We agree. Entrepreneurs are not born. They are created from life experiences.

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Here in the U.S., we’re fortunate that our culture fosters entrepreneurship – probably more today than in generations past. It used to be that entrepreneurs were considered renegades. They were the people nobody would hire so they didn’t have a choice.

Now entrepreneurship is a lifestyle option that even the most qualified people make. So what motivates people to strike out on their own?

Career events

Franchisors often see a spike in demand in an area where layoffs are happening. Sometimes we don’t come to entrepreneurship; it comes to us.

It may be career frustration. Many people start their own business because they’re bored with their current occupation. Perhaps they feel like they’ve topped out. They’ve gone as far as they can in their current career so they decide to start something of their own.

Personal motives

Art Williams, the football coach who became a billionaire by building his own insurance business, said he was just “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

W. Clement Stone, who built an insurance dynasty in the depths of The Great Depression, cites inspirational dissatisfaction as the source for many great achievements.

How do you know you’re ready to start?

Entrepreneuring is a process. Like any process, there has to be a starting point.

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The desire to be my own boss just consumed me. I had this feeling in my gut that I just couldn’t get rid of. I couldn’t stand not owning my own business. This desire just ate me up and spit me out every single day that I wasn’t in business for myself.

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For me, it didn’t seem that the opportunities I needed in my corporate career were there any longer. I just couldn’t get where I wanted to be if I didn’t strike out on my own. It was a very, very difficult decision. It was incredibly emotional. But looking at my industry now, I’m glad I jumped into entrepreneurship when I did. r?

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The battle between two fears

We think it comes down to fear. The general population has an overwhelming fear of failure.

Entrepreneurs have a fear of not trying. They just have to know what would happen if they just tested their bigg idea.

You’re ready to be an entrepreneur when your fear of not trying overcomes your fear of failure.

You reach a point where inaction or delay is just not acceptable any longer. You have to go for it. You have to take your shot at bigg success!

How did you know you were ready to strike out on your own?

Share that with us by leaving a comment below, e-mailing us at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com or calling us at 888.455.BIGG (2444).

Thank you so much for reading our post today.

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Please join us next time when we’ll discuss the trap that keeps people from striking out on their own. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00480-091409.mp3

Related posts

[cref 1962]

Think Like an Entrepreneur

(Image in today's post by tanyah)

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When it comes to money, the author says that a gentleman would never:

• Borrow from a lady

• Borrow from a man without collateral and a plan to pay it back quickly

• Discuss money

• Discuss his possessions or their cost

• Name drop about his rich friends

___

I think the idea that a gentleman never borrowed money from a lady shows that we are living in different times. Many women are financially independent today and willing to be angel investors. It’s when you don’t pay someone back, male or female, that it becomes rude.

___

Money talks. Should you listen?

Why do we feel the need to talk about, or show off, what we have? We all know people – be it co-workers, family members or friends – who like to talk about how much they make or how much something cost. We really liked the author’s final quote: “There was once a day that we did not try to keep up with the Joneses – because we didn’t know what the Joneses had and no one knew what we had.”

Materially possessed

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I recently saw a picture of people standing line. It made me think of the pictures we saw from the Great Depression. Back then, people stood in line to get a little soup or bread. The picture I saw recently showed people waiting in line to buy a Blackberry Storm!

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Why is it so important to have the newest phone? Because we get our identity from our possessions.

We’re not saying that it’s bad to be an early adopter; we need them. The question is, and only you can answer it, “Is it best for you to be an early adopter?”

It may be. Your career may require you to have the newest phone. That’s a good reason. However, buying one just to be able to show it off to our friends … not such a good reason.

Just say “No”

It’s not a good reason because it leads to an ongoing problem. If that’s really the reason we’re doing it, we’re going to have to keep buying over and over again.

It becomes like a drug and we need our fix.

“I want it. I want it now. I want people to know I have it.”

