The Dream Stage

Entrepreneurs for the most part all begin from the same platform. In a very macro sense, entrepreneurs dream and then build. In the dream stage, the entrepreneur or employee desires a job with at least enough income to allow the owner to live. The entrepreneur can take this skill to become self-employed to perhaps acquire more income and greater autonomy. In rare instances, there may be a desire for world peace or to save the planet but for the vast majority of budding businesses, the need for food, shelter, and clothing supersede other desires. The desire for autonomy is often hedged by the fear of failure, but the vast majority of budding entrepreneurs want to be untethered.

This dream stage is synonymous with a Personal or PreEntrepreneural microbusiness which consists of an identity: name; skills; knowledge; abilities; and purposed media or portfolio to tell the personal or pre-entrepreneurial story. Let’s agree that it is a given that someone who is entrepreneurial will examine everything within their environment to derive income. Let’s also agree that most people begin with a skill that others find valuable and leverage it for income. The build stage is entered once the entrepreneur recognizes his/her knowledge, skill, abilities, or resources can be leveraged into income and autonomy.

The Build Stage

We will use the ESBI model featured in Kawasaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad to illustrate how entrepreneurs develop their identity into income and autonomy. Quadrant “E” or in the first quadrant, an individual learns skills that will help him or her attain a job, become an employee. In the “S” quadrant, the same individual becomes self-employed providing the job and a certain amount of independence. In these two “steps”, the individual is working for money. No effort, no money. The B quadrant involves owning a system. The knowledge of how things or related processes work together provides a level of autonomy. People are working to provide the entrepreneur with a level of comfort. The final quadrant is the investor stage where the entrepreneur invests money in other people’s systems. This is the greatest level of autonomy. Money is now working for the individual.

We want to focus on the practical steps that take us from employee to builder of a microbusiness. Than Merrill outlines 12 steps to entrepreneurism. For now, we are only concerned with the first five: (1)Identify what you want to do, (2) determine what others will pay for it, (3) understand your customer, (4) create a plan, and (5) launch a small version of the business. At the moment that a plan is conceived, it will fall into one of the five areas of microbusiness.

• Membership: Roles, Information/Website Access
• Event Management: Schedule/Calendar, Tickets, Event descriptions, admission
• Marketplace / Service: Limited # of products and/or tiered Services, Menu Ordering no pay/no delivery, chat box
• Store: Financial Gateway, Store w/ Cart, Invoicing, POS
• Education: University / School / Class Description, Signup, Delivery of materials