This blog post continues my series of interviews with people who started businesses following job loss. Today’s interview is with Steven J. Ferrusi, inventor of FitDesk.

Q: What type of career did you have before you launched FitDesk?

A: Prior to taking my invention to market, I worked as a sales rep for a large company that has 3 M’s in its name.  Our target market was high end residential.

Q: How long did you search for a job and how did your job search go?

A: There was no reason to search for jobs as 8 months prior to getting laid off it was clear that the job market had been narrowed and job search would be futile. I didn’t search for jobs…I went straight to plan B: bring my product to market.

Q: How did you survive financially while you started your company?

A: I planned ahead by selling my expensive home before a market downturn and I bought a smaller home with a small mortgage.  Also, I had a small rental in my new home that paid the mortgage each month.

Q: What skills and previous experience were you able to bring to FitDesk that is helping you to succeed?

A: I had basic life skills such as managing money, living within my means, and making it a priority to save.  These skills are always needed to manage a start up.  Also, organization and patience have helped with the daily chores of running a start up.

Q: What is the best part about running your company?

A: The best part is that I believe in this product as a way to help others who have a hard time getting a fitness program started and sticking to it. I had always heard that belief in what you are doing is important when you launch a new venture, but now I completely agree and I suggest that this be part of your decision factors.  Sales are always welcome because they validate your efforts.

Q: This would be a good point in the interview to describe FitDesk. What is it?

A: FitDesk is a product that comfortably allows a person to exercise while using a computer or video game.  It offers a solution for the problem of not getting enough movement into our lives. I took something that people love to do (computers and gaming) and made it a part of what people need to do (exercise and movement). This increases the likelihood of consistency.  After a year and a half of trying many different designs, I decided to go to market with a method that was patentable, cost effective to produce and easy to install and modify.

Q: That sounds genius! You solved the “When and how do I exercise?” problem suffered by so many sedentary people!

A: Yes, I believe I did.

Q: What is the most challenging part about running your company?

A: The most challenging thing about running a new company that has no products like it are PR (no one knows you exist and no one knows how your product will perform) and balancing advertising costs with income. One of the first challenging tasks is to develop a list of resources for potential sales/referrals.

Q: What career advice do you have for job searchers who may be considering an entrepreneurial path?

A: Read books and information on topic. Write a business plan that is flexible. Start slow while you learn about resources that will produce results. Expect highs and lows. Bring all your energy to the table. Make sure you have enough capital to survive 6 months minimum.

Q: Anything else you would like to share?

A: When people tell you that you have a great idea, expect most to give verbal appreciation but not actually part with their money. People take time to make a purchase. Do not take everything personally. Keep pushing your product with utmost confidence.

Q: What new skills did you need to learn to be an entrepreneur?

A: I had to learn the difference between public relations, marketing, and sales.  These may seem similar but are very different and need to be understood before you spend time making a business and marketing plan.

I also had to make sure my organizational skills are top notch.

Q: How does your current income compare to your previous income? (not numbers, of course, just generally)

A: Income is down only slightly because I’m keeping my start up costs low. I’m using discipline to start out slow so that I can build my resources with the goal of realizing profit and minimizing marketing mistakes.

Q: Any other words of wisdom for people who have recently lost their jobs?

A: Find a way to make it positive. Personally, I was able to triumph. I would not change it for the world.

Q: Thank you, Steven!

Note: If you would like to purchase a FitDesk, you may do so through amazon.com

This blog post kicks off a series of posts where I will feature success stories of people who wanted to find a job but when they couldn’t do so, they became reluctant entrepreneurs who succeeded beyond all their original expectations. Today’s post is my interview with Ben Coleman. Ben created a business around his love of origami, the art of folding paper into objects.

Q: What type of career did you have before you launched your business?

A: In my previous job, I worked for a manufacturer of propane trucks. I managed the production schedule, handled inventory, and also wrote the manuals for our trucks as well as about a thousand other duties. It wasn’t an easy job but I liked it. Then I was laid off. Prior to that job, I taught high school math, and before that I ran a computer retail sales business.

Q: How long did you look for a job and how did your job search go?

A: I looked for a job for about a year. I sent out between 325 and 400 resumes. It was really depressing because not only was the labor market dead, but lots of new unemployed were entering it. I fell through the cracks in terms of COBRA, and all the unemployment extensions because I had been laid off a few months prior to the “official” recession. It was clear to me that if I continued to seek employment as part of the conventional work force that I would become homeless in a matter of months.