A void check

After we admit that we’re doing this, we have to ask ourselves why – what’s the underlying reason? You see, we buy because of how we feel about ourselves.

We’re spending money to fill an emotional void.

We’re showing off our latest acquisition to cover up our real feelings. When we do this, we just create a bigger problem.

Getting it in balance

That problem is – we end up with a weak balance sheet. We want a lot of assets and few liabilities. The result of our spending is few real assets and a lot of liabilities.

Millionaires do the opposite. They focus on building up their balance sheets by buying assets with real value and keeping their debt relatively low. That’s not determined by how much we make or what we buy. It’s based on how much we save and invest intentionally.

Shhh … be very, very quiet!

We do that quietly. Perhaps nobody knows but us! But that’s the beautiful thing about it – we know!

In the last few months, we’ve relearned how incredibly important it is to have a financial safety net. We have to build up an emergency reserve. It’s not a sexy thing like a Blackberry Storm or a new car. It won’t get your friends excited. In fact, you probably won’t even talk about it because it’s so boring. But it sure will come in handy in the future.

You can also quietly get out of debt. We like to show off what we just bought, but we don’t talk about how we maxed out our credit card to buy it. So we put out a false identity, which doesn’t help us feel better about ourselves, because down deep we know the truth. And that truth does not set us free!

Don’t worry about what your friends and neighbors think you have. Take solace by knowing what you’re doing to have all you need and then some!

___

___

We’re grateful that you read our post today. Please check in tomorrow when we’ll talk about night moves. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00281-120808.mp3

Related posts

Your Emotions and Your Money

Squirrels, Nuts and Business Cycles

6 Easy Steps To Financial Freedom

Getting Aggressively Passive: Creating A Passive Income That Sets You Free

(Image by isouthpawi)

___

___

When it comes to money, the author says that a gentleman would never:

• Borrow from a lady

• Borrow from a man without collateral and a plan to pay it back quickly

• Discuss money

• Discuss his possessions or their cost

• Name drop about his rich friends

___

I think the idea that a gentleman never borrowed money from a lady shows that we are living in different times. Many women are financially independent today and willing to be angel investors. It’s when you don’t pay someone back, male or female, that it becomes rude.

___

Money talks. Should you listen?

Why do we feel the need to talk about, or show off, what we have? We all know people – be it co-workers, family members or friends – who like to talk about how much they make or how much something cost. We really liked the author’s final quote: “There was once a day that we did not try to keep up with the Joneses – because we didn’t know what the Joneses had and no one knew what we had.”

Materially possessed

___

I recently saw a picture of people standing line. It made me think of the pictures we saw from the Great Depression. Back then, people stood in line to get a little soup or bread. The picture I saw recently showed people waiting in line to buy a Blackberry Storm!

___

Why is it so important to have the newest phone? Because we get our identity from our possessions.

We’re not saying that it’s bad to be an early adopter; we need them. The question is, and only you can answer it, “Is it best for you to be an early adopter?”

It may be. Your career may require you to have the newest phone. That’s a good reason. However, buying one just to be able to show it off to our friends … not such a good reason.

Just say “No”

It’s not a good reason because it leads to an ongoing problem. If that’s really the reason we’re doing it, we’re going to have to keep buying over and over again.

It becomes like a drug and we need our fix.

“I want it. I want it now. I want people to know I have it.”

A void check

After we admit that we’re doing this, we have to ask ourselves why – what’s the underlying reason? You see, we buy because of how we feel about ourselves.

We’re spending money to fill an emotional void.

We’re showing off our latest acquisition to cover up our real feelings. When we do this, we just create a bigger problem.

Getting it in balance

That problem is – we end up with a weak balance sheet. We want a lot of assets and few liabilities. The result of our spending is few real assets and a lot of liabilities.

Millionaires do the opposite. They focus on building up their balance sheets by buying assets with real value and keeping their debt relatively low. That’s not determined by how much we make or what we buy. It’s based on how much we save and invest intentionally.

