Penelope Trunk offers great advice in her weekly column for the Boston Globe and Brazen Careerist blog. I always love a woman with “brazen” attached to her name, and Penelope lives up to the tag line. She just wrote a great post on 8 Outdated notions of entrepreneurship that is worth checking out. A few of my favorites:
Old: Entrepreneurs are born with a specific set of character traits.
New: Entrepreneurship is learned. There is no, single way to be an entrepreneur.
Old: Raise money and spend a lot of it on advertising.
New: Raise no money and spend no money on advertising.
Old: Women will get power in corporate America and change it.
New: Women are getting what they want by leaving corporate America to start their own businesses.
If I were to be cynical for a moment, I would say that some of the old “keep us down” powers so prevalent in the corporate world can trickle into the world of entrepreneurship in the form of some “experts” and make us feel like we are not good enough or smart enough to start a business. The good news is that the prevalence of useful, free information from people like Penelope level the playing field.
The real opportunity you have as an entrepreneur is to design your business to fit your life. Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t have what it takes to make it happen. Diligence, tenacity, creativity and serious focus can get you through any perceived deficit.
Heck, you know that I created my business plan from a Dr. Suess book, and have done well despite my allergy to accounting, so you should have no problem.
“The good news is that the prevalence of useful, free information from people like Penelope level the playing field.”
Don’t forget people like you, too, Pam! Thanks again for the continued encouragement and wisdom.
Old: Entrepreneurs are born with a specific set of character traits.
New: Entrepreneurship is learned. There is no, single way to be an entrepreneur.
It’s probably both… you definitely need to be self-confident and aggressive in a non-offending way, and IMHO these are definitely character traits
Old: Raise money and spend a lot of it on advertising.
New: Raise no money and spend no money on advertising.
This may be possible for some businesses, but marketing is the core, isn’t it?
Old: Women will get power in corporate America and change it.
New: Women are getting what they want by leaving corporate America to start their own businesses.
Can’t comment on this one… maybe both are true…