How to be a Cautious Beginning Venturer

The interesting thing about being a Cautious Small Business 1st Venturer is that you likely possess a certain level of venturing expertise, which you have acquired ... but is unconscious. That is, you might have learned key elements of creating a start up and new business, but you don’t realize what you know. This knowledge usually comes through steady and successful past business experience. The concern, however, is that Cautious Small Business 1st Venturers often assume that because they are “able”, they are “capable”, which is not always the case. This sometimes results in suffering a loss, but gaining experience. And it’s quite possible that you have resources (such as cash, contacts, infrastructure, technology, venture capital, investors, private equity etc.) and enough know-how to make you an entrepreneurial “player”. Basically, Cautious Small Business 1st Venturers are conservative venturers who possess both resources and intuition, but lack a complete understanding of the full expert “script” required to successfully undertake all aspects of a new business venture over time. For them, the main drawback is that the “entrepreneurial script” has little meaning—yet. So you need to be particularly aware that there are better alte atives than guesswork. But such alte atives do require deep knowledge. What is required in order for Cautious Small Business 1st Venturers to minimize the very avoidable venture risks... is expert assistance. What You Should Do You may benefit from the assistance of an expert consultant such as a venture capital organization—a partnering relationship with someone who has the demonstrated experience in the industry or type of business opportunity that you are considering. As a Cautious Small Business 1st Venturer, it is unlikely that you will be willing to pursue a new business opportunity until you know what it takes to succeed (you understand what’s called the venturing success script), and you can verify that you have a very high probability of success. You can “start-up” the process of enhancing your knowledge and understanding of the “success script” through specific new business venture education, training, mentoring and coaching through venture capital organizations, successful entrepreneurs, and investors (in either a specific business opportunity, or in general). Reluctance to start a new business venture will decrease as you confirm that you’ve developed the critical skills to start a new business, and as your perceived likelihood to start a successful early business improves. Cautious Small Business 1st Time Venturers can dramatically speed up the process of enhancing their entrepreneurial expertise by taking a course in entrepreneurship, or through systematic exposure to expert venturers in a given business opportunity. SOURCES: Dr. Ronald K. Mitchell, CPA, Ph.D and Howard Mitchell