Ready to Be Your Own Boss with Henry Lopez & David Begin

Transcript: Episode 001 > Ready to Be Your Own Boss with Henry Lopez & David Begin

David Begin:
Welcome to another episode of the How of Business with David and Henry. Henry, good evening. How are you?

Henry Lopez:
I’m doing great.

David Begin:
Good.

Henry Lopez:
I’m enjoying a diet Coke, which I’m trying to wean myself off of. I figured I’ll enjoy one tonight while we record this podcast.

David Begin:
Any New Year’s resolutions you want to share with the group?

Henry Lopez:
Drink less diet Coke. No, I’m not big on necessarily, New Year’s resolutions. There’s always the “get more fit” that kind of thing but, no. Nothing in particular. How about yourself?

David Begin:
I don’t do New Year’s resolutions anymore. I think you and I are probably more into personal growth arena like probably a lot of our listeners are. It’s something I work on all year round. I kind of reviewed the year and layout what I think I want to do in 2016 mentally but I typically don’t do New Year’s resolutions because most of them are probably ongoing pursuits I have anyway. I don’t think it’s a good idea.

Henry Lopez:
It’s interesting. Now, I do have goals. Business goals and we will do some planning for the upcoming year but like you alluded to, they’re loose goals and they can change and we’re okay with that.

David Begin:
Right.

Henry Lopez:
That’s more what I prefer to do.

David Begin:
Yeah. If I were to mentor someone I would say, kind of avoid the New Year’s resolutions. You should be doing goals and plans on an ongoing basis throughout the year.

Henry Lopez:
Well, anyway. This episode has nothing to do with that.

David Begin:
True. True. Well, it’s close. You want to be your own boss. That’s your goal.

Henry Lopez:
This is true. Good segue. Love that. This episode to that point is about that transition and that question that both David and I had when we were working in the corporate environment of, am I ready to be my own boss? This episode is really targeted at those listeners who are still in a corporate world thinking about making a transition, have been thinking about it maybe for some time, or asking yourself that question. You think you might want to do this but you’re not sure, you have questions, you don’t know about the risk. This episode is for you. It won’t be the only episode that we record on this topic, but this will get this conversation started and we’ll share some of our ideas, some of what we went through, and our stories as to how we got there. We were not born entrepreneurs. We took the corporate route initially in our careers and then transitioned into becoming our own boss. That’s the topic for tonight.

David Begin:
Good. We’re going to start off with how we transitioned from Corporate America to being our own boss.

Henry Lopez:
I’d like to start with a story, one of many. For me, certainly that motivation as we shared in this initial episode where we introduced ourselves – that motivation was always there for me but I didn’t know how to get there. I didn’t know how to get the opportunity to become an entrepreneur. It was always a desire butt then I was very fortunate to go into and end up in a career in sales in the high-tech software industry. Where I was making very good money, certainly compared to what I was making previous. I was very fortunate in that regard. Had really early success and continued success. But even throughout that, there were moments in particular. One I recall very vividly is, I was at a software company where I had done very well. In fact, myself and the chief, the primary sales guy that I worked with, we were a team. We were named number one team, number one sales and pre-sales person that year and had a phenomenal year. I worked very hard, traveled all over the country to get to that level because you know how it is. You have to touch enough deals; you have to work enough opportunities.

I’d worked extremely hard but we were at the point – both my friend Mark, who I’m referring to, and myself – we were at the point where we were ready to move on to another opportunity that would compensate us more. I remember when I turned in my resignation, one of the owners of the company who happened to office out of my same office, called me a great person. I really had a lot of respect for him. At that point, all of the sudden they were offering me a significant increase in salary, a promotion in position, a whole different pay skill. Significantly greater money and I thought to myself, where was that a year ago, or two years now, or three years that I had been working extremely hard, delivering for this company? It really began to crystallize for me that regardless of how well I might be compensated; I’m always at the mercy at somebody else, setting a ceiling for me. Someone else determining my value. That really helped to start crystallize that in my head.