Q: What type of business did you start?

A: My business is focused on making origami more accessible and more desirable to everyone. Perceptions of origami vary, but many people consider it useless and complex, and therefore a waste of time. I use technology and innovation to make the art form more accessible, and I’ve developed applications that make it useful. In fact, my first book “Origami Bonsai” (Tuttle 4/2010) was reviewed by a reader on Amazon calling it “the first practical use of origami.”

I released my second book “Advanced Origami Bonsai” electronically after the publisher rejected it as “too specialized” in June of 2009. And I released my third book “Origami Bonsai Accessories” electronically in March of 2010. I sell all three books on my website and I also sell the first mass-produced, pre-folded origami flower in the world (my patented invention) there as well.

Q: How did you survive financially while you started your business?

A: When my own money ran out, I had help from my parents. I expect to have repaid them (with interest) in full in about two months.

Q: How does your current income compare to your previous income?

A: Companies are now coming to me to write books for them! In the past eight weeks I made more than I made in a year working for the propane truck company. My second and third books are selling well all over the world, and because they were too “specialized” for the publisher, all the profit from their sales is mine.

Q: What skills and previous experience were you able to bring to your business that is helping you to succeed?

A: My business is customer-driven. I learned that from working at the propane truck company. I think it’s really important to answer customer questions quickly, and in a coherent and respectful manner, and then to confirm with the customer that you answered their question satisfactorily. The same customer that gets their questions answered goes out and tells three friends what a great book they bought. If I ensure that my customers are successful, then I’ll be successful automatically!

I also think that having taught math brings a unique skill set and perspective to the table when it comes to explaining things that seem, at first, to be complex. After having learned how to explain concepts to teenagers, I’ve learned to innovate, and bring some fun into the learning experience. And I’m sure that my experience as a small businessman in the early days of personal computing helps a lot with day to day operations. I recognize that taking chances, carefully, is part of the entrepreneurial process.

Q: What is the best part about running your business?

A: Figuring out what needs to be done next. It’s important to remember that there is always something that needs to be done, it’s just a matter of finding it. I don’t like doing things like paying sales tax, but I love making sculptures. The sales tax isn’t going to pay itself, and if I don’t pay it I won’t be in business for long. So the chores come first so I can free my mind to work on the creative stuff.

Believe it or not, I’m not sure I like writing the books. I’m really hard on myself, constantly asking questions, “Will they understand it?” “Does it make sense?” “Can’t I find an easier way to represent that?” When I’m working on a book or magazine project I work about 14 hours a day, with real high intensity, until the project is done. Once it’s done I can make some art!

Q: What is the most challenging part about running your company?

A: Success hangovers. I’ll sell a record number of books, or I’ll be in a newspaper, or something else important to the growth of my business will happen, and then it will be weeks or months before something better happens. I start to think I’m depressed, but in fact I am frustrated. I have to constantly remind myself that the most important thing is slow, continuous growth, not instant fame. Instant fame comes and goes, and that’s not what I’m in business for.

Q: What new skills did you need to learn to be a successful entrepreneur?

A: People. I don’t know how to say this, but I had to learn how to deal with people in a more coherent manner. I used to always say things like, “Your business is appreciated.” Now I say, “I appreciate your business.” If you can’t see the difference, then you’ve got the same problem I used to have. I have learned to make a person to person connection, almost emotional, but professional, with customers. I make it clear that I care. It’s not just about making customers the number one priority, it’s about connecting with them on a whole new level.

Q: What career advice do you have for job searchers who may be considering an entrepreneurial path?

A: Just because you’re starting a business doesn’t mean you have to give up your job search. In fact, I’d argue that you should continue your job search until your entrepreneurial venture starts paying the bills. My parents insisted that I continue looking for a job even though it was clear that my business was supporting me. It’s not called the conventional job market for nothing. Wives, parents, children, friends, are all a lot more comfortable if you’re looking for a job, so avoid the controversy and continue. But start your business venture. Start it right now. The world market is huge, and I believe there’s room for everyone in it. This is the first time in human history that a specialty business in Akron, Ohio, USA can be found easily by a customer in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And it costs nothing to make your presence known. Get your product or service on the web. Start manipulating search engines. Put a brochure on Scribd.com. Give people a way to find you and they will find you.

