Building a startup is hard work for low pay, it’s risky, and it requires total responsibility to make it work. Yet, many entrepreneurs are the happiest people I know. On the other hand, I know many unhappy individuals who are always partying, have minimal commitments, and little responsibility. I suspect the real parameters of happiness have eluded these people.

According to one of my favorite authors, Brian Tracy, in his book “The Power of Self-Discipline,” happiness is not even a goal that you can aim at and achieve in and of itself, but it is a by-product that comes to you when you are engaged in doing something you really enjoy while in the company of people you like and respect.

He defines the five key ingredients of happiness that every potential and existing entrepreneur (and every person) should evaluate relative to their own situation:

1. Happy relationships. Fully 85 percent of your happiness – or unhappiness – will come from your relationships with other people. For entrepreneurs, that includes business colleagues, but it also still includes spouse, children and friends.
2. Meaningful work. You must be doing things that you love and give you a sense of fulfillment, as well as making a contribution. Studies have shown that the three most motivating business factors include challenging work, opportunities for growth, and pleasant coworkers.
3. Financial independence. The happiest of all people are those who have reached the point at which they no longer worry about money. That doesn’t mean unlimited funds, but enough that they don’t fear being destitute, without funds, or dependent on others.
4. Health and energy. It is only when you enjoy high levels of pain-free health and a continuous flow of energy that you feel truly happy. For many, health is only a “deficiency need,” meaning you don’t think much about it until you are deprived of it.
5. Self-actualization.This is the big one, the feeling that you are becoming everything you are capable of becoming. Before this can happen, you must first feel that all deficiency needs are satisfied, and you have achieved self-esteem:
   • Survival. Basic survival is the top deficiency need, meaning sufficient food, water, clothing, and shelter to preserve your life and well-being. You cannot be happy, and you will experience tremendous stress, until survival requirements are met.
   • Security. The second deficiency need encompasses financial, emotional, and physical security. You have to have enough money, security in your relationships, and physical security to assure that you are not in imminent jeopardy of any kind.
   • Belongingness. The final deficiency need reminds us that we are social people, and we need social relationships with others, both at home and at work. You need to be recognized and accepted by other people who count in your world.
   • Self-esteem. Your self-esteem is the core of your personality and largely determines how you feel about everything that happens to you. Are you liked and appreciated by peers, doing a good job and being recognized for it, and achieving your ideals?

According to Abraham Maslow, a noted psychologist, less than two percent of the population ever reaches this height of self-actualization and personal fulfillment. But the wonderful thing about self-actualization needs is that they never need to be completely satisfied. As you stretch yourself in this direction, you experience a steady flow of happiness and contentment.

In all of these areas, you need to exert self-discipline and willpower to overcome the tendency to take shortcuts. When you keep going in spite of all obstacles and hardships, you feel powerful. Your self-esteem and self-confidence increase, and then as you move, step by step, toward your ideals, you feel genuinely happy. Are you a happy entrepreneur?

Most entrepreneurs think that risk is just an “occupational hazard” that can be minimized or eliminated by a smart businessman. That way of thinking is simplistic and wrong. In reality, some risks are good and should be embraced for growth and a competitive edge, while others are bad and should be avoided completely.

Traditional risk management focuses only on bad risks, and seeks to contain losses. But if you want growth and sustainability, you need to create good risks, which means intentionally taking a risk to grow your business or gain competitive advantage.

In fact, entrepreneurship is all about taking calculated risks, while minimizing non-calculated risks. Here are some simple examples of “good” calculated risks that you should be working on:

