Top Reasons to be an Entrepreneur
Michael Spencer
A.I. Writer, researcher and curator - full-time Newsletter publication manager.
Hacking your career requires some bravery, intelligence, networking and luck. Increasingly we are moving towards an on-demand economy where freelancing, becoming an entrepreneur, joining a startup and starting our own small business is becoming a viable option.
With increasing automation of jobs by technology, with drones, droids, robots, smarter apps, smarter SaaS and increasingly sophisticated machine-intelligence, all sneaking up on us or on the immediate horizon, we have to start thinking about a Plan B.
So why risk everything and become an entrepreneur? I'm here today to tell you why:
1. Manifest Destiny
Being your own master and having freedom means living a fuller life of empowerment, control and being responsible for your own opportunity and failure.
2. Work with People you Like
Having co-founders you know and trust and enjoy working with is huge. Build your team, your culture, your network, from the ground up. The social perks are it's not just random, you can work with talented people you believe in and want to see succeed.
3. Don't Work to Live, Work to Innovate
Being able to build and contribute something new and valuable to the world that custom fits both you and a need in the market, this is innovation. Don't just repeat what others do, add something new.
4. Do something Ethical
People able to do something you are passionate about means you believe in it, it matches your values and is an ethical form of business that you feel is empowering and aligns with your motivations, preferences and philosophy.
5. Work When and Where you Like
In the mobile workforce, we work remotely and we work when it suits us, sometimes more, sometimes less, but it all balances out. This leads to more work-life balance than many professional environments can afford. You might have clients all around the world, but with today's technology that's a non issue.
6. Simplify Decision Making
Being an entrepreneur means simplifying your life. You may be a boss, may have a more coherent idea of what you have to do in order to be successful, there's likely less politics or a different kind of problem solving that must occur. It's hit or miss, feast or famine, but there's a certain elegance to it, it's facing fate head on.
7. Solve Real World Problems
If you are lucky you'll be able to talk to real people with problems you can solve. If you are good at what you do, you'll be offering them a solution or a service that gives them help, energizes them and makes a difference in their lives. The benefits of this are enormous. They will appreciate what you do and you will get the validation that you have done a good job and helped them as a person and not simply as an anonymous business entity.
8. Take Full Responsibility
Here you are, with all the blame and all the glory. That's the way it should be. Don't answer to others, or make excuses, it's your time to shine or your time to learn from failure. It's all on you, and for many of us, we wouldn't have it any other way!
If you want to contribute to this, you can. Feel free to follow me on Quora.