Q: Anything else you would like to share?

A: I don’t think there has ever been a better time to start a business. The web changes everything. Individuals have never had access to markets like they do today.

Wrap Up: Thank you, Ben! Your story is amazing. I’m sure most people would not have guessed you can make a living from origami!

Please visit Ben Coleman’s website at OrigamiBonsai.org

Sooner or later in your career, you will run into someone whose personality is so difficult, you will despair about ever finding a way to work with that person in any productive way. One of these types of difficult people is the narcissistic personality. Narcissistic personality is characterized by an unrealistic or inflated sense of self-importance, an inability to see the viewpoint of others, and hypersensitivity to criticism.

The mental health community has made strides recently in learning how to effectively treat narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic features. In less severe cases, executive coaches with training in working with narcissistic personality structure can minimize the workplace damage done by people exhibiting destructive narcissism. Consulting psychologists can help organizational leaders to make better hiring decisions or to contain situations where one person’s bad behavior is putting the entire organization or team at risk.

But this blog post is about situations where the narcissistic person is not interested in change or the organization is not actively working on damage control. In an entrepreneurial environment, the narcissist may be your boss, your co-worker, your venture capitalist/investor, or someone on your board of advisors. In these situations, you need some skill in dealing with a narcissistic personality.

In the short-term and when everything is going their way, narcissists are often charming, charismatic, compelling, and persuasive. In fact, a little narcissism may provide surface advantages to succeeding as an entrepreneur. The problems arise when the narcissist feels challenged or threatened. If the flow of admiration from others starts to slow down or stop, if funding fails to materialize, if the marketplace doesn’t behave as the narcissist hopes, narcissists are prone to angry outbursts and attempts to retaliate. Narcissists specialize in making everyone else’s life miserable, so how can you avoid having your career trashed by one?

Here is expert career advice for dealing with narcissists at work:

• Be genuinely helpful. Because narcissists are preoccupied with looking good and with getting what they want, aligning yourself with their goals will buy you some time before conflict heats up. If you can make the narcissist’s life easier, work can proceed smoothly, at least for awhile.




• Appeal to the narcissistic person’s self interest. Dr. Vicki Vandaveer of The Vandaveer Group, advises, “A leader – even a narcissistic one – is keenly interested in his/her ability to get results or have an impact. We can help polish the image…help them find more effective ways to achieve goals.”




• Accept that you will probably not receive credit for your accomplishments. Dr. Rob Kaiser of Kaplan DeVries Inc. observes, “You can get anything done, if you don’t mind who gets the credit. (It’s always the narcissist’s idea, no matter where he picked it up).”




• Don’t take anything personally. The narcissist doesn’t view you as a human with wants and needs but as a source of self-esteem for herself. “It is never about you,” says Dr. Kaiser.




• Lower your expections. For example, you aren’t going to get consistent care and support from a narcissistic boss. Dr. Ben Dattner of Dattner Consulting comments, “Gordon Gecko articulated the narcissistic boss’s worldview when he advised Bud Fox in Wall Street: ‘If you want a friend, get a dog.’”




• Avoid making yourself a target. Criticizing a narcissist can result in “narcissistic rage,” where a narcissist wards off shame by retaliating against the person who caused the narcissistic injury. These reactions are extreme and out of proportion to the trigger event. Dr. John Deleray of Deleray & Associates advises, “Don’t talk about their one big flaw unless they bring it up first.” Dr. Carl Robinson of Advanced Leadership Consulting adds, “The best way to deliver advice is with a neutral voice stating the facts as your perception and interpretation of things, not as a truth. This gives the individual wiggle room, room for face saving.”




• Line up emotional support. It is draining to clash with narcissists and interacting with a narcissistic person can leave you feeling like you did something wrong or make you question your own competence or judgment. Often this is because of an unconscious process where a narcissistic person manages to transfer their own bad feelings onto you. To stay psychologically centered, you’ll need help to reality test and to process negative emotion.




• Prepare for the worst. You may lose a power struggle with a narcissist, so you should be prepared to find another job if a situation escalates and you find yourself fired. While still employed at a workplace made toxic by a narcissist with power, quietly network and build your professional community so that you will have job-related connections if you need them.




• Try to muster some empathy. Even though narcissists are terrific at appearing as if they are on top of the world and as happy as they can be, it feels awful to be a narcissist because they need constant affirmation of how good they are. “You get to go home at the end of each day, but they have to live with themselves all the time,” notes Dr. Lynn Friedman.

