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The Year of the Entrepreneur
Last year proved to be a solid year for startups as the kinks continued to be worked out with the JOBS act. There were 237 IPO debuts in 2013 — a 62 percent increase over 2012.
What does this mean for you in 2014, though? You’re (sort of) young. You’re (relatively) new to the work force. You are (in all likelihood) certainly no where near an IPO. So, why is this important? It’s important because things like this help to close the gap between where you are today and becoming what you’ve always dreamed. In many cases this means starting out on your own. Creating a company is one of the most fun, exciting, exhausting, and exhilarating things you can do, and we’re in a time of such overwhelming creativity that there is no limit to what you can achieve.
What makes a business owner is changing. It used to mean being someone who graduated with a business degree, took out a loan, and followed certain steps. Now, with the rise in crowd-funding that we saw in 2013, the path is a lot less stringent.
That, however, doesn’t mean that you can skip those fundamental steps. Just because it’s easier than ever now — with technology and resources at our fingertips — doesn’t mean that this is a career path for the lazy. It still takes hard work. Most small companies fail within the first year and more drop off within the second. Even after that you’re never really safe. The only way to keep your company afloat is to keep swimming hard — sometimes upstream.
One of my favorite books on the topic is The E-Myth: Why Most Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber. I strongly suggest it to anyone going down the self-employment path. Anyway, one piece of his advice is to always work in the business as much as on the business. This means, instead of just doing day-to-day work, you also have to work on the greater picture of what you want it to become. Do the networking, marketing, and social work as well. If more people did this, so many more businesses would stay, well, in business.
It’s definitely not for everyone. But I have a feeling that this year more people will discover the entrepreneur in themselves. If 2013 was any indication, 2014 should see a lot more entrepreneurs discovering their calling. Now is the time.
Maybe you’ll be next!
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Alexandra Saville (@CapitalistaBlog) is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalistaand Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.
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