One of the important pre-requisites to start on your own is to have the backing of your family. Family has impact on your stress levels and hence your work.
If you are not from a business family and intend to be the first generation entrepreneur, most of the objections and negative feedback comes from the immediate family. Don’t really blame them, since taking care of them is your duty. You have to think how your decision would affect them. Usual objections are:
- But you have a nice job or you are earning well enough now
- What do you know about business?
- Who will finance you?
- How do you intend to foot your/ our bills?
- Don’t become the black sheep of our family
- What if you fail?
- What would everyone else think?
Try to convince your family as best as you can. If you have clarity in your thought process, it would be easy to communicate your decision and answer their apprehensions. Most important and difficult part is to convince your spouse. Involve him/ her in your decision, otherwise you will have to live with the nagging.
We dint need to convince each other, but we needed to convince our parents. We gave them few reasons with which they agreed:
- we both did our MBA from IIM which equipped us with necessary skills
- we have planned for this financially and can take care of our family
- we intend to give this a time period of 2-3 years and see how it goes
- in case of failure we shall return to our jobs
- we need to do this to satisfy our inner urge to achieve something
There are bound to be hurdles in your path and times when you find that things are not going smoothly. During that time you do not need to hear “I told you so”. If you have family support to fall back on, then they give you positive talk, help you financially, lift your moods and give you energy to move on.
If you are a person with “I care a damn” attitude, then go ahead and enjoy the journey.
Business lessons learnt by an entrepreneur 