If you Google, “How to be an intrapreneur,” Google will respond, “Did you mean, “How to be an entrepreneur.” In writing up notes for this blog post, Microsoft Word 2007 flagged the word, “intrapreneur” as a spelling error; TextEdit on my Mac actually changed “intrapreneurship” to “entrepreneurship” in an unwanted attempt to help me. Intrapreneurship is still not well-known, which is unfortunate because millions of people can likely benefit from learning about intrapreneurship and applying intrapreneurial concepts into their career management.

While popular culture hasn’t caught up yet, the word “intrapreneur” has been in dictionaries since the 1990’s. I like Wiktionary’s definition:  “the practice of applying entrepreneurial skills and approaches within an established company; being creative with ideas and procedures.” Intrapreneurship is a wonderful way for innovative progress to occur in a speedier way than it would otherwise happen in more traditional environments.

The advantage of intrapreneurship is that the intrapreneur has the benefit of all the financial support and resources of a large organization. The challenge for the intrapreneur is that business objectives must be met while continuing to navigate the structure and complications inherent within any large organization. (Some writers argue that intrapreneurs can ignore the corporate structure when working to achieve their business goals, but I think that is naïve).

So if you want to behave in an intrapreneurial way, here’s how to proceed:

1. Choose a project to launch and implement. The project should have clearly defined objectives and metrics via which you will define success. This project should be congruent with the overall mission and values of the organization that employs you and should be clearly beneficial to your employer if you succeed.

2. At minimum, make sure you have buy-in from your immediate manager and try to find out if your manager’s manager is in agreement with your goals and proposed strategies to achieve them. Also consider your surrounding colleagues who might be necessary and instrumental in assisting you. Think about how you will persuade them about the value of your project and how you will convince them to be helpful to you or at least stay out of your way if they are not directly involved.

3. Check your ego. If what you really want is to operate unfettered by organizational complexity and you resent any involvement by any corporate employee in what you are doing, ditch intrapreneurship and go start your own company, stat. (Then you’ll get to deal with other types of complexity, but that is a different blog topic).

4. Honestly assess your strengths and find colleagues to complement them. The ideal team is made up of people with a variety of strengths. If you don’t have the luxury of a large team to assist you, then create a plan for how the work will get done given that you are not going to be able to exclusively play to your strengths.

5. Implement. Know that you may fail, and honestly discuss this possibility with the powers-that-be that gave you permission to proceed with your venture.

6. If you succeed, your team might be integrated into the larger organization. This can be experienced as bittersweet for the intrapreneur, so be prepared for some feelings of loss.

7. Choose your next business goals and start again.

My previous blog post focused on the reasons why an entrepreneur is likely to need patience. This post introduces three entrepreneurs who aren’t naturally patient by temperament but who intentionally learned patience as a business and life skill. I will also suggest a three step process to learn patience.

Andrew Cagnetta, CEO of Transworld Business Brokers, recalls, “Patience came tough to me as a New Jersey Italian American young entrepreneur. I thought I would be financially independent at 25. Now that I am 45 and not financially independent by my definition (although successful by others), I have learned that real business success is a marathon, not a sprint. Change in degrees requires patience. You have to let repetition and education ferment/mellow like a good wine.”

In 2008, Greg Stallkamp launched Holos Fitness, a social networking Web site focused on a physically active lifestyle. Before starting his new company, Mr. Stallkamp worked in the fast-paced world of finance and investment banking. In his finance career, patience was not required. But in his new venture, Mr. Stallkamp learned that there were often times when technical staff could not be rushed to finish projects if they were going to do their jobs well. Mr. Stallkamp found himself impatiently waiting for results and becoming upset about his perception that his company was growing more slowly than he would like.

Out of necessity, Mr. Stallkamp taught himself to multitask rather than hound his employees to hurry up. While Holos Fitness employees are working to meet deadlines, Mr. Stallkamp focuses on leadership and strategic design. He says, “It is a small compromise and one that still requires a great deal of patience. However, it has helped me adjust to an entirely new way of doing business.”

