The Tribe Has Spoken
It's Up To You
The important thing is the first step: Just start it. "A
lot of people keep saying, 'I don't have that [start-up]
money yet,' and they never get around to doing it," says
veteran entrepreneur Jim Gustafson, a free-lance writer who left a
$70,000 department manager job at a fast-food chain 12 years ago,
when he was 42. In his bank account was enough money for one month.
His wife, meanwhile, was earning $5,000 per year, just enough to
cover their health insurance, by teaching half days at a Catholic
school. They had two children to support "who were unwilling
to take jobs at a Nike shoe factory," Gustafson jokes. "I wanted to be in a situation where failure wasn't an
option," he adds. "I had no alternative but to make it.
We had nothing to fall back on. So getting motivated was really
easy." Funding is important, but ambition is arguably more so. Rozner
says that before she became her own boss, she envied other
entrepreneurs and wondered what they had she didn't. "And
then one day it hit me," Rozner says. "I'm just
deciding not to do what they're doing. And that's what
motivated me. I kept saying, 'There's absolutely no reason
I can't do this.' " Content Continues Below
Even if you have to eat a lot of peanut butter and jelly to
survive, at least you're doing what you love to do, right?
"If you're going to work and doing something you
ab-solutely hate, why bother?" says Rozner. "No amount of
money in the world is worth that." | | | | |  | | |  Survival Of The Fittest
These nuggets come from Stever Robbins, a Cambridge,
Massachusetts-based venture coach who teaches leadership techniques
to entrepreneurs and upper-management executives:1) "I remind myself daily of my goals,
dreams and why I'm doing this wacky self-employment
thing." 2) "I use marketing as an excuse to
write articles and publish them on my Web site to explore different
creative concepts. I work on the Web site itself as a way to keep
my thoughts flowing." 3) "I make sure to have a couple of
lunches a week with really cool people who stimulate and challenge
me." Survival Tips
Bill Lampton is the author of The Complete Communicator: Change Your
Communication, Change Your Life (Hillsboro Press) and a
business speaker and consultant in Gainesville, Georgia. Here are
his tips for dealing with the stress and making the entrepreneurial
cut: · Get
physically fit. "This helps prevent solitude, since
so much exercise is social. Even while walking alone, I'll stop
to chat with neighbors. Three mornings a week I go to a fitness
center. One morning a month my sweating buddies join me for
breakfast. Equally as important, exercise helps us maintain
personal pride. And we can sell ourselves better when we consider
ourselves attractive. Many studies confirm that exercise reduces
tension-and with no steady income assured, there's plenty to
reduce." · Select a
method for replenishing your spirit. "For me,
that's memorizing inspirational sayings and poetry, and
repeating them during my morning walk. Others may choose to
increase involvement in religious or charitable organizations.
Whatever our choice, so much goes out of us daily, there must be
new intake that's energizing and
uplifting." · Close the
curtain on failures, sound the trumpet for successes.
"Tiger Woods loses golf tournaments but expects to win the
next week. Any entrepreneur can experience despair by lamenting the
contract that doesn't come through or the direct mailing that
draws few responses. Far healthier to celebrate our
achievements!" · Play and
relax. "Take a day off a week. Keep up with your
longtime hobbies. Admire sunsets, wiggle your toes in sand at the
beach. Honor your personhood to prevent becoming
petrified." | | |  | | | | | | | |
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