The Entrepreneur’s Journey Part 1

This is the first of a five part series on my reflections on the entrepreneur’s journey. Some of this is taken from my experience advising and counseling entrepreneurs over nearly 20 years of practicing law. Much of this comes from hard-won personal experience as I have worked to build my own businesses from the ground up.

PART 1: Fall Head Over Heels in Love with a Problem

I am often asked what it takes to be an entrepreneur, or even for a good definition of entrepreneurship. A quick scan of any dictionary will give you a workable definition, like this one in Merriam-Webster — an entrepreneur is “one who organizes, manages and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise”. Not a bad definition, certainly, but it doesn’t capture what it is to be an entrepreneur.

Instead, I prefer to use a definition I stumbled across in a Harvard Business School publication.

“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources controlled.”

This is the essence of an entrepreneur — the pursuit of opportunity, without the resources needed. Entrepreneurs don’t cross bridges as they come to them. Entrepreneurs build bridges along the way.

But there is something more to being an entrepreneur than just taking on risk and managing it. In preparing this series I talked with experienced entrepreneurs, both young and old. One friend, in particular, talked about the passion an entrepreneur feels for the business, the solution, the team and the very act of solving a problem. The way he sees it, an entrepreneur is someone who falls madly in love with a problem, and doesn’t slow down until it’s solved. And he’s right.

The first thing every entrepreneur must do is to recognize some kind of problem, and then fall in love with finding the solution. This stands true regardless of whether she is building a for-profit enterprise, or a not-for-profit one, and whether it is a social venture or an NGO.

Many of us see the needs in markets easily (“Wouldn’t it be great if…” “Somebody should invent a….” “I wish my widget could do this…”). For others the search to identify these needs is longer and more arduous. Some literally trip over an opportunity, almost without realizing it. However you may have arrived at discovering the problem, the important thing for you is to have an emotional, in fact, almost irrational, response to solving it. Your passion, your energy, and your focus will all be aimed directly at solving the problem and every time you meet somebody new they will recognize that passion as authenticity.

You will need the passion in order to focus your time and energy. Being an entrepreneur is nothing like having a job. You must be driven toward finding a solution (hopefully the best solution) to your problem and then sharing it with the world.

Countless entrepreneurs have failed because they didn’t really understand their customers’ needs or because they were too far ahead of the market. Being a visionary is wonderful. Educating the market is lovely. Coming up with something that people didn’t know they needed is fantastic. But once you bring your service or product to market, people must feel they need to have it, need to buy it, need to use it.

Find a problem. Solve the problem.

How?

Easy…

Do what you know.

Do what you love.

Do something that makes a positive difference in the lives of others.

Do something that is worthy of your time, your spirit, your genius, your energy.

If you can fall in love with a problem, and find a solution that people recognize, there can be no question that you will be successful. You will have found a way to make a difference. And that’s the right way to start along your entrepreneur’s journey.

This is Part 1 of a 5 part series. Next week I will talk about the importance of being of service to others and in the service of others.