No matter where I ended up going – and I did leave and come to another company and was very fortunate there as well, but there was always that nagging at me. Of that, someone else determining what my ceiling was. That to me was one of those moments that I remember very clearly.

David Begin:
Did you realize at that point you wanted to own your own business or you just realized this is something I didn’t want to do anymore?

Henry Lopez:
I definitely realized at that point because that was back – at that point, I still owned on the side, my pizza franchise business but I did so with a partner who managed it fulltime. I definitely by then knew but this crystallized, began to crystallize why it was that I needed to make the transition. It was further proof, further validation that I needed to make the transition but it was still very hard because I was making very good money. The pizza franchises were not making me enough money to leave the job I had so, I was caught in that trap. Which, I think a lot of people are as to, when can I financially afford to make that leap? That’s where I was at that point.

David Begin:
Interesting.

Henry Lopez:
Let’s talk about motivation and what are those things that we think are motivators to becoming your own boss, to taking that leap, and taking on that quote on quote, risk. I’m going to come back to that whole concept. What are some of those things? I think you and I are on the same page in that, we’ve crystallized that based on our learning’s, on our experience, on others who have coached us, and things that we have read, that it’s about control and freedom. That might be one in the same but it’s that freedom over how much you make, freedom of time, freedom of place, freedom of relationship, and freedom or purchase. As I like to say, I want to be able to choose what I do, where I do it, with whom I do it, when I do it, and for what purpose. That’s whatever my personal purpose is.

David Begin:
Right. Right.

Henry Lopez:
Is that in line with how you look at it as well?

David Begin:
Yeah, absolutely. I think these four freedoms came from Dan Sullivan’s book, The Four Freedoms. He talks a lot in his workshops about one reason people become entrepreneurs, is because they look for these particular freedoms. You need to continue developing these freedoms over time. He’s got another one, the freedom of money. He calls it the freedom of time, freedom of money, relationships, and purpose – are the four he uses. That’s one reason why people take the risk to become entrepreneurs, but they sometimes also get themselves in such a situation where they don’t have any of these freedoms and they’ve backed themselves into something that wasn’t quite what they thought it was going to be.

I’ll share a quick story about my experience. Henry and I have similar backgrounds. We both have software backgrounds, working for software companies, doing very well. I sort of with the larger software companies and wanted to work for the startups. I did a series of startups for about three years. I was working for one startup in California, commuting to California probably three to four days a week. I was also working on the car wash and the product we were working on wasn’t quite developed, people couldn’t quite get their heads around what it is we were selling or why they should pay any money for it. I sort of spent a lot of time, at the same time, working on the other business. The CEO was probably one of the most insane individuals I think I’ve ever met. Got probably a handful of people and he ranks up there in one of the top two or three. He had a big meeting trying to get everybody re-motivated and I said, “You know what? I’ll get motivated again, reconnect with what the company’s trying to do and put myself back into it.” That was on a Thursday or Friday. I was flying back to California on Monday and got a call as I was walking down the concourse at the airport, that they no longer needed me and they were going to get rid of me.

Henry Lopez:
Wow.

David Begin:
I just thought – kind of rededicated myself to this particular company and this job. I didn’t know where it was going to go but I was willing to put the time, energy, and effort into it. Then just getting a call out of the blue saying, “We no longer need you and so, don’t even bother getting on the flight.” I think that might have been the moment for me when I said, “You know what? I’m not going to put myself in a situation like this again.” Where this allusion of working for somebody, you trade a lot for that. You do trade that allusion of security, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. That was probably my epiphany moment.

Henry Lopez:
Yeah, that’s a tremendous story and I’ve been in similar situations as well. Fortunately for us, we were fairly, relatively speaking, employable. In other words, the following week – and you probably did – call ahead, or reach out to other people in your network and gotten another job, right?

David Begin:
Sure. Sure.

