THE PROBLEM OF RISK

A professor at The Harvard Business School said something that stuck with me. Entrepreneurs, he suggested, master the art of becoming the, “worlds most successful hoop jumpers.” He meant that entrepreneurs often get so skilled at keeping our customers happy by jumping through “hoops” for them all day long that we forget that we’re supposed to be making ourselves happy too.

Frequently, entrepreneurs get through the start-up stage of development, overcoming the overwhelming odds favoring failure, only to reach a plateau in their growth. Reality demands that we keep our businesses running, often on sheer tenacity and determination alone. Our companies survive because of the endless hours we spend refining our business systems. Naturally, hard-working entrepreneurs often lose sight of what is happening externally. Even the most superb management can find itself caught unprepared when a challenge arises. So many people struggle so hard to get through the early times just trying to stay afloat. Unfortunately, the driving force often shifts from growing an enterprise to protecting and maintaining what has been acquired.

The fact is, the majority, the vast majority of entrepreneurial endeavors are nothing more than glorified day jobs. Even though many entrepreneurs may, “do their own thing,” they’re still working fingers to the bone with little personal reward. The syndrome of risk adversity overpowers the lure of calculated risk and they lose sight of why they decided to become a business onto themselves in the first place. A lot of us get stuck in the doldrums and become obsessed with maintaining mediocrity. But there are proven ways to get unstuck, get healthy and even get wealthy.