Starting a business is less risky than it seems

Starting a business is less risky than it seems Entrepreneurship used to be an inclination that festered until a midlife crisis. But the entrepreneurship bug isnt something that hits in middle age, so why wait that long? Today, the people who start most new businesses are under 34 and if theyre doing it, so can you. Dont be stifled by your age or lack of experience. And dont be put off by the bad advice people spew when you mention entrepreneurship. Bad advice #1: You wont make enough money. Insane. Who is making enough money at the anything new? No one. The few who pull down six figures at the beginning probably spent six figures on grad school and are paying it back, with interest. So the fatalists who say you wont make enough money are really telling you to never switch careers, never risk being a beginner, never bet on yourself. This way of thinking will put your career in a coma. What many people mean when they say you wont make enough money is that you wont *raise* enough money. After all, if you raised a ton of money to start your business, you could pay yourself a great salary. Most of you have ideas that do not require amazing fundraising efforts. And, lets face it, if you are coming up with ideas that require a six-million-dollar investment, thats not really a good idea. Bad advice #2: You can be entrepreneurial in a large company. Large corporations suck up fast-paced, fun, innovative small business and make them boring, and then tell you, in an interview, that the position you are considering is very entrepreneurial. Its not. If it were entrepreneurial then it would be too big a wild card to fit into a corporate hierarchy. What the corporate maven really means is that the position youre interviewing for could be entrepreneurial if it were not in a large company. Bad advice #3: Starting your own business is too risky. At this point in loyalty-free corporate life, it may be higher risk to work for someone else. You probably know someone who got laid off in the 90s. And you probably know someone who got off-shored in the 00s. It was risky of them to bet that a large company would keep them around. And when youre sifting through those ubiquitous statistics that say most new business fail, think about the perspective of those numbers: Seventy-six percent of new businesses make it off the ground. Sure, most do not last as long as say, General Motors. But are you looking to run a multinational company, or are you looking to get control over your time so you dont get laid off or tapped to travel from home six weeks in a row? Dont listen to those people who tell you small businesses are risky. Listen to Matt Rivers, owner of Pump House surf shop in Massachusetts, who went into business when he was 17. To him, the biggest risk was that hed have to grow up and get a job that wouldnt allow him to surf. Matt redefined the meaning of risk, and you should, too. What is most important in your life? Can starting your own business get that for you better than a corporate job? Then entrepreneurship is pretty low-risk for you. And heres a piece of good advice: Dont think of failure as black and white. Rivers was so successful with his first shop that he opened a second. But running between the two shops took too much time away from surfing, and the extra money wasnt worth it. So he closed the second shop. Is that failure? To some, maybe. But to those of us who are enlightened, closing down a business is not so much failure as it is gaining self-knowledge to lead a more fulfilling life going forward.