Henry Lopez:
We were fortunate in that way. However, I’m sure it just brought it home for you as to how arbitrary, how subjective, and how at the whim at someone else you always are when you are working for someone else regardless of how much value you’ve added, how much you’ve brought to the company, it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day you are just a part of it and as soon as you’re no longer needed, everybody is dispensable.

David Begin:
Absolutely. Corporate America’s very good about creating that family environment. We want you to be part of this, we give you a lot of perks. Which, we ought to talk about later on is, what are some things you miss from Corporate America? We will miss some things about it. They do create this environment to make you think you are part of a family.

Henry Lopez:
Yeah. Like you said, it’s all created so that we buy into that. For a lot of people that’s great. If you’re listening to this and none of what we’re saying resonates then you’re not ready. That’s what this episode is about. It’s about helping you understand that those feelings, if any of this resonates with you, then you are where we were at that point. You were on that path. What we’re hoping to accomplish with this episode and everything that we do with Levante Business Group is to help you through that process. From the beginning of it, from right now where it’s an idea, where it’s a thought, where it’s a feeling, all the way through you’ve started your business and you want to grow it. That’s what we’re about. If this resonates, that’s where we were. That’s where we were. At the same place, having the same thoughts, trying to separate ourselves from what we know now very clearly. That myth of job security because that’s what we were indoctrinated to do. Our parents did, our society did, our schooling did. What we were supposed to do was get a good job and for us, we were very fortunate. We had good careers, we were very employable, we got compensated very well and yet nonetheless, these things were eating at us, eating at us, and motivating us to move forward towards becoming our own boss.

David Begin:
Right. It’s like walking through the matrix I think.

Henry Lopez:
Good point.

David Begin:
I don’t know how else to describe it but once you get on the other side of the matrix, then your eyes open and you see what things can be like on the other side. When you’re in the matrix, sometimes it’s difficult for you to see what things can be. If you were to describe the way you felt – for me, I think about, what were the feelings I had while I was working for corporations? What were the feelings that you had because I think you say people aren’t ready but sometimes people aren’t going to have difficulty identifying what’s wrong. I knew there was something wrong when I worked in a corporate environment. Something just didn’t sit well. I didn’t know what it was but I just felt like something was wrong. Did you have any feelings like that or how did you feel?

Henry Lopez:
That’s a great point because that’s exactly what we’re trying to do in this first section. Layout kind of how we felt and if you identify with this, what do we do next, is what we’ll get to in a moment. I felt all kinds of things. I felt like I felt when I was young, a kid at home in a not so great relationship with my father. I felt controlled and oppressed, sick of the whole thing. On the flipside, I greatly enjoyed what I did in my career. You mentioned what did I miss the most – one of the things I always tell people that I miss the most about when we were in sales is two things. One is working with highly intelligent people.

David Begin:
Right.

Henry Lopez:
Getting to be around those people, then challenging me to be better. Second was being on stage. I loved – and that’s why we still do a lot of that. I loved getting in front of an audience and presenting a concept, presenting a way of doing things, and convincing that audience that that’s what they needed. I got a charge out of that. I loved that. I still love that.

David Begin:
Right.

Henry Lopez:
Those things I definitely miss. Everything else, the politics, the arbitrary control, the power games – from one moment to the next I might be part of the power group. The next moment if somebody got fired, I was out. All of that was exhausting, it made me feel hopeless sometimes, it made me feel out of control. Which is something that I do not like at all. Again, I always was the type of person that I needed to be able to dream about a bigger future. I felt like there was this ceiling, this cap on what I could do. I felt like I was always having to be worried about how someone was going to judge me, whether they were going to value completely what I could bring to the table. I always had to prove and sell myself and that’s just not who I am. It was just an all-around feeling that would go anywhere from feeling depressed and hopeless about it, to thinking “Well, I do enjoy this.” There was a lot of confusion as well. I think that’s how I felt.

