Making the Jump Into Small Business Ownership Lib/E

The economic meltdown of 2008 was a wake-up call for anyone who assumes that a career in corporate America is secure. The painful lesson learned by a significant portion of America’s workforce was this: If you work for someone else, you have little control over your employment status and are investing inthat person’s dream, not your own.In 2010, the unemployment rate of America’s workers rose about 10 percent. We wrote this book in response to a deep need we saw for people to discover the benefits of self-reliance. In our humble opinion, there is no greater vehicle for security than owning your own business. When successful, a business can defy most financial models and calculations. While 2010 has come and gone, the need isstill real and will live on.The reasons to go into business for yourself are infinite. Perhaps you want to spend more time with your family. Maybe you want to earn more income, call the shots, or travel more often. Is there something you enjoy doing more than anything else—and can you earn an income doing so? Regardless of yourmotivation, the answer to the question “Should I go into business for myself” is yes. Small business ownership can be a path to true independence, life balance, and personal happiness.As successful entrepreneurs, we have identified significant opportunities and assumed many risks, and ultimately chose to pursue our dreams. Because there are over 30 years separating us in age, our bookcovers generational as well as universal perspectives and insights.Our goal is to present in these pages a practical guide on how to build self-reliance and start your own business. We will speak to the fundamentals, the block and tackle, of entrepreneurship, and we will address the challenges that most new entrepreneurs face. In several of the chapters you will findvignettes—stories of real-life entrepreneurs whose experiences illustrate some of our main points. We hope you will find their stories inspiring as well as informative.This book is not about deal junkies and their seemingly magical ventures that start on a short runway and take off with sales that seem to defy gravity. We are not addressing “vaporware” or unprofitable companies that go public and return a gazillion dollars—before imploding. Like winning the lottery,these successes represent only a small slice of start-up ventures.We firmly believe that the future security and prosperity of baby boomers and new college graduates— and all the generations in between—will be reached by encouraging entrepreneurship based upon sound business principles. Small businesses, and the entrepreneurs who start them, create more than50 percent of American jobs. By encouraging displaced workers and others to become entrepreneurs and expand this important sector of the economic base, we hope to add new fuel to the American small- business growth engine—and perhaps power your dreams in the process.