1. Deliver an innovative solution to a painful customer problem. This can be high risk if your solution doesn’t work, or your price is more painful than the problem. A bad risk is assuming that you because you like the solution, everyone will buy it, or that you can build an existing solution cheaper than anyone else.
2. Plan to replace your product with a better and cheaper one. Probably more companies fail by avoiding this strategic risk than any other. If the current product is making money, it seems like a bad risk to obsolete it. Yet, new technology can quickly blindside you, and market dynamics change, plus you need to broaden your opportunity.
3. Build a dynamic product line, rather than a single product. Every new product you add stretches your ability to deliver winning function and quality. Yet a great initial product, with no follow-on, will not keep you ahead of competitors. Take the strategic risk.
4. Implement a new business model. Software as a service (SaaS) has now pretty much replaced the old licensing model, but offering it was a strategic risk for SalesForce.com. Proactively implementing new business models, like subscriptions and “freemium” pricing, are good risks, while linearly lowering old product prices is a bad risk.
5. Partner with a competitor. Use “coopetition” for cost sharing, economies of scale, and open access to new markets. Once you have established your credibility and value, a strategic partnership may lead to other business relationships or a funding source.
6. Plan to spend money on marketing. It’s a bad risk to count only on word-of-mouth and viral social network buzz for marketing, as I see in many business plans today. These days, you have to spend money to make money. Of course there is work involved to find the right media, and balance the investment against the return.
7. Build your team from the best and brightest. Good people are expensive, and they are hard to find, which adds risk to your startup, but it’s a strategic risk. Lowering the risk by hiring the cheapest, or counting on family members, is a bad risk.
8. Count on less funding rather than more. It’s a well-known oxymoron that startups which are over-funded to reduce risk fail more often than under-funded ones. Strategically, the more you can do for less, the stronger you grow. It’s a bad risk to solve problems with money.
9. Be aggressive in your forecasts. Every investor has heard from the “conservative” founder who reduces his forecast to lower the risk. These don’t get funded, or they under-perform anyway. Forecasts should be strategic, based on the opportunity and pain level.
10. Lead rather than follow. In the old days, the leaders always caught the arrows, so following was less risky. Entrepreneurs who try to reduce risk by following winners, like building another Facebook or another Google, will find that they don’t catch arrows or customers.

The challenge with all risks is that they must be proactive, measured, and managed. If not, they automatically become bad risks. How much of your time is spent on containing the bad risks, versus initiating forward-thinking ones? If it’s over 50%, your whole startup is a bad risk.

Every startup founder I know talks about the chaos of their business, which they usually attribute to that burst of growth that is required to get to positive cash flow. They envision a stable environment after that point, and may have convinced themselves that they will be safer and happier with a livable income, maintaining a loyal but flat customer base.

Sadly, this false perception often leads to the death of their business, or at least the end of their tenure as CEO. I second the message that chaos never subsides, from a couple of successful entrepreneurs, Clate Mask and Scott Martineau, in their book “Conquer the Chaos.” Your only choice is to live with it, and find a way to conquer it.

Some small business owners hope to reduce stress by keeping their business static, and believe that they can rely on referrals and repeat business to keep a consistent customer set. Even with this, there are important reasons why not innovating, or going into maintenance mode, will lead to your demise:

• Competitors swoop in and take your space. There are always people around with deeper pockets that can find synergy between your space and theirs. Once they see you have developed credible traction, they can grab your space with less cost (meaning lower price) than you had to put into developing it. Don’t count on your IP to save you.

• Employees stop innovating. Employees are human, and a static known environment is more comfortable than a dynamic one. Innovation requires venturing into the unknown, causing more dreaded chaos. The easiest way to reduce chaos is to buffer all your activities (slow down), define safer generic processes, which spiral down productivity.

• Your products quickly become outdated. Change is the only constant in a successful business. Technology keeps improving at a rapid rate, so you fall behind in technology, driving costs up, and you become non-competitive.

• Your income drops. With decreased employee productivity and outdated technology, your costs go up, and income drops. Even great entrepreneurs are amazed at how fast this can lead to a non-recoverable situation.

The only real solution is to conquer the chaos, while continually expanding your reach into the available market, and into the improvements in technology. Conquering chaos requires two key strategies:

1. Mindset strategy. Your mindset is your emotional capital, bolstered by disciplined optimism and entrepreneurial independence. These give you the capacity to grow your business without getting consumed by it. You need to find ways to replenish these on a regular basis, and find your balance of pain versus rewards to keep your company vital.
2. System strategies. These are the processes and tools you implement to grow your business and keep it running smoothly and profitably. Key ones include centralization, automation, and follow-up. Again, balance is the key, with some measurements along the way to keep you on track.