David Begin:
Yeah. I enjoyed it as well. I mean, there were a lot of things, there were the perks. Obviously, the travel, the trips you could take. A lot of times the sales trips were tremendous. You got to go on some great vacations, but for me there was that feeling like, I can’t figure out how to navigate the organization. I can’t figure out how to get promoted up the organization. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know who to talk to, I didn’t know how the politics worked. I just threw myself into work. I said, well if I could be the very best then maybe I’ll get promoted to manager. Maybe I’ll get to run a region, but that never happened.

Henry Lopez:
We were the best at points in time and yet, there was still always that feeling and not just the feeling, the reality that at any point in time it was over. Someone could decide we don’t need you anymore.

David Begin:
Right.

Henry Lopez:
Those were some of the things we felt, some of the questions we were asking ourselves at that point. I’ve said this various times in other episodes but one of the ways that I’ve crystallized it when I chat with others and when I try to express it is – I have come to look at it as, you either are at a point where you have to create for yourself or you continue to be okay with creating for someone else. By create I mean everything that means create. It could be creating work, creating art, creating wealth, whatever it might be. I just wanted to be in a position where I failed or succeeded based on my own merits without anybody else arbitrarily deciding what my limits were, and being accountable and responsible for where I went and how much I achieved. I was willing to take both sides of that on. Meaning, the potential to fail as well as the potential and the hope to achieve great things. There have been times when I have made less money as a business owner than I did at the height of my sales career but I’m more than okay with that. It’s a completely different thing because I was in control; I had those freedoms that we talked about. It was a completely different thing.

David Begin:
Once you ended up on the other side of the matrix – looking back at what it was like when you thought about being a business owner versus now being one. Now that you’ve realized the matrix is out there, what’s different? What’s different for you? I’ll share mine and then you can share yours.

Henry Lopez:
What’s different about how I feel about the corporate environment?

David Begin:
No. Now that you’re a business owner – I think what happens is there’s that fear. There’s that wall of fear that everybody has who has worked at Corporate America, I’m going to go do my own thing. Now that you’ve gone through that, what’s different in the new world?

Henry Lopez:
What’s different in the new world is it’s a realization for the most part of everything that I wanted. Which is, yes I’m still accountable in certain regards. I’m accountable to my partners, to my family, to my employees, to any other stakeholders in what I do, but I embrace and I really, truly enjoy the fact that it’s on me – me and my team, me and my partners – as to how far I get. Only I set limitations for myself. That’s a whole other conversation. There’s lots of limitations that I set for myself that are self-imposed that I’m working at breaking down. It’s only me that sets or provides those limitations. I don’t know if I’m answering your question.

David Begin:
No, that’s good. Yeah, for me I think it’s more – I realize there’s a big world out there of things that need to be done. There’s not enough people to do them. I’m always looking for a good electrician, a good graphics designer, a great web builder, a good attorney, a really good book keeper, an accountant. There’s lots of things that need to be done, done well out there. The world’s full of people needing things to be done. Once you make that leap in becoming your own boss, you’re going to realize there’s a big world out there of goods and services that need to be exchanged at that level. If you’re really a good accountant and you’re working for a good corporation, you might want to open up your own accounting practice.

I was just talking to my accountant today about opening up a book keeping shop. He said, “You know, I’ve thought about that.” I go, “There’s a massive need for really confident book keepers.” Go hire them from college, people that graduated from junior college with an accounting degree. Go train them to use QuickBooks or whatever the tools are that need to be used. You can charge two or three times what they’re making. The world is full of opportunity. It’s chalked full of opportunity and once you get out of that corporate environment and you sit back and you look at it, you realize there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity out there for people.

The fear of making that leap goes away quite a bit. My neighbor up the street was working for a corporation and now builds apps. He builds apps for iPhones. He told me that something I told him made him go ahead and quit his job. I said, sometimes you’ve just got to take the leap and do it. It’s not going to feel 100% but you just have to jump off the cliff and take the leap. I was kind of proud of myself that I helped another person.

