Week Six 

So Why Do You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?

     Wences Casares a technology entrepreneur and CEO of Bitcoin, as well as other endeavors, said this about being an entrepreneur, we don't choose to be entrepreneurs we just are. He said this while speaking to a group of business owners, so I am not sure if he means everyone who thinks they are an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur or just everyone in that room is. I am going with everyone who thinks they desire to own their own business or start a start-up or people who want to work for themselves. 

     I don't know that I necessarily want to work for myself but for many years business ideas come to me and I research them for a couple of days and decide what the necessary steps to proceed might be but then fear sets in and I talk myself right out of it. Once, I went so far as to make a prototype, contact my entrepreneurial friend for some help, get professional pictures taken of the product, and send them out to some department stores. Much to my dismay one store called back and said they were interested, but I would need to find a different way to display the product. I found another way to display the product but then I didn't know how I was going to mass-produce the product so I just never contacted the store again. 

My second business venture was called The Way We Were Reunions. I asked my sister-in-law to help me out and we did three or four reunions and made a little money. At this time the internet was an up and coming thing but I didn't have the slightest idea how to use it to our advantage and I wondered how realistic the business would be with only having the schools near us as our market. Another company that started up just before we did used the internet and, I believe, is still in business today. 

     In another reading for this week, So You Want to be an Entrepreneur they reported that some entrepreneurs may actually have fear and be risk-averse. I would put myself in that category. I can think of an idea before I step in the shower, become rich while washing my hair and broke wondering how I ever thought that was a good idea by the time I step out of the shower. But the ideas keep coming. 

     President Uchtdorf, or at least he was at the time, gave a talk on Creating at the 2009 Women's meeting of General Conference. The message validated my desire to create and I think of it often. 

     Someday...