Unleash your Entrepreneur Spirit

It’s a sunny day outside and the glare of the sun on my windshield is blinding. As I pulled down the sun visor I thought to myself, these things aren’t long enough; wouldn’t it be nice if they were just a little longer to actually block the sun? As I continue to fight the rays of the sun, putting my hand in just the right place to block the glare yet see the traffic, I continued to complain about how the sun visor is misleading because it does nothing to block the sun. An attachment to this device would be great, something like a visor shade – a great idea right. I chuckled out loud and kept it moving. Low and behold I was flipping channels on TV late one night, couldn’t sleep, and there it was, Easy View HD an easy pull-down sunshade attachment for your sun visor. The product seemed to be one of those simple no-brainer inventions that so many of us talk about but then dismiss. It’s an invention that could easily turn out to be a million-dollar concept that will cause many of us to say, why didn’t I think of that. So what I complained about and laughed off, someone else unleashed their entrepreneurial spirit and developed a solution to an everyday problem faced by most drivers. Sold at a reasonable price to millions of households with two or more vehicles, well you do the math.

Just the thought of such a simple invention addressing the needs of so many drivers set my mind to wonder. Who does that; what kind of person takes a simple idea and turn into a successful product? Of course, my being all-knowing, NOT, I answered my own question with it must take lots of money to do something like that, even on a small scale. I ended this self-to-self conversation with the decision that entrepreneurs must be gifted people not everybody can be an entrepreneur. Once again I shrugged it off and kept moving. Then I saw an interview on CNBC with Sara Blakely, founder of SPANX. At 29 Blakely committed her life savings of $5,000 to create something suitable to wear under her white slacks. In less than a year this one-time Disney World ride greeter and seven-year door-to-door fax machine salesperson found her line of shaping underwear. Blakely who admits to having no retail or business background has taken SPANX from a product sold out of her Atlanta apartment to a household name sporting $250 million in annual revenues and net profit margins estimated at 20%.

By now I’m starting to think that becoming an entrepreneur may not be so difficult. But what or who is it exactly – Entrepreneur. According to Merriam Webster, an entrepreneur is a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money. Risk loss, this is where most of us lock up our ideas, label them as pipedreams, fantasies, or foolishness, and walk away. Then we begin to convenience ourselves of all the reasons why loss is not an option, especially the loss of money. Yet, so many of us often daydream of ways to make money, if I only could or if only I had… then I would be able to… Perhaps your reasoning starts with I’m just a… I don’t have the means or know how to do something great. Sound familiar? Being the researcher that I am, I took to the Internet to find out if there were any entrepreneurs I could identify with, those that were in my shoes – just an everyday person working hard trying to make a better life for my family.

Here’s what I found. J.K. Rowling a destitute single mother on welfare who, with the Harry Potter series became a best-selling billionaire. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and the six subsequent books have sold 500 million copies worldwide. A film franchise and theme parks have made J.K. Rowling far more than just an author by anyone’s measure. All it took was her imagination, pen, and paper to unleash her entrepreneurial spirit and set her on a path of unimaginable financial success. Lisa Price started making hair products in her Brooklyn kitchen with just $100. She sold her blends at church flea markets and street fairs. Today, Carol’s Daughter is a multimillion-dollar line of must-have beauty treats.

Cathy Hughes, a teenage mother to a media power player, Hughes is the founder of Radio One, which includes 53 radio stations in the U.S., and TVOne, a cable network. At one point during the early stages of her career, she lost her home and was forced to live with relatives as she rebuilt her company into what is now one of the biggest media companies in the world.

Kimberly Dillon’s desire to changed the way we use technology led her to create House of Mikko, a website that helps women choose their makeup and hair products based on their features.

My search led me to a host of ordinary men and women who unleashed their entrepreneurial spirit and became great success stories. The most inspirational story I found was about Jaylen Bledsoe, a 15-year-old who, at the age of 12, launched Bledsoe Technologies, now worth approximately $3.5 million (http://bledsoetechnologies.com). Since its start, Bledsoe Technologies has become the number one information technology consultancy firm operated by a minor in the Mid-West. Bledsoe started with two employees and now has almost 150 contract employees around the world. In addition to e-commerce solutions, Bledsoe Technologies also provides online marketing campaigns, corporate branding, and technology consulting to small and mid-size businesses. Jaylen is currently moving his company forward with the development of cell phone check-in at hotels which would also allow customers to use their phone as a room key. Jaylen’s best advice “keep going, move forward, and always take risks.”So the next time our bright idea light bulb goes off, don’t ignore it – investigate. The next time you say to yourself I wish someone would make… investigate, because that someone could be you. Don’t be afraid of failure because failure is another step toward greatness. Denis Waitley said it best, “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is a delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.