Henry Lopez:
I see where you were going with the question. When you do get to the other side what you find is that there’s an abundance of opportunities, especially if you apply yourself, you surround yourself with the right people, you keep opening yourself up to those opportunities, they’re there if we allow ourselves get there, get through there, and realize those opportunities. I think that segues to this whole thing of risk and people will use that I think, to an extent of an excuse. Now, there’s legitimate risk. Certainly when you quit your job and that’s the way you pay your bills, the way you get your medical benefits, and all of that good stuff. You’re going to take some of that money and you may tap a 401K to start a business, that is real risk. I get that. If you lose everything, it’s going to be a problem for your family. I get that, but there are other ways.

A) There are other ways to start a business. B) We certainly recommend – we won’t get into the details of it in this episode but we recommend that you typically have your own financial house in order first. I think the real risk, risk is used as an excuse to really say, “I’m afraid to fail.” What are your thoughts on that?

David Begin:
Oh, I agree with that. Risk is in the eye of the beholder and one of the questions I think you brought up is, is jobs – we’re all taking a risk whether we work for a corporation or whether we work for ourselves. I would contend that working for yourself is less risky than working for a corporation because you never know when you’re going to get the call on Friday afternoon, and you’re going to be handed the bank box and say, “Go put yourself in the box. Today’s your last day.” and you get escorted out the building. That’s risky. Now, you’ve built a lifestyle based on that money that you were bringing in, as most people do, they tend to spend a little bit more than what they make. When you do lose that job, then you’re in a world of hurt.

Henry Lopez:
I have to say – and this might come across a little harsh but, I think there’s a bit of laziness as well that we tend to fall into, a comfort zone. One of the myths certainly of becoming a business owner is that it’s less work, I’m going to work less hours than I’m working now, it’s going to be easier. That can be farther from the truth, at least certainly from my experience. I think that it takes that effort, that gumption, that desire, that energy to say, “I’m going to go do this and it’s going to take all of my faculties and abilities.” because I no longer am going to come in Monday and someone else has thought of what digits we’re going to sell, what markets we’re going to get in and out of, how we’re going to sell them. I just typically will execute and maybe I have a little bit more responsibility. For the most part, I execute on someone else’s plan. If that plan fails, I’ll get another job fortunately. When it’s on you, when you are the owner, all of that falls on you and that’s a tremendous responsibility. I think that’s where people then think that’s risky. It’s a different way, like you said, of looking at risk.

I’m reading a book right now. It’s the follow-up to Abundance and it’s called Bold by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. It’s a quote from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and he says on this topic of risk, “Many people misperceive what good entrepreneurs do. Good entrepreneurs don’t like risk. They seek to reduce risk. Starting a company is already risky, so you systematically eliminate risk in those early days.” In that last sentence he touches on what we just talked about which is yes, starting a business is risky. Especially if you’ve put down a chunk of money and that money is money that you really can’t afford to lose, you’ve given up your job, all those things are risky. The way we look at it is, we look to mitigate the real risks and we’ve analyzed and looked at this, and we see this as a lot less riskier than working for someone else. That’s really the shift that occurs.

David Begin:
Absolutely. It just came to mind, think about all the employees at Enron in Houston who worked there and put most of their money in a 401K, through the encouragement of the company, actually invested a lot of that money in Enron stock. When the rug was pulled out from underneath that company, most people ended up with nothing. People who have worked there for 20 or 30 years.

Henry Lopez:
I happened to have called them back in my sophomore days.

David Begin:
I did too.

Henry Lopez:
They really did think they were the smartest people in the room, by the way. At least that was my experience.

David Begin:
It might have been after when we had called on them. In their late ’80s, they were a customer of ours.

Henry Lopez:
That also brings to mind a proud moment for myself. A couple years ago, Makena mentioned at the dinner table – Makena is my daughter. She mentioned or was referring to one of her friend’s fathers, who had just gotten laid off, and the stress that created, and the angst. He had been looking for a job for some period of time. By the time we had this conversation they made – they were looking at having to relocate to another city because he wasn’t able to find a job here. She made a comment, I’ll paraphrase that, “Dad, I’m so happy you own your own business because you can’t get fired.” I thought, wow. She gets that. She gets that – certainly, my businesses could fail and I might have to go look for a job, but she gets and was reflecting to me that that’s the big difference right there. No one else is going to tell me that my day is over, that my job is over. I’ll make that decision myself by mistakes that I might make, decisions that I don’t make, or chances that I don’t take, or things that I don’t do. It’s on me. It’s because of me, not because anybody else decides that for me.