Even after you bring chaos under control, you face an ongoing challenge to avoid back-sliding. Once your systems are in place, you have to give yourself the time you are saving. Make sure your own ambition doesn’t send you back into chaos. Don’t fall for the belief that your business will fail without you. Relax, let go, and enjoy the freedom you have earned.

Only now can you become the liberated entrepreneur that you set out to be in the first place. Your business will grow, you will make more money, have more time, more control, more purpose, and less chaos. Do you have what it takes to achieve the real entrepreneur lifestyle?

These days, your online Internet reputation is your reputation. Of course, having no reputation is usually better than a bad one, but don’t wait for someone else to establish a good one for you. It’s time for every business and business person to proactively create a positive presence, before someone else puts you in a defensive mode that is hard to win.

The first step in the process is to claim your online identity. This is simple in concept, but requires real effort and can be time consuming, and even expensive, if someone gets there before you and tries to sell you the rights to your preferred business or personal domain name. See my previous article on “When to Pay a Premium for Your Company Domain Name ”

Michael Fertik and David Thompson bring this issue and many others together in their book “Wild West 2.0.” After you claim your identity with placeholder domain names, accounts in social networks, and common blogging platforms, your next challenge is to create enough positive content as a “Google wall” to keep negative info out of the top Google search results.

Positive content, such as information and pictures on your accomplishments, achievements, and friends, paints you in a good light. Neutral content, including your membership in business associations, and company affiliations, can at best balance false negative information, or at least make the negatives harder to find.

Here are some of the easiest methods we both recommend for creating positive and neutral content:

• Blogging. There are several major free blogging platforms you can use to claim your identity, including WordPress, Blogger, and LiveJournal. If you add new content periodically, it is likely to become a secure and important part of your online resume, and it will come out at the top of any Google searches on your identity.

• Twittering. An even easier way of getting your positive messages to the top of Google rankings is “micro-blogging” through Twitter. This is especially useful in providing links to other positive and neutral content.

• Profile sites. There are several free and paid services, such as LinkedIn and Visible.me, that allow users to create a short personal profile and to link to other relevant sites. Simply engaging in forum discussions and exchanging comments establishes positive content.

• Other user-created content sites. Sites like Flickr, Webshots, and YouTube allow users to create and share photos and videos, and create short profiles. You can use these sites to your advantage by uploading relevant and positive content and prominently including your name in the subject or description.

• Professional directories. Many professions offer free online directories of members or similar sites for professional networking. These sites are often highly ranked in search engine results because they are heavily linked. If there is a directory relevant to your business or profession, use it.

If you have already been a victim of online reputation damage (accidentally or maliciously), proactively reach out to friends and co-workers to explain the problem. They can assist you by linking to positive and neutral content about you, thus displacing or minimizing the negative content.

For your startup, one study found that reputation damage is a bigger risk to most companies than natural disaster or even terrorism. Remember that during the startup phase where your company is not yet a brand, you are the company, so your reputation and that of your company are tightly linked.

The Internet has been a powerful and disruptive technology. The good news is that you can use it to advantage. But you can’t ignore it, and pretend there is no danger. Just like in prior generations with the Wild West, people who put up a good offense to protect themselves were the ones who survived and prospered. Take heed, and take action.

If you have had some success in a business, I’m sure you bristle just like I do when someone says “You were just lucky…” I’m a strong believer that we all make our own luck, which means that the harder we work, the luckier we get. In reality, “hard work” is just a catch-all term for a list of principles that good entrepreneurs follow, allowing them to work smarter and improve their odds of success.

A short list of these “hard work” principles, published recently by Anthony Tjan in the Harvard Business Review summarizes them as heart, smarts, and guts. I agree with these, and most people recognize them when they see them in others, but the terms are still a bit abstract for learning purposes.

