The mark of an entrepreneur? The ability to see opportunity, when others see challenge, obstacle, and impossibility.
As I shared last week, a recent Inc Magazine article offered up one of the best definitions of “entrepreneur” that I’ve ever seen:
“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.”
Which means, if you want to start a business. If you’re dying to take the leap from your nine to five. If you’ve always wanted to test the entrepreneurial waters, there’s no better time than now.
The resources at your disposal may not be ideal. Money will be tight. Finding clients isn’t going to be easy. But, even in our challenging economic state, business-owners are growing and thriving in their ventures. For many reasons, of course, but maybe above all, because they take action. They’re willing to take the first step. They’re willing to try.
While others are stuck saying, “I can’t”, they’re saying, “I can” and “I will”. Rather than allowing the doubt and fear to consume them, they used and use that unknown and uncertainty as motivation. Then they go make shit happen.
The Inc article goes on to say:
“Every time you want to make any important decision, there are two possible courses of action. You can look at the array of choices that present themselves, pick the best available option and try to make it fit. Or, you can do what the true entrepreneur does: Figure out the best conceivable option and then make it available.”
This has much less to do with entrepreneurship, and much more to do with life.
As Seth Godin so aptly puts, “It’s completely up to you”:
“…So many things are now completely up to us, more than ever before. Where and how and when we work and invest and interact and instruct and learn.
If you think you have no choice but to do what you do now, you’ve already made a serious error.
It seems to me that passing the buck on this merely because it’s easier than choosing is precisely the wrong strategy. It enables an abdication of power that will be very hard to reverse. It’s up to you, and that’s part of the power that you’ve got…”
You have a choice. And whether you’re starting a business or waiting tables, don’t let anything, or anyone, stop you from making that choice. Let it be yours, and yours alone.
The choice to do more. The choice to do less. The choice to be better. The choice to be best. The choice to live the life you’ve always imagined.
I leave you with one profoundly simple and complex question: What will you choose?
Today is the new tomorrow. There’s no better time than now.