Entrepreneurship for the Wrong Reasons

Yesterday morning I had the opportunity as a representative of S.C.O.R.E. to talk to about 50 students at local technical school here in Philadelphia. It trains people to become machanics. Most seemed to be thinking about opening their own auto repair shops. Another business counselor talked as did a representive of the Small Business Association. I learned a lot from the SBA guy about how the SBA approaches things and thinks about things. Most were young guys, but there were some women and some older guys as well.

But students seemed to be trying to work an angle. As we went through the questions, it seemed they were interested in starting a business to get some deal. I talked about passion and transparency and following your dreams, but their eyes glazed over when I did that until they went back to things like, "If I start a non-profit business can I get more taxes back?"

Well, my entrepreneurial leaders, you go into business because you want to realize a dream or make things better for the world or support your family or something. If you approach it from the point of view of getting a deal, the odds are very high that you're going to be frustrated.

What do you think about this? If you have something substantive to add, post a comment.

This is some of the stuff that will go into my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.