Monday, July 29, 2019

I learned to be a low overhead entrepreneur in the 1970s and 1980s

Since I started working at about age 10 after school with a paper route and then worked pretty steady at other part time jobs after age 12 I knew by the time I was 21 that I wanted to own my own businesses because by then I realized that business owners then at least mostly take advantage economically of their employees. In other words you really cannot get ahead just working 9 to 5 at any job anymore. So, you have to apply leverage to whatever you are doing by owning your own businesses to get ahead. It is never how much you make per hour but how much you can make owning a business during any month or any year. And in owning a business you may or may not be required to pay yourself even a salary at all which can help a lot in plowing money back into your business in a variety of ways. But, the trick for most people being successful is to have a low overhead business without a store front at first when you start sort of like out of your garage. The type of storefront that is the most difficult of all to manage is a restaurant because then you have high overhead and if anything goes wrong you easily can go bankrupt. So, owning a restaurant is a particular skill that most people simply do not have unless their family has owned restaurants for years already.

If you think about people like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak starting Apple computer out of one of their parents garages I believe this is an ideal way to start a business selling something today. But, of course many things have changed since the 1970s and 1980s so educated yourself of these changes so you are successful. However, an entrepreneur learns a whole lot more from his or her failures than they ever do from their successes. So, keep on learning and trying. No one becomes successful from just giving up. You have to keep trying something until it works and keep learning from your mistakes and other people's mistakes too. and this is a never ending process by the way.

So, good luck being an entrepreneur!

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