Inspiration for the would-be entrepreneur

A year ago I quit my full time job to follow my dream and start my own business. Deciding to strike out on my own and forgo the comfort of receiving a regular paycheque with someone else's signature on it was by far the scariest and most important decision I've ever had to make. For me, it was not an easy decision by any means, since I loved my job and the people I worked with, and for the most part was content with my career. It would have been very easy for me to stay right where I was - working my way up in a company that I believed in and felt appreciated at, having a regular 9-5 job with a stable income guaranteed every month and enjoying my evenings and weekends off to have a personal life (which any business owner will tell you doesn't happen once you've started the business). But the entrepreneurial bug, as they say, bit me and held on for dear life; it wouldn't go away until I had at least tried. (If you can't stand cliches, then I suggest you skip the next couple sentences!) Someone once said that "as you grow older, you'll find the only things you regret are the things that you didn't do," and I knew that I'd regret it immensely if I didn't at least try my hand at being a business owner.

Now, once I'd made the decision to give it a go, staying motivated was key. I'm not going to lie, there were millions of times that I thought to myself "this is crazy, who are you to start your own business? This will never work, you should just go get your old job back" and I had to work at staying motivated despite the many obstacles that I faced throughout the whole start up phase of my business. One way that I stayed motivated, and I think that this made the difference between packing it in and giving up when the going got rough for me, was by constantly immersing myself in books and articles about successful entrepreneurs. One of my favourite books is "Starting from Scratch" by Wes Moss. In it, Moss shares the stories of 21 "regular people who made the entrepreneurial leap" and are now thriving in the business world. Reading their stories and seeing that they all faced and overcame the same obstacles that I was now facing was truly inspirational to me. Others books that I read and drew inspiration from were "The Bear Necessities of Business: Building a Company with Heart" by Maxine Clark, the founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop and "Pour Your Heart Into It" by Howard Shultz, Founder and CEO of Starbucks. I've read tons and tons of business books, including the standards like "The E-Myth" and "In Search of Excellence" etc, but these 3 in particular stood out for me, as they are about regular people like me who took took the leap and made it. I would recommend them to any would-be entrepreneur looking for a little inspiration during the tough times of following your entrepreneurial dream...