David Begin:
What was it like – if you think back when our parents were working. If they got laid off, it was devastating. Absolutely devastating. Now, kids nowadays – even in our generation to some extent – getting laid off wasn’t that big of a deal. We sort of knew we were probably going to have a number of jobs, but the stigma of being laid off even for us kids, if one of our parents got laid off it was like a death. You didn’t talk about it.

Henry Lopez:
It reflected on them and on the family.

David Begin:
I think that’s moving out. I think it’s kind of that whole stigma, sort of moving out of the generation now. We still feel it. It’s embarrassing, you have to come home and tell your family you got laid off. Your wife, your kids don’t really understand what that really means long-term. Then whether you’re a wife, or a husband, or a man or woman providing for others, there’s a lot of uncertainty that comes about.

Henry Lopez:
A curious point is that both you and I, we transitioned to business ownership and we started a business while we still kept our day jobs.

David Begin:
True. That’s one way that we did it, yes.

Henry Lopez:
That helped certainly for me, to make that financial transition. I very clearly always make this point to those of you who might be thinking about doing the same thing is, one mistake I made was sharing that with everybody at work including my boss. What I found and maybe this was just unique to my experience, but what I found was that while people will nod their head and say, “Oh, that’s great” really what a corporation wants is for you to at least pretend and make it seem like you are dedicated fully and completely to your job. They really don’t want to hear that you’ve got something else going on.

It created for me – I made that mistake. I was naive and I thought, oh I’ll share this and that they’ll see this as something I’m doing that’s good for me. That doesn’t matter. What it created for me at that point in time was certainly some resentment and jealousy from others perhaps, and then the biggest thing and the most tremendous thing is my bosses looked at it as, “Well, Henry doesn’t really need or isn’t really dedicated to this job because he’s got that other thing going on.”

David Begin:
Sure, yeah.

Henry Lopez:
Did you experience any of that or did you kind of handle it differently?

David Begin:
I did, I probably was a little more vocal when I was starting my business. At that point I didn’t really care. I was probably more vocal about that. It’s interesting how many really good and talented people that we know in corporate America, talk about wanting to own their own business but never really do it. It’s that fear, well I’m pretty comfortable with where I’m at, I’m getting paid pretty well. Again, if it’s something you enjoy doing and you feel like you’re making good money, and you’re good with all that then being a small business owner isn’t necessarily a thing that you’ve got to do. We wouldn’t really recommend for you going into it. We’re really trying to communicate more toward people who like you said, that pit in their stomach that says, “This isn’t where I’m supposed to be. This isn’t what I’m supposed to do, I need to start looking for something else.”

Henry Lopez:
Absolutely. If by this point in the conversation, if we’ve lost you, if this is not you then you may not be ready or at least our examples of being ready don’t resonate. That’s why we’re having this conversation because for you listening now, if you are in a corporate environment or in a job somewhere, if this doesn’t resonate with you – this pain, this angst, this desire, all of these different things that we’ve expressed, these stories that we’ve shared. If none of that resonates then you may not be ready. If it does resonate, if you can see yourself in some of those stories, if you have some of those same feelings then you probably are like us, and you need to start thinking about how do I plan for becoming my own boss? That’s what this is about. That’s what we are hoping to do with Levante Business Group, is to help people make that transition. Then once you get there, how do I grow from there? Our website www.levantebusinessgroup.com is dedicated to providing that type of information, those types of resources.

We’ve touched on some myths but I want to touch on a couple of them, one quickly. I touched on the fact that people think, “Well, if I’m my own boss I don’t have to work as hard.” We know and I think anybody that we’re speaking to probably gets it, that that’s not the case. You actually will end up working harder than you ever have in your life, would you agree with that?

