How to Make It on Your Own

What Makes a Good Entrepreneur?

By Jaron Serven, Staff Writer

Like many of you, when I graduated with my Master’s, I was at an almost complete loss as to what to do.

What was more, with the economy the way it is, it seemed like the world didn’t have many options for me.  Instead of sifting through offers, I was sending out resumes, discontent gnawing at me the whole way.

Wasn’t I supposed to be doing what I loved?  Wasn’t I supposed to be cultivating my career… my future… my life?

What I didn’t realize was that I was making a very big mistake with regard to my outlook: I was letting other people define who and what I should be.

Instead of telling people what they needed to hear, I was asking people what they wanted to hear.  The difference appears small, but that gap is very large indeed.

What I hadn’t considered, and what turned out to be the most obvious path for me going forward, was a life of entrepreneurship.  I thought a steady career would give me stability, a sense of direction–but as a writer, I would first need to create that stability and direction on my own.

While I am, against my will, socially designated as a “freelancer”, I consider myself to be an entrepreneur.  Like all entrepreneurs, I’m building a business, cultivating a brand.  With writing, it is just a less expensive start-up. It is a more personal and internalized commodity being put to market.

This was my first lesson in entrepreneurship: “The nature of being an entrepreneur means that you fully embrace ambiguity and are comfortable with being challenged regularly,” says Tanya Prive, a contributor to Forbes online.  “Choosing [entrepreneurship] is completely irrational because the odds of succeeding are dismal…”

Yet, when considering what it takes to be a good, or even great, entrepreneur, what do we consider to be the attributes of “success”?  Is success a billion dollar company and world-renowned fame like some of our greatest entrepreneurs, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs?  Sure, of course.

But what about the millions of others who have found success on their own, who have created their own small businesses and have thrived in their own, non-world-domineering way?

For more and more Americans, especially the new-graduates and young people, entrepreneurship is a foot in the door for working in business, a way to gain better experience outside of the sterile setting of higher education and get our hands dirty in the real world.

In a world where jobs are scarce and big businesses are looking for people with more real-world experience than ever before, starting along the path of entrepreneurship doesn’t seem like such a bad idea as Tanya Prive would have us believe.

“Success” for us, then, would be the experience of embracing the challenges of staking a new path, of doing instead of listening, of creating instead of waiting.

But the specific challenges of entrepreneurship remain, and must be overcome as the economy struggles to recover.  I have been lucky in my own endeavors in that freelance writing and editing do not require that much finances to start-up–not so for those of us who plan to create a full-fledged small business.

A primary focus of my work as a freelancer has been making sure all of the proper tax work is done and all regulations are followed, which speaks of a larger issue in small business creation.

In a study recently published by the New York Times and conducted by Ernst and Young, the United States came up lacking in the fields of tax and business regulation.

“U.S. entrepreneurs surveyed were more negative on tax and regulation than any other G20 country, despite the fact that the nation’s overall [entrepreneurial] performance was strong,” the study says.

For me, records must be kept of all bills, and at the end of the year, I have to correlate income earned with spending declared by my various clients, which will likely hit my wallet a little harder during tax time than I will probably like.

Another one of the tougher aspects of the job is simply getting your name out there.  As I continued on in my quest as a freelancer, my biggest challenge turned out to be concerned with new client acquisition, a concern for all start-ups.

As with everything in business, it’s more about who you know than what you know.  A very dear friend introduced me to one of my first high-profile clients, and through hard work and persistence, things started to snowball from there.

That client recommended my work to someone else, who saw me fit for another, and so on, until I was editing and writing on the side as much as I was working my day-job.

But does all of this make me a “great” entrepreneur, or even a successful one?

It all depends upon your own measure of what “success” entails; as I’ve already made clear, my own personal endgame is more about developing relevant experiences and branding myself as a competent writer and editor than creating a large, successful business.  Everyone is different.

Some people are just shaped to create something game-changing and unique.  I’m talking about the Richard Branson’s and the Bill Gates’s of the world.  These are the geniuses who, like Shakespeare and Mozart before them, are just born to live the tough lives of global entrepreneurs.

Their genius is what makes them unique, but these people still retain the basic qualities that all entrepreneurs need to be successful in this world.

Steve Tobak recently wrote an article highlighting his observed attributes of the great entrepreneurs he has worked and hung out with–such as work-ethic, problem-solving skills, passion, etc.–, in an attempt to get to the root of what makes “great” entrepreneurs tick.

But what about the unsung heroes foraging their own paths who never get worldwide recognition?  What do they have to say about the world of making it on your own, creating something from scratch and making it into a good business commodity?

Ryan Caloras is one of those unsung heroes, a young software engineer who co-founded Coolhandjuke.com, a web and mobile application that allows you to control the music at restaurants and bars using your smartphone.

“No one is going to tell you how to do something,” Ryan says about making it on his own.

“Discipline is super important.  You have to know what you’re capable of, and how to accurately give estimates.”

Ryan successfully developed Coolhandjuke into a commodity–even pitched it to a high-end company–before settling down and finding his career as a software engineer full-time in New York City.

And, despite Steve Tobak’s emphasis on total work ethic, Ryan says it’s important to remember that work is work and life is life.

“Being able to separate work from the rest of your life is key.  [I also] highly advise working outside of your home when possible when… starting a new venture.  It helps differentiate and schedule time for you to think about and do work.”

Whatever your type of business commodity–whether it be a software program, writing skills, or merely a good public image–entrepreneurship is growing into a large, competitive, global industry.  An industry that is built upon the basic principles of tenacity, discipline, hard-work and, probably most importantly, when to say “no”.

For a while, as a freelancer, I tried using freelance profile sites.  But those sites heavily de-value the necessary uniqueness that any industry needs these days.

I was effectively giving up my individuality for slightly more exposure than what I was getting with my social networking, but for significantly less pay.  I deleted my profile after a couple of weeks.

The most important thing to remember about making your own business is this: know your value.  Know what your worth.  Then demand it, and never back down from it.

Visit Coolhandjuke here.

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Jaron Serven graduated last year with his Master’s in English, and is now a freelance writer, editor, blogger and a host of other things that end in “er”.  Follow him on Twitter @j_serv and check out his blog at www.jaronserven.com