The Entrepreneur’s Source Reviews How to Overcome Roadblocks to Entrepreneurship

The Entrepreneur’s Source Reviews How to Overcome Roadblocks to Entrepreneurship

Last week on Franchise Friday, host Paul Segreto was joined by Isabell Estes, franchise owner of The Entrepreneur’s Source in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Prior to opening the Tulsa branch of The Entrepreneur’s Source, she worked several years in marketing and public relations for Tele-Communications Inc., Tulsa Public Schools and TV Guide.

Isabell also had her own public relations and marketing consultancy called Estes Communications. She opened The Entrepreneur’s Source in order to assist others in what she did for herself.

During her Franchise Friday show, Isabell shared advice for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to open their own business, and how to avoid two major roadblocks to success: risk and crabs in the basket.

How to Minimize Risk:

When I was looking at pursuing entrepreneurship, it was scary because I had it pretty good. I had been at my position long enough that I had beyond two weeks of vacation time and a steady paycheck, but I still just needed something more.

So, I put pencil to paper and figured out our financial picture so that my husband and I knew exactly what to do if I couldn’t make it on my own.

I said to my husband, “Here’s the worst case scenario. But, we could survive and all that.” I looked at the facts, and what our financial situation was, and we determined a plan of action.

I minimized our risk by understanding our financial situation and what it would take to invest. I had an idea of how we were going to make money, do the marketing and control our expenses. There was a planned effort: I didn’t do this by myself. I asked other business owners, “What would you do differently or what do you think you could have done better?”

How to Avoid the crabs in a basket:

When there’s one crab in a basket, you have to put a lid on because it is able to crawl out itself. But, if you have several crabs in the basket, you don’t have to worry about a lid. All the crabs are trying to get out of the basket, and are pulling one another down. This means none of the crabs make it out of the basket.

In pursuing entrepreneurship, there will be people out there that, because of their fears or because they want to do it themselves, will attempt to drag you down. You must be confident enough to say, “This is my dream and I’m going to do everything that I can do to make this happen.”

Arm yourself with facts and figures. Remind yourself that negative people ,or even people who are well meaning but drag you down, often have a vision for themselves, but aren’t willing to just go ahead and go for it.

Make sure you’re balancing out your positive and negative influences so that you can accomplish what you want to accomplish.  Most importantly, surround yourself with people who want you to be successful and who want to help you to achieve your dream.