Tina Paparone, co-founder of children’s gift company, BeMe, says that before she became an entrepreneur in 2009, she equated patience with being lazy or boring. After she co-launched BeMe, Ms. Paparone tried to use pushy and overbearing business tactics that worked well for her in the past, but she quickly realized that these strategies were not working well at BeMe. Ms. Paparone forced herself to slow down and practice patience, commenting, “I still believe that if you build it, they will come, but it might take awhile… by accepting I cannot control everything, I have actually re-established control of my own environment.”

Are you motivated to learn patience? If so, here is how to do it:

1.  Accept the necessity of patience in work and other spheres of life. Until you make it a conscious goal to be patient, you are less likely to achieve it.

2.   Find a mindfulness/stress management strategy that works well for you. Experiment with exercise, meditation, yoga, journaling, etc. Doing this helps you to have a longer fuse, making it much easier to feel patient during challenging circumstances.

3.   Be patient about learning to be patient. You probably won’t go from chronic impatience to blissful patience overnight. Instead, your journey will likely be one of ups and downs, successes and failures. As long as the overall trend is toward increasing patience over time, consider it a victory!

Echoing one of Ms. Paparone’s favorite quotes:

“He that can have patience can have what he will.”
Benjamin Franklin

“Patience and fortitude conquer all things.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some people think that entrepreneurs launch their own businesses because founders of companies are too impatient to tolerate slow-moving bureaucracies or the tortoise-like process of climbing the corporate ladder, rung by rung. Both of these things may be true, but does this mean that entrepreneurs need not worry about cultivating patience because impatience is a virtue in fast-paced start-up environments? I say, “Absolutely not,” and there is ample evidence to back me up.

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft told Fast Company magazine that products and businesses all go through three phases:  Vision, patience, and final execution. He observed that people enjoy the vision and final execution phases, but that most people are very uncomfortable with the patience phase.

Perhaps because of urban legend surrounding overnight successes, entrepreneurs hope to go from zero to 60 mph as quickly as possible. But in reality, “overnight success” takes years, 7-10 to be exact. Paul Buchheit, creator and lead developer of Gmail, blogged about the 7.5 years it took Gmail to evolve from a product that many people thought was a doomed dud to a product with a 40% growth rate from 2008 to 2009.

“Guitar Hero,” the video game that was the first in history to reach $1 billion in North American sales, was 10 years in the making by developers Harmonix and RedOctane. Serial artistic entrepreneur Lisa Canning described the 10 years as, “A decade of learning that ingenuity comes in two flavors: the kind where you invent mind-blowing technology (that was the easy part for two guys with master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and the kind where you build a legitimate business around it.”

A co-founder of stackoverflow.com, Jeff Atwood, wrote:

I have zero expectation or even desire for overnight success. What I am planning is several years of grinding through constant, steady improvement. This business plan isn’t much different from my career development plan:  success takes years. And when I say years, I really mean it! Not as some cliched regurgitation of “work smarter, not harder.” I’m talking actual calendar years. You know, of the 12 months, 365 days variety. You will literally have to spend multiple years of your life grinding away at this stuff, waking up every day and doing it over and over, practicing and gathering feedback each day to continually get better. It might be unpleasant at times and even downright un-fun occasionally, but it’s necessary.

There are studies indicating 10 years is a meaningful unit of time. Malcolm Gladwell presented evidence in his best-selling book, Outliers, that the key to success in any field (including business, science, sports, and music) has less to do with talent than is commonly believed. Instead, success comes from practice, 10,000 hours of it — 20 hours a week for 10 years. Mr. Gladwell called this the “10,000 hour rule.”

Are you convinced that patience is necessary but you are feeling daunted by the requirement? My next blog post will explore strategies for cultivating patience in a “hurry up” world.

Recently I asked a group of entrepreneurs to tell me what causes them stress in running their businesses. Many of their responses centered around having too much to do and not enough hours in the day to get it all done. Some business owners described a feeling of constant anxiety about the tasks that are left undone because of time constraints, and some business owners admitted to feelings of severe burnout because they keep trying to do everything no matter how unsustainably challenging their workload is.

When pressed about why they don’t delegate some of the work, entrepreneurs give a variety of reasons. Here are the top reasons given for reluctance to delegate and some discussion about those reasons. You will find that I am a big fan of delegation and learning how to do it well.

1.  ”It would take so long to teach someone how to do some of my job, it is easier to just do everything myself.”

