Yeah, right!  There is a huge disparity between dreaming the dream and living the dream; and it takes more than simply throwing money into an aspiring business start-up to make the transition to successful business owner.  To make matters worse, governmental entrepreneurial support agencies are beating a cosmetic drum, often over-stating the ease at which someone can start and grow a successful business.  It is a wee bit more convoluted than this; let me explain.

Being an entrepreneur is neither easy nor is success guaranteed.  Although many governmentally-financed entrepreneurial support agencies pronounce the secrets of entrepreneurial success, it takes way more than simply attending a business class, or learning how to read a financial statement, or writing a fancy Business Plan.  In today’s media there is a belief that entrepreneurialism is the secret to fixing the economy.  It is, but not for the reasons often touted.

Over the last few years the U.S. government has wrestled with a sagging economy.  Regardless of the reasons for the economic mess, much has been spent on remedying the problem.  The U.S. government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars in new programs, economic incentives, workforce education, political arm-twisting and government-funded projects to jump-start the economy.  Despite record spending, the results are not significantly unimproved.  As David Saint-Onge (President of the e-Loft and Black Ink Assets) states in his new book, Built to Fail, uncertainty is killing intuition, invention and investment in American small business.   Despite the U.S. government’s best intentions, the pile of cash, and the proclamations and speeches, the road to entrepreneurial success is a calculated formula of a good idea, a better plan, and implementation of best practices. 

When it is all said and done, the government cannot help you build a successful start-up.  It really boils down to the skill, perseverance and innate ability of an aspiring entrepreneur to comprehend and cultivate opportunity.  In a recent report from the Kauffman Foundation for entrepreneurship entitled, The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur, a survey of 549 company founders across a variety of industries provided the following:

• The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40.
• 95.1 percent of respondents themselves had earned bachelor’s degrees, and 47 percent had more advanced degrees.
• The majority of the entrepreneurs in the sample were serial entrepreneurs. The average number of businesses launched by respondents was approximately 2.3.
• Only 4.5 percent said the inability to find traditional employment was an important factor in starting a business.
• Entrepreneurship doesn’t always run in the family. More than half (51.9 percent) of respondents were the first in their families to launch a business.
• The majority of respondents (75.4 percent) had worked as employees at other companies for more than six years before launching their own companies.

No one should be misled as to the ease at which you can start and grow an entrepreneurial enterprise.  If you really want to try, start first with consultations with people who have already done it.  Get the real insight in mastering entrepreneurial success before you burn through all your cash.