‘I’ve been funding my business by myself alone’ If you’re an entrepreneur and you do express this statement please just stop already.
I get this expression all the time during the course of my doing business with mostly women. It shocks me all the time when entrepreneurs make this statement in a bid to get sympathy or be congratulated.
Well, if you’re the type who say things like that, please learn today hoaw embarrassing and condescending it is for you and your brand. In fact it makes you look unserious and ignorant.
The first meaning of entrepreneurship is the ability to turn an idea into a viable business that yields money. It is you the entrepreneur who is responsible for funding your idea until such a time when it starts making money and hopefully go into a profitable business.
Whatever way you devise to generate the funding it is your sole responsibility to make it happen. Whether you solicit from friends, family, investor or you take a loan, that fund is still your responsibility. In other words you are still the one funding and growing your business.
When folks say ‘I’m the only one funding my business.’ I usually would withdraw my trust of doing business with them as it tells me they’re not sure what they’re doing and probably have no business plan and may not have evaluated their idea to ascertain it’s viability or relevance. Therefore doing business with such person will ultimately if not at the short run, then at the long run cause a serious fall out.
Agreed, business is and can be tough, sometimes you may not have budget to accomplish certain things or may not have the cash flow you require to keep things going. I think every entrepreneur at one point or the other experiences this difficulty, especially during the start up stages. But, having a good mindset about the situation will help you come up with better ways to deal with the situation. That is, if you take responsibility, you’re in a better place to come up with ideas to overcome the situation. But if your mindset is flawed to think in such a way that somehow you’re doing the world a favour by running a business therefore someone somewhere should have the responsibility of funding your idea, then you get it wrong.
Yes, we do have investors who can fund your idea, yet, it is you who will do the work of convincing your investor that your idea is funding worthy.
Therefore as a entrepreneur, from today learn never to express such statements as it makes you look and sound unserious.
