The Genesis of an Entrepreneur
Author: Stan Newton, CFO of TCR, and just an all around stand-up guy and successful entrepreneur.
Backdrop: Unrelated to TCR, Stan had written a small article about the genesis of entrepreneurship – from an idea to a successful business. It resonated with us at TCR, because it’s aligned with how co-owners Chris and John have built the business, organically, for nearly three decades. Like a breathing, living organism, we bit TCR with love, patience, and discipline. Moving toward nearly three decades in business, with hundreds of happy clients, and a fantastic team of dedicated staff, we have a lot to be grateful for!
“Nothing about entrepreneurship is easy, but the rewards are monumental and worthwhile.” – Stan Newton
Young children do not necessarily dream of growing up to be a sole proprietor or entrepreneur. They usually dream of other things.
Reality however has a way of changing things and sometimes we arrive at a different point in our lives and make the decision to take the chance, overcome the risk and strap on the challenge!
Most people go through life looking for a way to make a life for ourselves and earn a living to provide for our needs. We may try several different jobs before we find something that appeals to us. We make some mistakes and sometimes learn what we do not want to do. Other times we like what we do but we make mistakes in learning skills or processes or even break some things but eventually we develop skills and talents. Most entrepreneurs follow this track until we reach a moment of disgust and have the thought or say out-loud to themselves “I can do this better than these Bozos for which I work.”
Then we take some money (usually not enough) and all of the courage we can muster up a take the leap of faith and start our own business. We find that we were correct. We actually can perform the tasks better but running a business is new and uncharted territory for which we have no experience. We can and should hire some good experience to augment our efforts.
The statistics for small business are grim at best. Year 1, borrow your own pay. Year 2, borrow more but pay back some of year 1 debt. Year 3, get by with no more borrowing. Year 4, actually make money and reduce all year 1 debt and pay some of year 2 debt. Year 5 determine that you can survive and head into year 6 with debt paid off. If you get past 5 years you generally survive.
Successful business people see their business as organic. It is a living, breathing thing and its needs are similar to that of a child’s needs from their parents. It demands care, love, nourishment, encouragement, patience, discipline and forgiveness and a willingness for its parent to do whatever is necessary to keep positive momentum going. Nothing about this is easy but the rewards are monumental and worthwhile.
Read more about Stan’s background on our Meet the Team page.