Therefore, other experts, like professors Alex Rovira and Fernando Trias de Bes, authors of the book, “Good Luck: Create the Conditions for Success in Life & Business,” have identified five more definitive principles that seemingly lucky and successful entrepreneurs have in common:

1. Accept responsibility for your actions. Business owners who feel that they have had good luck also feel responsible for their own actions. When things go wrong or the outcome of any given situation is other than intended, they never point the finger of blame at external factors or other individuals. Instead, they look to themselves and ask, “What have I done for this to occur?” Then they act accordingly to solve the problem.
2. Learning from mistakes. Creators of good luck don’t see a mistake as a failure. Instead, a mistake is an opportunity for learning. Thomas Edison is the classic example. The very first light bulb was invented by Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, who demonstrated the theoretical concept but gave up trying to develop a practical application after only three attempts. By contrast, Edison made his own good luck and designed a working light bulb after over 1,000 failures.
3. Perseverance on all goals. Creators of good luck don’t give up or postpone. When a problem or situation arises, they act immediately to either solve it without delay, delegate, or forget about it. This enables their energy to be fully focused on their work and avoid conscious or unconscious distractions, which only generate inefficiency.
4. Confidence in yourself and others. The most powerful principle is often the most overlooked. Confidence in yourself is essential, and those who create their own good luck have high degrees of assertiveness and self-esteem. Closely linked to assertiveness and self-esteem is trust in others and respect for them, seeing other people as major sources of opportunity.
5. Cooperation with others in your network. Synergy is key. Trust in others leads to a solid network of work colleagues and friends, which, in turn, provides more resources to carry out projects than if they were managed alone. Think cooperation rather than competitiveness. At the most basic level, any project or undertaking takes place in the context of the broader group, and everyone should have the chance to emerge a winner.

With these attributes and the right attitude, I believe that most of “business luck” can be meaningfully influenced. That lucky attitude, according to Tjan, is a combination of three traits – humility, intellectual curiosity, and optimism.

Therefore, the basic equation of developing the right lucky attitude is quite simple. It starts with having the humility to be self-aware of your own limitations, followed by the intellectual curiosity to ask the right questions and actively listen to input, and concluding with the belief and optimism that something better is always possible.

Any entrepreneur can have this mindset if they just believe that luck is not random. They need to realize that they alone are the creators of the conditions that foster the achievement of specific, visualized goals. Then, having seen it work, they will know how to repeat the success. Overall, that really is “hard work.” Are you doing the right hard work to get lucky in your business?

I’m sure we have all seen entrepreneurs with high levels of passion and confidence touting an idea that seems to make very little sense to us. Of course, we never see ourselves in this mode, yet we need to recognize that all humans see reality differently through a built-in set of “cognitive biases,” based on their own unique background of experiences, training, and mental state.

These biases are good, in that they allow us to quickly filter and make decisions in the constant barrage of information we face each day, but bad because they often lead to errors in reasoning and emotional choices. The worst case is called the “passion trap,” where a pattern of beliefs, choices, and behaviors feel good and become self-reinforcing, but lead to disaster.

John Bradberry, in a recent book called “6 Secrets to Startup Success” identifies five key biases that sabotage many passionate entrepreneurs in their startup decision making. I challenge any entrepreneur to honestly tell me that they have never fallen victim to any of these while making startup decisions:

1. Confirmation bias. This refers to the human tendency to select and interpret available information in a way that confirms pre-existing hopes and beliefs. The antidote is to look for dissenting views that seem to form a pattern of concern. Then what you perceive as isolated exceptions, might indeed appear as a clear majority.
2. Representativeness (belief in the law of small numbers). Many entrepreneurs tend to settle on conclusions they like, based on only a small number of observations or a few pieces of data. The new founder who hears positive reviews from three out of four friends may assume that 75 percent of the general population will react similarly.
3. Overconfidence or illusion of control. Overconfidence leads founders to treat their assumptions as facts and see less uncertainty and risk than actually exists. The illusion of control causes startup founders to overrate their abilities and skills in controlling future events and outcomes. Both result is “rose-colored” plans, rather than realistic ones.
4. Anchoring. This refers to our mind’s tendency to give excessive weight to the first information we receive about a topic or the first idea we think of. It encourages founders to cling to an original idea or, if pressed, to consider only slight deviations from the idea instead of more radical alternatives. The ability to pivot sharply and timely is at risk here.
5. Escalation of commitment (“sunk cost” fallacy). Startup founders often refuse to abandon a losing strategy in an attempt to preserve whatever value has been created up to that point. They feel that they have put so much money, time, and energy into an idea or plan, that it must be the idea. Investing more into a bad idea doesn’t make it good.

