Serial Entrepreneurs: Are You One of These Crazy Ones? Being a serial entrepreneur is a ride not many will opt. But those who do won't have it any other way.
By Meera Kaul
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It is 3 am in the morning and you still have a list of to-do's from last week yet to be done, but it's not making you nervous. Everything works itself out -- one thing at a time.
Weekends are obliterated into weekdays; personal life is enmeshed into workspace. But this is the just the start of the glamour of being a serial entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship is a modicum of the way you are built. The risk is in your blood and the fire, in your belly. You won't just become one until you are able to embrace the risk and the rewards.
Being a serial entrepreneur is a ride not many will opt. But those who do won't have it any other way.
Here are six signs you are a serial entrepreneur.
Everything is an opportunity
The thing about being a serial entrepreneur is that every situation you walk into is a plausible next business idea. So you are at a restaurant that you visit every day and the server forgets what you drink every day; that's probably your next venture. You find an opportunity in every gap that you see and create venture success out of it.
Everyone is your next opportunity
You are on a date trying to be the normal person next door and the unsuspecting date has no idea that that your mind is racing to make a connection into their work or about their work. Did you just catch yourself offer help with their careers or venture? Jeez, stop taking about work! But that's just not you l. Is it?
Everything is about your venture or ventures
You catch yourself eating, sleeping and drinking your ventures. Everything else is inconsequential. You find yourself having less time to hang out with people, and at places that have lesser to do with your ventures or enabling them.
Someone asks you how your day's been, and you speak about your work. Someone says hello and your hello is about what your product is up to. You are at someone's home for dinner, and you find a way to connect your venture into their dinnerware. Yes, you will.
You know more about more things
More or less, that means you know more ways to do most things and lesser ways to do lesser things. You have probably had a shot at more roles than most people have doing jobs in their lifetimes.
If you have been serially taking risks, chances are you are probably a good accountant, an ace salesperson, a fair enough attorney, a good negotiator, know a few things about marketing and are able to whip coffee up for the whole office, all while making a venture pitch to your next investors.
That's a notch higher than superman and almost in competition with superwoman.
You jump out of a fully functional plane at 15k feet everyday
If you are a serial entrepreneur and you have ever gone skydiving, you would know that it's barely any different than going to work. Every day, the risks that you take as a entrepreneur will probably be bigger than jumping off the plane.
Risks don't faze you. They excite you. They challenge you. And oh, what fun it is to ride on a sleigh to slay those fears and overcome those challenges. You are wired for this and you wouldn't have it any other way.
Serial entrepreneurs create serial entrepreneurs
You find and nurture strong personalities. You create a squad of people who become your mentees and team. You look down upon incompetency and surround yourself with warriors that carry your mission. You value entrepreneurship and you create more of your tribe.
(As told to Prerna Raturi)