Page 73 - 6 Secrets to Startup Success

52 6 SECRETS TO STARTUP SUCCESS

businesses in the United States generate $10,000 or more in annual
profits. The typical business owner will make 35 percent less over a
ten-year period than if he or she worked for someone else during the
same period. And, contrary to conventional wisdom, this lack of finan-
cial success is not offset by greater job satisfaction. On average, people
who own their own businesses work significantly longer hours and ex-
perience higher levels of stress, fatigue, and depression than people
who work for someone else.2 Based on these facts, startup founders are
clearly not achieving happiness or creating wealth at a level consistent
with all the hype and hope surrounding entrepreneurship.

A primary reason for the dismal statistics concerning startups is
that too many passionate founders confuse their optimism with readi-
ness. At the moment of their entrepreneurial leap—the very point at
which the personal and professional stakes could not be higher, the
time when knowledge and preparation will make all the difference—
emotions escalate and passion takes over. Driven by impatience and
unwavering belief, aspiring entrepreneurs plunge forward without ad-
equate awareness of what their new business will require and how well
they match up against those requirements.

The solution lies not in ratcheting down passion, but in elevating
awareness. By pausing early in your startup process to take an objec-
tive look at yourself and what you bring to the table—your purpose,
goals, skills, resources, and needs—you can develop a highly valuable
kind of optimism, one that rests on the rock of clear, honest assessment
and willful preparation. I call it earned optimism, and I find it to be much
more useful than the uninformed hope that drives many startup
founders. It is a quality worth pursuing. Earned optimism will boost
your performance and help you sleep at night.

As a reference point, most of us can recall an opportunity from
our past that we approached with confidence and passion, but with
little awareness about what the opportunity called for, whether it was
a marriage that ultimately ended in divorce, a job that didn’t work out,
or a business project that went sour. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s
instructive to look back and consider how we would have approached
the opportunity differently, and more skillfully, had we only known
then what we know now.

American Management Association • www.amanet.org