Optimism, for example, is a typical entrepreneurial trait that improves performance, but only up to a point. In fact, moderately optimistic people have been shown to outperform extreme optimists on a wide range of task and assignments. There are a number of similar entrepreneurial characteristics that are recognized as good, but can be amplified to unhealthy levels, resulting in passion traps, or so-called “Icarus qualities.”

Every entrepreneur needs to be on the lookout for early warning signs of biases and passion traps that signal that you are in danger of undercutting your odds of startup success. Obvious ones are founders who are thinking or saying, “This is a sure thing,” or executives losing patience with advisors who point out risks or shortcomings in your plan.

In my experience, a great startup is more about great execution, rather than a great idea. It’s about converting your passion into economic value. To counter-balance the biases in your passion, the best approach is to look beyond your own mind and actively listen to your customers, your advisors and your team. When was the last time you really listened?

A couple of years ago, I saw first hand what can happen to a founder, and the business, when the founder practices unhealthy habits, such as working 20 hours a day. A typical “Type A” personality, with boundless energy and enthusiasm, she aggravated some previous health limitations until she was bedridden, and the business floundered.

Many entrepreneurs are too focused on their dream to take notice of health warning signs, which leads them to ignore business health signs as well. If you can’t remember the last time you had a relaxing evening with the spouse, or read a book, then your health may be in jeopardy. If your business won’t run for a day without you, then the business isn’t healthy either.

There is no single formula for how to stay healthy while starting and running an exciting but demanding new business, but here are a few suggestions, depending on your lifestyle:

• Stay fit and rested. You will have more energy and think more effectively if you are in shape and rested. In addition, you’re a role model for partners and employees. Real job performance is more a function of productivity than hours worked anyway.

• Find a stress reliever. For some people, it’s quiet meditation, and for others it’s a vigorous workout at the gym. Find something you really enjoy that doesn’t have anything to do with your business. These will help you unleash the creative side.

• Work and family balance. Family-work balance is an issue that involves financial values, gender roles, career paths, time management and many other factors. Entrepreneurs can be so focused that they ignore the family, resulting in an unhealthy situation for everyone.

• Regular medical checkups. No one is immune to the random attacks of a disease, and something recognized sooner rather than later can often be treated with minimal lasting effect. Undiagnosed and untreated problems, resulting from ignored or unknown symptoms, are a health disaster well worth avoiding.

At the same time, don’t forget that there are things you must do to maintain the health of your business, and send the right message to your employees on priorities:

• Reward employee health. Lead by example, of course, and encourage employees regularly to pursue a healthy lifestyle. You might even give special recognition for sticking to a wellness program, or sponsor a healthy team outing or other activities.

• Quarterly business reviews. On a regular basis, at least once a quarter, you need to take a hard look at all your key metrics. Maybe it’s time to tackle a new geography, or figure out how to exit some clients who are “high maintenance.”

• Quality improvements. Continuous improvement is the key to quality production. Make sure your processes are working. A constant increase in the quality of products and services, including more innovation and creativity, all lead to a healthier business.

• Improve customer service. Make sure all employees are empowered to provide the same customer service they would want for themselves and their own business. Measure how well you are doing with surveys and personal contacts.

Healthy companies need healthy employees and healthy processes. Workplace health promotion is not, as some might think, a charitable gesture towards employees but an investment in the company. It can be a life or death issue with you personally, as well as your company. Don’t wait, like my friend, until it’s too late.

One of the most common complaints I hear from entrepreneurs is that they are overwhelmed by the workload and stress of starting their company. Then there are the additional challenges of balancing the demands of family and friends. Having too much on your plate can turn your dream into a nightmare.

