As if the entrance isn’t difficult enough!
How do you know when to enter a specific field, venture, or partnership? Or know when to exit? It is a knowing that you can make whatever it is that you are undertaking, work. Jumping from ledge to ledge is scary, energizing, full of unknowns, fulfilling, and dangerous. What a mixture of emotion an entrepreneur rides to get from point A to point B. This emotion can propel an entrepreneur like a sling shot, improving ones income 2X, 4X, even 10X that of a traditional job. It has risks. You might land back at square one, in bankruptcy court, or even worse.
Once you have taken the plunge and used both hemispheres of your brain, it does not get easier. Markets change, products are duplicatable, customer’s needs change, smarter competition enter the sector, assumptions become invalid, and pain points change. Not only do you need courage to start, succeed, and then thrive, you also must have courage to exit.
Go Ahead and Exit
You made the jump, maybe not your first try, who cares, none of us do. Some do. You created a beautiful business, a great product or service. Outstanding. Or maybe you built a mediocre business, product, or service. Either way, you connected the dots, found a product-market-fit and succeeded; profited. But it was not your love, so you took those skills that helped you elevate an unknown business to profitability and you built other businesses. Say you bought a franchise or created another service company. You transcended from business owner to investor. This can work, does work, should work. If you have replaced yourself with leaders. If you have not, how will you track the market, innovate, iterate, improve, and exit when the time comes? You will not.
If your first business was a stepping-stone to businesses with greater volume or profit margins, great. You are a serial entrepreneur. Be certain, businesspersons watch and learn from every win and loss. Without a true leader or innovator involved in these ventures, you leave your market share unprotected to others passionate about the segment. Capitalist markets turn this way. They churn. Sears was once the largest retailer in America.
A great philosopher once said rarely are things created from whole cloth. Certainly, your competition is one or two steps behind you. If you no longer are engaged in your business or have minds that are, exercise your genius and exit.
Need a website built or a business optimized? Email us for details nozakconsulting@gmail.com