Becoming an entrepreneur

When I left my job, I set out to be an independent consultant. I wanted to be alone, charting the unfamiliar waters, adrift outside the familiar corporate world that I had inhabited for over 12 years after my education. I wanted to get out of the rat race which I felt I was unqualified to participate in. I felt like a tortoise, on a treadmill made for rats. The 3 Ps (position, power and pay) which play an important part in career decisions of men were not of significance to me - position and power play did not excite me, the titles seemed hollow and the satisfaction nil. The pay I knew I could manage even without a stable salary.

For two years, I called myself a consultant. But occasionally, someone would introduce me in a public forum as an entrepreneur. In my definition, an entrepreneur is one who creates jobs. I had created one for myself – surely that did not count for an entrepreneur, did it? So I looked up the definition.

The Merriam Webster defines entrepreneur as one who organizes, manages and assumes the risk of business while the Cambridge dictionary defines entrepreneur as one who starts their own business, especially when this involves seeing a new opportunity.
There was nothing overt in the definition that mentioned “job creation”. The criteria really were about taking up the risk of starting a business in response to identifying a new opportunity. It is the founder, the one with vision who gets labeled as entrepreneur. And it logically follows that as the idea evolves, there is creation of opportunity for others.

What I have done recently is to continue being a consultant but have refined my vision to include other professional services in the pharma domain which has led me to hire my first employee. I am sticking more than my neck out to offer a service in a niche area where I see a definite need. I have found the perfect fit in my “employee number 1”. Now I truly feel like an entrepreneur.

The impetus for growth came from two conversations in the last couple of months; one from an entrepreneur himself and the other from a wannabe entrepreneur. The latter freely admitted that he lacked the guts to leave a stable job. Both gave me similar advice that struck a chord at a time when I had been personally soul-searching about “What now?”

Sometimes the perfect advice comes from an unlikely source, although I quite agree with a quote that says “Advice is what you seek when you already know the answer”.
I knew that my answer to “what now?” lay in growth. I have taken the first step by expanding my workforce and service offerings. I am waiting now for “what next?”