Some people will tell you to just get a bigger plate, meaning hire some help. But with the pressures of the economy, and limited access to outside funding, we all know this isn’t always possible or appropriate. I recommend the opposite, or getting things off your plate that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

In reality, many entrepreneurs are their own worst enemy, trying to do everything, working inefficiently, and imagining things that need doing which will never happen. Here are some tips on how to look at work, make some hard decisions, and keep your health and sanity:

1. Maintain a big picture perspective. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by day-to-day details, to the degree that they all seem like big items, driving up your imagined workload. Take a few minutes each day to reflect on your real goals, and eliminate items which don’t relate.
2. Set realistic deadlines. The more your workload grows, the greater is your temptation to set unrealistic deadlines for yourself. This results in poor quality work, which generates more work to fix previous efforts. Allow some buffer on every item.
3. Prioritize the work items. Relentlessly reprioritize your list and complete them in order, resisting the urge to skip over the tough ones. The longer that high-priority items stay on your list, the more stress you will feel, and consequences will add new items.
4. Keep a written to-do list. Most people can’t manage more than five items in their head, and when your list gets longer, it seems infinite. Write it down, but even then, keep it to the top ten priority items or less. Multiple pages of work items won’t get done anyway.
5. Block out time for priority work items. Don’t allow your day to be monopolized by distractions and the crisis of the moment. Close your door, or move to another location where you will not be interrupted so that you will complete the top item on your list today.
6. Count the completions. At the end of each day, check off, count, and celebrate your positives. A sense of progress is important here. Look positively at your progress as a glass half full, rather than half empty.
7. Take a break to recharge. Even a few minutes each hour to relax will re-energize you. Regular non-work breaks, like a trip to the gym, or time with family will be ultimately more productive than slugging it out all night on a given problem. Get a good night’s sleep.
8. Discuss the tough ones with a mentor. Don’t be afraid to discuss your challenges with a trusted friend, or business advisor. This will clarify the issue in your own mind, and let you see it from other angles. You need to stop and regroup when you hit a brick wall.
9. Stay in control of your emotions. Stress is a normal part of life. Don’t let it lead to anger and frustration, or loss of productivity. We can choose how we handle tough situations, and the best approach is always to stay calm and in control.
10. Eliminate phantom work items. These are items that you never intend to do, and probably don’t need, but you carry them on your list because of guilt or direction from someone else. You can’t complete an item that you don’t understand.

Wearing all the hats required to initiate a startup is tough in the best of situations. Then your business really starts to take off, and it gets even more challenging. As an entrepreneur, you need to seriously apply the discipline of these principles early and always to survive, and hopefully even enjoy the journey.

Entrepreneurs are usually highly creative and innovative, but many innovative people are not entrepreneurs. Since it takes a team of people to build a great company, the challenge is to find that small percentage of innovative people, and then nurture the tendency, rather than stifle it.

A while back I read a book titled “The Rudolph Factor,” by Cyndi Laurin and Craig Morningstar, which is all about finding the bright lights that can drive innovation in your business. The story most specifically targets big companies, like Boeing, but the concepts are just as applicable to a startup with one or more employees.

The core message is that real innovation and competitive advantage are more people-based than product or process-based. Every good entrepreneur needs a people-centric focus to ferret out creativity and innovation in his team, and to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

The authors observe that people who behave as mentors tend to have an uncanny ability to recognize and nurture people who have innate capabilities along these lines. Here is a summary of the characteristics they and you should look for:

• Thinkers and problem solvers. Innovators are naturally creative and love new challenges. Some may appear a bit eccentric to people around them. They generally promote unconventional ways to solve problems and have an easier time than most at identifying the root cause of a problem.

• Passionate and inquisitive. These team members are passionate about their work and light up when talking about their role or a particular project they are working on. They often ask “Why?” even when it is not the most popular question to be asked.

• Challenge the status quo. They believe that questioning is of value and benefit to the organization. This is also how they discover what they need in order to solve a problem, so they aren’t rocking the boat just for the sake of rocking the boat.

