Employees
Employees sacrifice personal freedom and upside potential for more predictable income – or at least a mirage of it.
The employee must balance this internal desire for stability and a slow-but-generally-upward career progression against the nagging what-if questions we ask ourselves as we begin to see life in the rear-view mirror and evaluate the decisions of our youth. What if I had taken the risk and started a company? These what-ifs surround pivotal moments that give our career and life their vectors.
Entrepreneurs
Conversely, entrepreneurs forfeit financial and personal stability for the opportunity to create, and for a sense of controlling one’s own destiny.
Entrepreneurs must balance the hope of a significant payoff (financial and personal) against the continual fear of failure – the joy of creation against the drudgery of everyday work.
The entrepreneur balances a sense of freedom to do what we want, when we want, with a profound sense of obligation to do certain things in a certain way by a certain time, often challenging the very definition of our professed freedom.
Successful entrepreneurs use their talents, experience and hard work to deliver a product or service that is sell-able precisely because it is useful to people. However, my personal experience with entrepreneurship – and I think a common one – is that it starts before the concept of a product. It starts before the actual idea for the service.
Entrepreneurship begins with a desire to create.
Often, the calling to create precedes the actual, specific pursuit. It beckons us to search for the right market opportunity before we know what it really is we should do.
Once we find it, and taste the thrill of the attack, of trying and creating and building and struggling and persevering, we want more. More of the struggle. Our entrepreneurial selves engage in growth through the constant and unrelenting grind of moving ideas to execution to delivery of a functional product or service.
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