Last month, Ron Garrett of Rondam Ramblings posted an interesting article called Top Ten Geek Business Myths.
Many new entrepreneurs fail because they focus on the wrong things. Filing for patents to protect an idea and getting millions in startup capital won’t help you one bit if you forget to focus on getting sales, and getting sales means you need to focus on the customer. The customer has needs, thoughts, and concerns. Address them, and you’ll be fine.
The bonus 11th myth, “After the IPO I’ll be happy”, addresses a fallacy that isn’t specific to entrepreneurs. I’d like to generalize it to the idea that happiness is “out there”. If you connect your happiness to some accomplishment or goal, you are basically saying that you won’t be happy unless you succeed. What happens if you don’t succeed? What if you change your goals? You should BE happy doing whatever you are doing. You shouldn’t become happy only once you finish. It otherwise sounds too much like work. If you don’t enjoy it, why are you doing it?
Sure happiness should be connected to an accomplishment or goal. I mean that *is* the point. I want to work all my life so that when I retire, I have enough money to have fun with. That’s the accomplishment, and that is the goal. The point of the matter is that it *is* work and you’re doing work for a very specific purpose. Not that it’s the whole meaning of life. (The meaning of life for me as a Christian should mean winning more souls to Christ, in order to see that no one I come in contact with ends up going to hell after their limited time here on this earth — of course I am also a human, and am prone to make mistakes, like not putting this first — or bowing to the dollar — not that I am bowing to the dollar, in fact i’m quite poor, which is why i’m trying to work at this).
Left by Keith Weatherby II on December 1st, 2006