• Connect the dots. Innovators have the ability to quickly synthesize many variables to solve problems or make improvements. To others, it may appear as if their ideas come out of the blue or that there is no rhyme or reason behind their thinking.

• See the big picture. They tend to be natural systems thinkers and see the whole forest rather than a single tree … or just the bark on the tree. They may express frustration if people around them are having conversations about the bark, rather than the forest.

• Collaborative and action oriented. They are not loners, and have the ability and confidence to turn their ideas into action. They act on their ideas, sometimes without knowing how they will accomplish them. The “how” is always revealed in time.

Your challenge is to go forth with this new awareness and thinking, to find and mentor those bright lights that will drive innovation and competitive advantage. The next step after finding innovators is to integrate them into your team. A key aspect is establishing a team-based culture that is a safe environment to share and execute ideas.

In fact, this safe and nurturing environment has to extend beyond a single team to the highest levels of the organization. It should embody a style of leadership that is essentially a commitment to the success of the people around you. That opens the door for anyone in the organization to lead from where they are, rather than waiting for management to “do something.”

Innovation is at the very heart of every successful startup. Everyone wins when you look at things very differently and wonder “why”, not “why not.” What better way to extend this power than to surround yourself with more highly creative people? Then you can make the world a place of possibilities, as well as probabilities.

If I had a dollar for every time someone has said to me, “One of these days, I’m going to start my own company,” I’d be rich. If this day ever comes for all these people, we will be overrun by startups. Yet I don’t lose any sleep over either of these possibilities.

Most people procrastinate from time to time, but I suspect that the challenge here is somewhat deeper than that. So I did my own informal survey of business books, to gather the key reasons why most people never start the journey. If you recognize yourself in any of these categories, you may be more of a “wanna be” than a real entrepreneur:

1. You are a dreamer, not a do-er. Most people in this category actually prefer to think of themselves as “idea people,” rather than implementers. In reality, the dreaming part and the idea are the easy parts, and the hard part is building a workable plan and making it successful. A strong vision is required, but that’s different from the dream.
2. Unable to learn the new skills. This starts happening to people immediately after school, who think that academia is where skills are acquired. Actually, schools are only for learning how to learn. Specific expertise is self-learned from experience, not books. The ability to learn doesn’t decline with age, unless confidence and interest declines.
3. Unhealthy fear of failure. A wise man I once knew said “He who is never afraid, he’s a fool.” Successful people overcome their rational fears, and move on to get the job done. Others are debilitated by their fear, and never start. Expecting some failure, and learning to deal with it, is one of the most effective ways to learn. Investors know that all too well.
4. Hidden fear of success. Believe it or not, many people fear success, and stop short if they see it approaching. There is, in fact, plenty of evidence that it takes a strong person to manage their life after success – note the many failures after success in winning the lottery, or after topping the charts in their chosen profession.
5. You are a perfectionist, not a pragmatist. A new product or service will never be perfect in a rapidly changing world, so why start? At the other extreme, I know inventors that have been working on the same idea for thirty years, and have nothing to show for it. A proven path to success in business is to get something out, and iteratively improve it.
6. Not focused, or easily distracted. Successful entrepreneurs have a strong vision, and don’t let anyone or anything lead them astray. In business, this means you have to keep your priorities straight, and separate the important from the urgent. Learn to commit, focus, organize your work, and delegate when appropriate.
7. Always finding excuses. The first principle of entrepreneurship is that “the buck stops here” – you have to accept ultimate responsibility for whatever happens, good or bad, Excuses are artificial barriers for not starting something, or ways of convincing yourself that someone or something else is responsible for your failures. Neither is productive.
8. You are not a self-starter. If you need someone else to tell you when to develop your business plan and organize your time, then “one of these days” will probably never come for you. With the entrepreneurial lifestyle, it’s up to you to set the standards, be the model, and actively do the follow-through.

According to Psychology Today, some twenty percent of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators. Among wishful entrepreneurs, I think the percentage is nearer to ninety. If that is your current state, it need not be a life sentence by default. Some of you will change your outlook and your behavior, one of these days. When will you get around to it?