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Key Takeaways After I left my secure job to pursue entrepreneurship, I learned that competence as an employee inside a large organization does not guarantee success in an entrepreneurial setting.
Moving from employee to entrepreneur requires passing three tests: Can you survive the transition? Do you have the skills required to engage the market? Can you endure the uncertainty long enough to succeed?
Understand that being good at a job and being prepared for entrepreneurship are two very different things.
I landed in commercial nuclear power operations at the tender age of 18, and it did not take long to discover that I had an aptitude for the work. By 22, I was a licensed Reactor Operator — nearly unheard of at the time. By 25, I had earned my Senior Reactor Operator license and continued climbing through shift operations, supervision and management.
By 38, however, I had the uneasy sense that I had mastered the profession and done about all there was for me to do.
Then I was introduced to the idea of “unlimited income potential.” Sales and business ownership seemed to offer something my utility career could not: a direct connection between effort, skill and financial reward. So I did what, in retrospect, looks almost reckless. I left a secure utility career after 19 years, moved from Michigan to Washington, D.C. and discovered very quickly that reality is where you land when the bottom falls out of your world.
It became clear that competence as an employee inside a large organization does not guarantee success in an entrepreneurial setting.
From the outside, sales and entrepreneurship can look like freedom. Plenty of books, seminars and programs will show you how simple the transition can be. I know because I read many of those books and went through several of those programs.
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