Starting the final semester of MBA school, I had just won a business plan competition and was ready to make a run at getting my company off the ground. I couldn’t have been more scared. But that was overshadowed by the excitement I felt to be chasing my dream of being a successful entrepreneur.
Around the same time, I was telling my parents about the plan to launch the company. When I finished they asked what I was going to do for work.
What a gut punch.
I might as well have said I was starting a band and would couch surf until we made it big. They thought I was just a lost soul trying to figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up. In their mind, any thing other than the traditional route of degree = corporate job was sleeping on reality.
This isn’t just my parents, but how most people act toward entrepreneurs early in their journey. Vision & youth are confused for lack of direction. And so everyone encourages you to find a new, more concrete one.
But as entrepreneurs we aren’t lost or youthfully naive. Just because we don’t know exactly how we’ll get there, doesn’t mean we don’t know where we’re going.
So, sorry while we sleep on the traditional “reality.” We’re too busy chasing our dreams. You can wake us up later, when we’ll undoubtedly be wiser & older. But we still won’t need to find ourselves.
Because we never knew we were lost.
