I got an interesting question in my inbox and as I was replying to the email, I realized that this email can never be from a person who wants to be an entrepreneur rather it is from a person who wants to find an excuse not to be an entrepreneur / self employed / blogger?
Entrepreneurship is not something that you can wait for the right time to be one. You don’t be an entrepreneur when you see the right time to be one but because there needs to be something inside you that tells you that you can do things much better than what is being done.
If you are looking for the right time to be an entrepreneur; there has never been any. Entrepreneurs always have odds against them and you have to be standing against all those odds to be an entrepreneur. What I can do is share with you the pros and cons of being an entrepreneur / self employed / freelancer / online blogger now and may be few years earlier and few years later.
The Pros of Getting Started Now is
1. More advice than ever before
Online content is ever increasing and as more time passes, the number of online content increases over time and so you will be able to find more information and advice online now than in the past.
2. More funding opportunities than ever before
Money is more easily and readily available for ideas now than in the past. Crowd funding is really on the rise and veteran author like Seth Godin who has written more than a dozen best selling books still used kickstarter to fund his new book idea. Apart from that there are some crazy ideas like potato salad being funded online as well.
3. Best talent for hire
What if you wanted to proof reader? What if you wanted a developer to fix certain bugs? You can just hire the best talent almost instantly using sites like Elance and he need not be at a driving distance either. Hire and get the job done. No long-term contracts and no long-term commitments and at a very affordable price.
4. Home office culture
Entrepreneurship and work from home is more of a culture now than it was few years back in India. When I left the job and started working from home, there was a question about my office. As I told people I work from home it did not went down their throat that easily but now it is more of an accepted process of working from home.
The Cons of Getting Started Now is
1. Winners look like losers
There are millions of businesses but there can be only one Google, Facebook or Amazon. Flipkart in India is one of the largest ecommerce platforms and yet it is not considered as a success when compare to Amazon. Think from the perspective of an Entrepreneur – He is competing with one of the best ecommerce platform worldwide aka Amazon that is in business for ages before even Flipkart was conceptualized and yet it looks like a loser.
You can be a successful entrepreneur but still feel insignificant when compared to Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos.
2. Price transparency
Consumers are empowered due to technological enhancement that means your product or service needs to be competing on a global level and irrespective of your GEO location.
As an example if you are a freelance designer, not only your design should be best in the business but also your pricing should be at par of other global designers. If you live in a city where cost of living is higher, you may not be able to compete with other designers on a pricing front and so they may have an advantage of able to provide the same quality at much cheaper price. The only option left with you is offer competitive pricing.
It applies to product manufacturers as well where you have to be competing with the products manufactured in China.
3. Online reputation and feedback
No matter what business you do, you can never have a 100% satisfied customers and an angry customer can share his experience on social media to dampen your online reputation. Negative comments about a product or service are more likely to get more social distance. As an example Vodafone India is bound to have millions of happy customers in India and abroad but I did not had such good experience that I shared on my blog here and soon it was taken up by right people to resolve my issue.
So as a business owner you not only have to make sure each of your customers are happy but have a plan of action to make sure angry customers feedback are acted upon as fast as you can and make them happy.
Conclusion
Right now is far better time to be one than a minute later because it’s never about time but about the attitude that makes an entrepreneur an entrepreneur. If you have an entrepreneur in you, each and every minute in your entire life is the right perfect time to get that entrepreneur out. You cannot go in the past and be one anyway. Share your views in comments below.