David Begin:
Absolutely, agreed. It’s a different type of work.

Henry Lopez:
It sure is.

David Begin:
For me, I’m doing it for myself and it’s something I enjoy doing so, I’ve been able to find some things that I really enjoy doing. I don’t think about the number of hours that I put in like I did when I was working for someone else.

Henry Lopez:
As you’ve put it before eloquently, we no longer look at it as trading work for pay.

David Begin:
Time for effort.

Henry Lopez:
Time for effort, that’s not the way we look at it. Now we’re creating for ourselves, and for our families, and for the people that matter to us. We’re creating, we’re building our business. I find that I have ongoing energy and enthusiasm. Sure I hit hard spots, I hit down times, I hit times when I’m exhausted but by and large I find the energy. The point is that it’s harder work than you will have ever done before but it’s for you, it’s for your own thing, and so the motivation is there.

David Begin:
I would say if that motivates you, if you find that motivating, that would be a good indicator that you’re probably ready to start a small business. If you don’t find that motivating, if you still feel the same way that you did when you worked in a corporate environment as far as putting in long hours, then it’s either the wrong business or it’s the wrong time.

Henry Lopez:
Interesting statistic from the Small Business Administration that 67% or the majority of businesses are successful after four years. Only 33% fail. There’s also this somewhat of a myth that businesses mostly fail. Certainly there are segments like the restaurant segment, food business that we have been in and that we still are in that has a higher failure rate, but it’s simply not true that most businesses fail. Certainly there’s still a good percentage that do, but it ties back to the point you had made. There are opportunities out there. There are plenty of ways through which you can deliver value that others will pay you for. It’s just a matter of finding those ideas, finding where your skill sets match those, and then having a plan to move forward and through that barrier of perceived risk and fear. I think that’s what it takes.

David Begin:
Yeah, agreed. Agreed. We probably have to wrap up this episode. I think we’ve got a lot more information, probably to do a part two.

Henry Lopez:
Yes, we definitely will because I want to get into the subsequent episode on this, on what are some of the characteristics that we think make up a good, potential, entrepreneur or business owner. We’re going to get into in a subsequent episode, what do we see as a difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur. We tend to use those terms interchangeably but we do think there is a difference there. We’ll explore that topic. The big takeaway from this episode, David, to me is what I want you to ask yourself to the listener – if this resonated with you, if you’ve been asking yourself the same questions, if it’s been tearing you up that you want to be a business owner, but you also have asked yourself the reality check questions, why is that? It’s not because I think it’s going to be easier, it’s not because I think I’m going to be accountable to nobody because while you do gain all of these freedoms, you’re still accountable. You’re accountable not just to yourself but like I said, to your partners, to your family, to your employees. There’s still a lot of responsibility but it’s about now it’s on me and you have to be willing to have the courage to take that on, to have the courage to fight through the fear, and the risk. It’s about realizing that your corporate job is not safe.

Again, if you are fortunate like David and I were and you were very employable, that might be okay for you. I do have this one belief. You are only ready to make this transition when you’re ready. I know that sounds simplistic and simple but the point is, nobody can pull you there, nobody can even motivate you to get there, you have to be ready for it yourself.

David Begin:
Yeah, absolutely agreed. If this excites you, if you’re getting the feeling like this excites you when you think about it, then that might say you’re ready as well.

Henry Lopez:
Absolutely. You can find links to all of the resources we’ve mentioned, the books I’ve mentioned. All of that is on our show notes page on our website at www.levantebusinessgroup.com. So, go there for all of that and additional resources that you’ll find there. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the How of Business podcast. If you haven’t already, we invite you to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or wherever you may be listening. Always, we greatly appreciate your ratings and reviews. We look forward to having you join us on the next episode of the How of Business.

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Henry Lopez and David Begin, Co-Hosts of The How of Business Podcast