Entrepreneurship is like Parenting: Nurture Your Business

Summary

Intrepid Entrepreneur Debra Gould explains why entrepreneurship is a lot like parenting. Great highs, a lot of unglamorous and sometimes boring work, but hugely rewarding if you stick with it.

Entrepreneurship is like Parenting: Nurture your business in good times and bad

Your business was conceived the moment you had the idea that would free you from the daily grind of working for someone else. You worked hard to bring that business into the world; drafting a plan, coming up with a name, finding a designer to create your logo, a developer to get your website online, all of that is like labor.

That business is your baby.

You were there throughout its infancy losing sleep, doing what you could to keep it growing, healthy and thriving. You put everything you had into it; you read everything you could get your hands on about growing your business just like a new mother devours parenting magazines and how-to books. When a business is new, it’s almost a novelty. It’s thrilling to watch something you created from nothing grow into something bigger. When you’re complimented on your brand you feel proud as a parent showing off baby pictures.

Then as your business moves from its infancy, all of a sudden the adrenaline has worn off a bit. You see how much work it is just to keep everything going. Of course you love your business, your baby, but the long nights are catching up to you, and you’ve been tending to it all by yourself; it’s taking all your energy. It’s at this stage that we are likely to lose our momentum when it comes to building our businesses.

If you’re coming out of the infancy stage of your business as we slip into an economic recession, you might be tempted to give up, more so than if the economy were good. As a parent you can’t just decide you’re bored and discard the baby, moving on to something else, so as an entrepreneur why would you just let your business fade away?

As a parent, when times are tough and you’re feeling challenged, you look for support, whether it’s from a spouse, another parent, or an online network made up of people in the same situation as you. You continue to nourish your child when money’s tight (like you must continue to invest in marketing your business) and you think about how rewarding the entire process will be in the end.

No matter what, you owe it to yourself and your business to realize its true potential. If you give up the moment you start to lose momentum, or you fear the economy will force you out of business you’ll never know what could have become of your enterprise, your dream, your baby. Like parenting, being an entrepreneur is one of the most rewarding things you’ll do in your life.

If you haven’t read The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It (which should be required reading for entrepreneurs) you should pick up a copy. Author, Michael Gerber spends a great deal of time forcing you to look at your business as if it were a child going through different developmental stages. He takes you through the reasons why most small businesses fail and how to prevent that outcome yourself.

About Debra Gould

Intrepid entrepreneur, Debra Gould, president of internationally recognized home staging company Six Elements Inc. has no trouble attracting clients. An entrepreneur by the age of 30, she also created The Staging Diva®Home Staging Business Training Program with 1000+ Graduates worldwide, authored several guides and is the founder of the Directory of Home Stagers which helps homeowners and real estate agents locate home stagers to decorate homes to sell quickly and for top dollar. To learn more visit http://www.stagingdiva.com.