Wise Words for Wannapreneurs
Wannapreneur: A person who talks about organizing and managing enterprises, esp. businesses, usually with considerable initiative and risk, but never actually does.
If you’ve decided the answer to your economic situation is to move from government or corporate work to become an entrepreneur but haven’t taken the plunge, you may be a wannapreneur. Here’s a book that will give you direction and something to think about. “I Did It My Way and…It Worked!” by Colleen J. Payne-Nabors who is on the left.. I’m Dr. Joel Martin on the right. Colleen has won a significant number of awards for her business success, Inc. 5000, 2007 Oklahoma Small Business Person of The Year, and most recently, Woman Entrepreneur Of The Year for FraserNet’sPowerNetworking Conference. Colleen is also a wife, mother, community leaders, and nationally known public speaker. A nuclear medicine technologist by profession, she decided to create a mobile nuclear medicine unit and to provide nuclear cardiac stress testing to those in remote areas of rural northeast Oklahoma.
In her book, she gives it to you straight with no frills. She’s a medical professional so read her book because it’s good for you. I wished that I had when I started my businesses. It would have made the journey to success shorter and easier. Here’s her quote.
The entrepreneur’s sacrifice is tremendous. Initally, we all have dreams of grandeur, thinking, I will be able to work for myself and nobody will tell me what to do. I’ll get to go home. I won’t have to go to the office. I will have so much money. Surely in this day and age, no one still believes in this fairy tale! In every book on being an entrepreneur, the first story you read will tell that this dream is not real! You are going to work longer and harder than anyone else, you are going to have more hats to put on than anyone, you are going to get paid less than anyone in your company and you are not going to get to go home early. On any given day, you are not even going to get to be your own boss (Payne, pg. 133).
Better to read her book, than to face the agony of defeat. She covers all of the bases from banking to communication style. Wannapreneurs, she also says, ”If I can do it you can too!”