Start Your Entrepreneurial Voyage

A Sea of Opportunity Awaits

If you perform a Google search regarding the word ‘entrepreneur’, it populates with a staggering 1,350,000,000 results. Fine tune the search a little by inserting the term ‘entrepreneurship’ and the number doesn’t fine tune down – it does the opposite and expands to 1,500,000,000.

You are reading that correctly – 1.5 billion!

That’s a tremendous amount of information right at your fingertips – readily available to help one begin their research and start their journey.

And on that entrepreneurial journey, your competition may appear much more manageable – as there are approximately 582 million around the world, and only (only?) 31 million in the United States, roughly 16% of the adult population.

In more straightforward words, about one of every six adults you encounter on any given day are entrepreneurs: self-employed individuals launching or operating small, medium, or large businesses. A very impressive number.

However, the results that nagged at me were the ones providing examples of successful entrepreneurs. Here we read from the same roster of names familiar to most anyone – Franklin, Ford, Carnegie, Edison, Carver, Bell, Wright, Jobs, Gates, Musk, Bezos, Winfrey, Rockefeller, etc., etc., etc.

Yet when I think of entrepreneurs, my thoughts are of the once-average man or woman that wakes up one morning and decides that will be the day they will start their own business. And that once average individual becomes the innovator, the pioneer, the risk-taker, the gambler, the daydreamer, the radical, the ‘little engine that could’ who then puts in the endless hours, struggles to make ends meet, handles the ups and downs, withstands the economic highs and lows, and sustains themselves physically and mentally over long days and nights, months or years or decades – all in the pursuit of a solitary goal: the satisfaction of being their own boss and realizing the culmination of a dream come true.

What makes a person become an entrepreneur, or enter the world of entrepreneurship as a career direction?

The dictionary defines an entrepreneur as ‘a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so’. It originates from the French word ‘entreprendre’, which denotes ‘a person who undertakes a project’.

In describing ‘entrepreneurship’, the consensus definition is ‘when an individual that has an idea and acts on that idea, usually to disrupt the current market with a new product or service’.

These types of undertakings primarily start as small businesses and remain as such; but the long-term objective is often much greater, the underlying intent being to seek high profits and capture market share with an innovative new idea or approach or product; resulting in massive sales growth, investors knocking at your door, articles being written about you and your team and your company – and a buy-out offer being tendered that harkens back to those names mentioned earlier.

Can it happen?

Absolutely. Can it happen to you? Absolutely. What are the odds? That’s where the ‘absolutely’ becomes not likely.

But the lack of stratospheric numbers and a fantasy-land ending does not mean you will not be – or have not been – a successful entrepreneur. For true success, much like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder.

I grew up on a farm in north-central North Carolina, where we raised tobacco, corn, wheat, oats, soybeans, hay, cows, and hogs. Working six days a week was the norm back then, and as a youngster I always assumed my future would be as a farmer – like my dad, and his dad, and his brother, our cousins, and so on.

But I also had other interests: drawing (I could never refer to myself as an artist) and writing being the specialties…aside from sports, hunting, fishing, and fast cars (this was the sixties and seventies, the hey-day of muscle cars).

As my high school senior year progressed, more conversations turned to college – or not. Good grades came natural for me, manipulating numbers and words was easy, and I was blessed with a great memory. Dad wanted me to become an architect or a lawyer, but I told him I had no interest in six to eight more years of education. So, I pursued a degree in commercial art and advertising design at a nearby community college, while still farming on my own (dad had taken a position with a fertilizer company).

Multiple Income Streams

A couple of years later I started my own company (three months before getting married), freelancing as a graphic designer. I continued farming (job two), taught myself enough about architecture to produce house plans for people (job three), sold original art or limited-edition prints on the side (job four), and bought and sold commercial properties (job five).

Why so many different jobs and income streams? I simply followed the lead of my dad, who was a farmer, sold hail and crop insurance, and worked in a tobacco warehouse six months a year. While not exactly the first image that comes to mind, he was the epitome of an entrepreneur – especially if you read back over the descriptive attributes outlined earlier.

As for my company, it evolved into a full-fledged agency – and over four-plus decades I served a wide range of regional, national, and global clients.

Am I a successful entrepreneur? You be the judge: I made my own hours; worked for clients that interested me; never missed a school activity or dance recital or birthday party or vacation; served in numerous civic organizations; still work on our family farm (which I now own); and have become quite content with the life I have led (and continue to lead). So, in my eyes, and those of my family and friends, I have been a success.

As one of thirty-one million, I’m just a drop in the sea of entrepreneurship. But every drop contributes in its own way to the whole.

So, research your idea or field of pursuit, and dive in – for the water’s fine. Will it be easy? No. Will each path be smooth and every day sunny? No. Will each decision be the correct one? No. Will you be guaranteed success? No.

Will it be worth the effort, no matter the end result? Absolutely.

Dwight O. Chandler owns Chandler Marketing Group, is the organizing director of the ‘Every Person A Winner’ coaching and publishing program. He is a LevelNext mentor, an artist, author and lives on the farmland that has been in his family’s lineage since 1797.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwight-chandler-38a46437/

Email: dchandler214@yahoo.com

Header Image Credit: Aphiwat chuangchoem on Pexels.com