The Rockwood Files : What it takes: Writer finds prerequisite for launching a business
Posted on Sunday, May 4, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bcdr/Editorial/61482/
If you want to start your own business, there’s one essential ingredient you’ve got to have. It’s not hard work or a great location or a solid business plan — although all those things are important. The one thing you really need is this: a dash of crazy.
You’ve got to have the crazy component because starting your own business is one of those ideas that looks great on paper and seems nearly impossible in real life. I know because I’m doing it. I can’t even believe I’m doing it. Like most moms, I already had a full plate with the kids, the dogs, the house, the baseball and soccer games, the column deadlines. What am I, nuts ? The answer is yes — a little. Otherwise, I’d be doing something entirely more sane, like trying to spin 18 plates in the air while hopping on a pogo stick.
About six months ago, a fellow freelance writer who’s also a mom called me with this great idea: We’d take the two things we love most — motherhood and creative writing — combine them, and turn them into our own business. We’d create a Web site for moms that would function like an online women’s magazine. “ Genius, ” we said. “ Of course it will work, ” we said. “ Why wouldn’t it ?”
Then the honeymoon phase of entrepreneurship ended. We entered the reality, day-to-day phase wherein we learned all the different reasons why many small businesses fail: the workload, the time commitment, the uncertainty, the competition, the cost. Suddenly the joy of having our own business was tempered by the reality of what it would require.
Some days I wake up and feel completely free and exhilarated by the seemingly endless possibilities of what our little business could become. Other days I wake up and feel completely freaked out, wondering if we know what in the heck we’re doing.
Yet we forge ahead. That’s where the dash of crazy comes in handy — when you’re not certain it will work exactly the way you’ve planned, but you’re just nuts enough to go for it anyway.
It’s reassuring to know that some of the most amazing business success stories began with someone who seemed nuts at the time. In 1930, a man who had worked several different jobs, including farm hand and streetcar conductor, opened a chicken restaurant in the front room of a gas station. That man would later become known worldwide as Colonel Sanders of KFC fame.
In 1976, Steve Jobs and two friends built the first Apple computer in the living room of his parents’ home. He sold the first 50 units to a local computer store for $ 500 each.
I wonder if those guys ever woke up with that “ I must be crazy” feeling in the pit of their stomachs. If they did, they got out of bed and kept working and dreaming in spite of it. They faced down fear and doubt and just kept going.
I’m beginning to believe there’s a genetic link behind that dash of crazy. Today I realized my business partner and I are both daughters of entrepreneurs. My dad started his own landscape and tree-service business the same year I was born. Who in their right mind quits his perfectly safe job at the post office, buys a humongous dump truck and starts his own company when he’s got a wife, a son and a newborn baby girl at home ? A crazy person, that’s who. But he did it, and for more than 30 years now, he has enjoyed the highs and survived the lows. The business became part of the family. And even though it took a lot of time and hit its share of rough patches, he stuck with it. That’s the thing about a new business. You end up investing, not only time and money, but also a big chunk of your heart. That’s an investment worth protecting, worth working for even on the days when you’re uncertain. Those are the days when you lean on your dash of crazy, and you just keep going. For all my fellow entrepreneurs, godspeed.
• • • Gwen Rockwood is a regionally syndicated freelance columnist. You can see archives of the Rockwood Files at www. nwaMotherlode. com. E-mail her at rockwoodfiles @ cox. net or write to her in care of this newspaper.