They're all about scaring the dookie out of would-be entrepreneurs

I’m sure they think they’re doing us all a favor and saving us from ourselves when they try to make starting a business sound like getting on the wrong side of the Spanish Inquisition.

How fun. Another government agency trying to save us from our own foolishness. 

• “Are you prepared to lose a portion of your savings?”
• “Are you aware that running your own business may require working more than 12 hours a day, six days a week and maybe Sundays and holidays?”
• “If you discover you do not have the basic skills needed for your business, will you be willing to delay your plans until you have acquired the necessary skills.”
• “Are you prepared to sell your mother to an Eastern European slavery ring in order to raise seed capital?”

(I made the last one up.)

The entire RAG, and a good chunk of the SBA entrepreneurship courses, are designed to scare the bejeepers out of anyone so bold as to consider starting their own company.SBA used to stand for the Small Business Administration.  In May of 1994, in a little-know shift that nonetheless completely transformed the mission of the SBA, the acronym was changed to "Scare Businesspeople Away."

So, are they right? Is it in our best interest to be frightened away from starting our own business unless we have just “the right stuff?” Should a government agency be in the business of putting hopeful entrepreneurs through some kind of Navy Seal boot camp designed to make them quit?

In this entrepreneur’s opinion, there’s only as much risk in starting a company as you want there to be.  Anyone can start their own micro-business with ZERO risk if that’s what they prefer.  In fact, it’s almost always better to start a new business with low risk. The only time that risk arises is when the m-bizzer gets bigger than their britches – which is actually something the SBA encourages by backing small business loans. If you don’t want risk in starting a new business, then DON’T:

• Invest a bunch of money,
• Borrow a bunch of money,
• Quit your ever-loving job, or
• Invest months or years of your life in planning.

 In short, if you start your business small (tiny small) and start it today – without bailing on your day job – there’s nothing to fear.  The most you have to lose is some of your time.

Oh, and if you think it “takes money to make money,” keep reading.  We’ll address that fallacy in NUMBER FIVE. In a nutshell:  no it doesn’t. You can make tons of money with no money.  Many, if not most, really successful entrepreneurs have done just that and you can too.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say starting a business is “easy.” But it’s the good kind of hard – like working out or spending time with your kids at Chuck-e-cheese. There’s no reason on Earth for the dipthongs at the SBA to try and scare us off.

We can handle it.  And, now that we’re over eighteen, we’re brushing our own teeth without a reminder and even deciding what clothes we should wear every single day, it’s probably a good time to let us decide for ourselves if we want to start our own business or not.  Granted, the bureaucrats wandering the halls of the SBA probably have stunningly-large IQs, but I think we can handle this decision on our own.

Go scare Al Queda. We’re perfectly capable of scaring ourselves.

Trying to plan a start-up business is like trying to plan sex. Only the sex is taking place in the back of a pickup truck barreling down a washerboarded dirt road and there are fourteen other people in the back, half of whom are trying to have sex too and your partner wants to fantasize about you being a lair (but you’re not absolutely sure whether he/she said “liar” or “lawyer”) and you have no idea how to pretend to be either and you also have no idea where the truck is going and you’re worried that someone’s going to turn the cargo light on and reveal the whole sordid mess. That’s exactly what it’s like. Trying to plan a business, I mean. 

In my experience, business planning equals a futile attempt on behalf of the human ego to limit the risk of failure by spending buckets of time taking zero risk and delaying the day when the businessperson and the business idea will have to prove itself.business planning: a futile attempt on behalf of the human ego to limit the risk of failure by spending buckets of time taking zero risk and delaying the day when the businessperson and the business idea will have to prove itself."

You’ve gotta be nuts to think you can plan a startup business. Either;  

1. you’re doing something EXACTLY like it’s been done before, in which case you don’t need a plan since you know EXACTLY what to do (copy the last guy,) or  

2. you’re doing something new or with a new twist, in which case you don’t have a friggin clue how that’s going to work, what it’s going to cost and what awesome new ideas you’re going to run into along the way. In which case, why the hell waste your time planning the un-plan-able?

There’s just one reason to write a business plan and this one reason accounts for about ninety percent of all business plans written: to get a loan or funding, most often a loan backed by the SBA. If you’ve read Number One, then you know how I feel about business loans. They’re much more dangerous than a business plan.

So, next time you’re hauling ass down a dirt road in the back of a pickup truck with your honey, plan some sexy time and see how you do.  Unlike business planning, it could be fun.