It is true that it would require an initial investment of time to teach someone how to do some of the more routine aspects of running your business. But there are a lot of extremely smart people in the world and many of them know how to use accounting software, create or maintain a Web site, respond to simple inquiries from clients, scan or file paperwork, run errands, etc. Once this person is up-to-speed, you can save hours per week by not doing these tasks yourself.

2. “I would love to delegate but I can’t afford to do so.”

In making this financial decision, you really need to weigh the opportunity cost of doing everything yourself vs. creating more time to do the important work of strategic visioning for your business, marketing to land more work, delivering awesome results so that clients want to book more business with you or customers want to buy more products from you, or simply having more time for self-care so that you don’t begin to break down under the strain of an unmanageable workload. Can you afford to neglect the functional areas of your business that are the most important? Can you afford to become too exhausted to continue?

3. “I tried delegating once and it didn’t work well.”

This excuse makes the assumption that if something doesn’t happen the first time, it isn’t worth doing. But how many things in life are accomplished on the first try? You can identify which part of delegation was ineffective and change that part to do it better the next time. Learning how to delegate effectively is a skill that requires practice. Each time you try, make it a learning experience and be assured that as your skill grows, you are getting closer to becoming competent at delegation.

4. “I am afraid that if I delegate something, it won’t get done the way I want.”

Effective delegation requires that you are able to specify the outcome you desire and to check in with the person doing the work so that he/she doesn’t get too far off track before you redirect in the right direction. Schedule frequent check ins in the beginning when someone doesn’t yet know your style and consider it an investment in the future. After you establish that you and the worker are in sync about expectations, you won’t have to track milestone progress so carefully.

5. “I’m afraid I will hire someone and then realize I made a mistake and be stuck with the person.”

Many entrepreneurs find that it is easier if their first hire is an independent contractor / freelancer rather than a permanent employee. This way, you can evaluate for a trial period if there is a good match between what the freelancer offers and what you need. Make sure to follow the IRS guidelines about hiring an independent contractor, including the rules about allowing the freelancer to have control and independence about how he/she accomplishes his/her tasks as long as the output matches your expectations.

6. “I don’t know where to find freelancers.”

There are lots of resources now to find talented individuals to hire. HireMyMom.com, ELance.com, Guru.com, and oDesk.com are just a few of them. If you would rather investigate resources closer to home, contact the career services office of a local university and find out how to post a job to hire a student.

Once you taste the freedom that effective delegation brings, you will be so glad you learned how to do it. Then the only task left to do is to figure out the best ways to use all that time you have freed up!

As the U.S. Department of Labor reports that the U.S. economy lost 8.4 million jobs between December 2007 and February 2010, a predominant emotion expressed by job seekers and potential entrepreneurs alike is fear. Some fear is adaptive and healthy, because an appropriate amount of reality-testing is prudent and strategic.

In this blog posting, I want to explore a different type of fear … a type that is based on unexamined emotion and fear of the unknown. This type of fear prevents prospective entrepreneurs from doing what they really want to do. Paralyzing fear deprives the world of the businesses that could be meeting the needs of clients and customers with innovative products and services.

Are you longing to start a business but fearful that you don’t have enough money, that the economy is too challenging, that you don’t know enough, or that your business will fail?  Here are some facts to consider:

1. It doesn’t take as much start-up capital to launch a business as you might think. In one Inc survey, 41% of the Inc 500 CEOs launched their businesses with $10,000 or less. More than a third started with less than $1,000!!!

2. A Kaufmann Foundation study, “The Economic Future Just Happened,” reported that more than half of the companies on the 2009 Fortune 500 list were launched during a recession or bear market, along with nearly half of the firms on the 2008 Inc. list of America’s fastest-growing companies. The data also suggest a broader economic trend, with job creation from start-up companies proving to be less volatile and sensitive to downturns when compared to the overall economy.

3. If your expectation is that you should have a perfect business plan with all aspects of your business strategy evaluated and fine-tuned before you start your business, think again. This BusinessWeek article by Doug Hall, “Fail Fast, Fail Cheap,” makes the excellent point that you can’t possibly know in advance how the market will react to your business until you invite customers to provide feedback. Mr. Hall advises to develop your business idea about 50% of the way, then launch and let customers tell you where you have made mistakes and how to improve what you offer. Isn’t that a relief?

4. It can be a lot easier to find customers or clients than to find a job. And, if your revenue comes from a variety of sources as is the case with many entrepreneurs, you may actually end up with more job security than if all your eggs were in one employer’s job basket.

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain