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For the love of $$$

Hi, I’m Matt from MandLAdventures.com. Unlike many of the other guest authors, my blog tends to focus on technology more than entrepreneurship. Being a long time reader of this blog, I have a sense of Blogtrepreneur’s wonderful entrepreneurial audience–you. Though a self proclaimed geek, I do have a college degree in business so I hope I this post will provide a unique perspective on entrepreneurship. I also want to take the opportunity to thank Adnan for allowing me to write on his blog during this short introduction about myself.

Money is the motivation for a lot of things in life. I believe every entrepreneur is aware of this fact and likely attracted to entrepreneurship for the hope of making it big one day. I, however, feel the love of money may present some obstacles to launching a successful venture. Before I cause too much alarm, let me present a few key points to defend my argument:

  • The desire to hold onto money makes you risk adverse.
  • The love of money causes you to think short-term.
  • You may launch a venture you don’t believe in.

Now, I hope to briefly explain why each of the above points can limit your effectiveness as an entrepreneur.

Avoiding risk helps you keep the money you’ve already earned but makes it hard to make more money. You’ve probably heard the saying that you can’t make money without money. Unfortunately, that statement has some merit; making lots of money requires investment and investment requires taking on risk. Yeah, you could work a normal job like everyone else without much risk, but doing so greatly limits the opportunity to make more money than the average Joe.

Therefore, a successful entrepreneur must be willing to put their hard-earned money on the line…not just once but many times throughout their career. A lot of investments may fail yet being unwilling to take risk and invest your money guarantees you’ll miss out on the next great idea. Of course don’t start investing in every new trend that comes your way because the main reason lots of investments fail is because they weren’t carefully analyzed.

Very few ventures allow you to get rich quick and those that do often don’t make as much money as those that continue to provide value over time. For instance, you could start a moderately popular website/business and sell it to the first person who makes a substantial offer. On the other hand, you could hold on to website/business and watch it grow overtime. I bet the company who sold QDOS (which eventually morphed into MS-DOS and used on virtually every personal computer for years) to Bill Gates for a total of $75,000 is still regretting only having a short-term perspective.

Long-term strategy doesn’t work for every entrepreneur. In particular, the uncanny type who tend to launch tons of great ideas. If you have that skill, then launching something and flipping it for cash may work great for you. For the rest of us, it may be best to hold on to our really good ideas and watch them grow into an empire over time.

Launching a venture you don’t full heartily believe in may seem like a good idea if you just love the idea of making money. However, I think you’ll never sell as many products and/or services as you would if you truly believed in the value of your idea. Your beliefs about the idea will come out in your presentations to investors, potential/existing customers, and anyone else you’re trying to market it to whether you want it to or not.

Think about this in your own life, aren’t you much more likely to buy from someone who you can tell really believes in what they’re selling than from someone who you can tell is just in it for the money? Of course you are. So, to maximize your chances of success only support ideas you truly believe so you will be able to put your whole heart into making it profitable.

In conclusion, the main thing to learn from this post is that focusing only on money may actually hurt you chances of becoming the next great entrepreneur. Just remember to not be afraid of investment, focus on the long-term, and only support things you truly believe in and you’ll be on the right path.

Please share any of your comments and suggestions below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

P.S. I can’t leave you without sharing one final piece of wisdom, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” I’m not saying that its bad to be rich because I’ll be the first to admit that it would be nice to have plenty of money, but I am saying that we must all be careful not to lose touch with reality and our customers. Don’t forget that being truly successfully means more than having an impressive bank account.

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