Shhh … be very, very quiet!

We do that quietly. Perhaps nobody knows but us! But that’s the beautiful thing about it – we know!

In the last few months, we’ve relearned how incredibly important it is to have a financial safety net. We have to build up an emergency reserve. It’s not a sexy thing like a Blackberry Storm or a new car. It won’t get your friends excited. In fact, you probably won’t even talk about it because it’s so boring. But it sure will come in handy in the future.

You can also quietly get out of debt. We like to show off what we just bought, but we don’t talk about how we maxed out our credit card to buy it. So we put out a false identity, which doesn’t help us feel better about ourselves, because down deep we know the truth. And that truth does not set us free!

Don’t worry about what your friends and neighbors think you have. Take solace by knowing what you’re doing to have all you need and then some!

___

___

We’re grateful that you read our post today. Please check in tomorrow when we’ll talk about night moves. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00281-120808.mp3

Related posts

Your Emotions and Your Money

Squirrels, Nuts and Business Cycles

6 Easy Steps To Financial Freedom

Getting Aggressively Passive: Creating A Passive Income That Sets You Free

(Image by isouthpawi)

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We found a great white paper by Marvin Bolt of Alpha Plus Advisors [PDF]. It’s well worth your time to read the full paper to understand historical mutual fund flows and market performance.

Specifically, he looks specifically at what individual investors did with their money during four recent periods:

Stock market crash
In the first quarter of 1987, individual investors placed a then-record amount into the market as stock prices rose. Of course, in October of that year, the stock market crashed. Individual investors responded by withdrawing record amounts of money as the market hit a low we haven’t seen since.

Gulf War & recession
In the second quarter of 1990, there was a huge inflow of funds as the market hit its high for the period. By the third quarter, investors were pulling money out just as the market hit another low point.

Dot.com bubble and 9/11
At the height of the dot.com bubble, investors poured a new record amount of money into the market in the first quarter of 2000. The S&P 500 hit a high in that same quarter. Things soon changed as the market began falling, reaching a low in the third quarter of 2002, just when individual investors were withdrawing record amounts of money.

Housing bubble & mortgage crisis
The market hit its high in 2007 as investors poured money in again amidst the euphoria. While all the data is not yet in, it appears that in October of this year, a new record amount of money was pulled out of the stock market.

Rising above the crowd
We want to buy low and sell high. History shows that the crowds tend to do the opposite – they buy high and sell low. They invest heavily during the bubble and get out during what we’ll call the crater.

Think about what’s happening right now. Stock prices have been falling. But for every seller, there has to be a buyer! Who’s buying and who’s selling? Morningstar has a great video that’s well worth your time to gain the proper perspective on this crucial point.

To rise above the crowd, you can’t think like the crowd. You have to do the opposite.

So take a deep breath. If you don’t need the money for five to seven years, the odds are heavily in your favor. If you need the money sooner than that, stocks probably aren’t the best investment for that money. Because we’ve relearned just how risky stocks can be in the short-run.

Educate yourself to maintain the proper perspective. We can’t count on our media or our leaders to do this for us. Knight Kiplinger wrote a fantastic piece explaining all of the differences between today’s situation and the Great Depression. We highly recommend that you read this article to see why he thinks we’re not ready to jump over the cliff.

Market timing is a risky game. Since the crowd tends to get it wrong, perhaps the best way to get it right is to keep investing through the whole cycle. You’ll buy fewer shares when the market is up. You’ll get some great deals when the market is down like it is now. Over time, you’ll end up with a decent return. 

Thanks so much for reading our post today. Join us next time as we discuss overcoming guilt about how you choose to spend your time. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00271-112408.mp3

Related posts

Squirrels, Nuts and Business Cycles

6 Easy Steps To Financial Freedom

Getting Aggressively Passive: Creating A Passive Income That Sets You Free

(Image by svilen001)