stress of having to grow fast or die. This pressure is not good or healthy for anyone.

5) Get someone with some sense of finances on your core team. If that person can not dedicate the time or resources to you find someone else. This person needs to watch your money like a hawk and own your ever changing business plan and financial docs. If you are going to require outside funding at some point this (#5) is an absolute requirement for success. I do not care if you have a CPA from Harvard (if that is even possible) you have to build a business and the last thing you need to do is worry about accounting or financial documents until you need them to present to an investor. I had found an ace with sales and accounting skills to help me start BigLeapGPS but his runway was shorter than mine. Looking back, I knew I had to replace him with someone to help in those aspects I was not strong and I didn't. Shame on me!

6) Yes, for the most part, means Hell no screw off. DO NOT listen to the vast majority of people because they are full of shit and are not willing to back anything they say with anything but more shit. I wasted 98.99% of my time on dung spewers. Imagine if I had just stuck to the few that were actually for real in their intentions to work with me and allow us to grow our businesses together. Problem is it is tough to weed out the crap because they are the ones that always sound so good. Keep in mind that 1 out of every 25-30 discussions you have will turn into anything worth your time. People for the most part want to tell you what you want to hear with no intention of ever doing what they say they will do or what you think they will do.

There are more points to address but this is all I can muster tonight.

I have mulled over this post for I know 4-5 months. My intention is not to send future or potential entrepreneurs for the hills. All I want to do is make clear what I learned through dying you can change and adapt to while you still have blood left in your body.

I wanted to make sure I hit home as best I could that it may be exotic thought to start a business and make it successful but the absolute truth is we hear much more about successes then we do of the failures. The successes are those who find their non-shit blower(s) before the runway ends and who have time to still grow their business before an even better funded, more experienced start up doing the same thing eats their lunch. The process is a challenge. It was one of the greatest challenges of my life.

I do want to end this post with something positive... If an entrepreneur dies, they come back stronger.

So worst case, at least you have that to look forward to... Good luck and don't die!!! Get it right the first time....