The Accidental Entrepreneur's Guide to Success

Hey there, it's Diann and welcome back to another episode of the Driven Woman Entrepreneur podcast. Today we're going to talk about creating success as an accidental entrepreneur. Now, here are the facts, the number of female entrepreneurs is increasing all around the world, but many women continue to face significant obstacles when starting their own businesses. And while many women choose entrepreneurship for all kinds of reasons, quite a few of them can be classified as accidental entrepreneurs, meaning they never intended to start their own business. But they were laid off, they couldn't find another job, their hours were cut, their position was eliminated, the business relocated, or their caregiver responsibilities simply made it impossible for them to be in two places at once. Imagine childcare costs are on the rise, and let's not even talk about elder care and pet care.

So the rise of online business, ecommerce, freelancing, gig work, and, frankly, the ability to start a business with nothing more than a strong work ethic, a functional laptop, and a relatively dependent WiFi connection means a growing number of women who never intended on being self-employed are now scrambling to figure out how to acquire the skill set and the mindset to be an entrepreneur. So, I want to talk to you today about this phenomenon, because in my work as a business coach and strategist, I see so many women thinking, well, I'm just really not a natural born entrepreneur, so I'm kind of behind the curve and trying to catch up. But in my opinion, yes, they may have some catching up to do in terms of some of the entrepreneurial mindset, but they also have many strengths and advantages, having come out of corporate, nonprofit, or academic work that the so called natural born entrepreneurs just don't have.

Now, this is pre pandemic, this article by senior contributor Allison Coleman is titled the Rise of the Accidental Entrepreneur. Now, I'd like to say that I came up with that term, but I didn't, and I'm not even sure if she did. But here's what she says, most entrepreneurs will tell you that starting a business is simply something they were always destined to do. But a surprising number of accidental entrepreneurs, people who never in a million years thought they'd be running their own business, can now be found among the ranks of the self employed. In this article, Coleman quotes a study by the Recruit Venture Group indicating that over a third of business owners who are currently running their own businesses never planned on starting their own company. That's a lot of people and again, this article was published almost two years before the start of the pandemic.

So I want to share with you some of the things that I see in the people I work with who maybe they don't even realize are advantages to not being natural born entrepreneurs, but I think are actually going to be very helpful for them in setting them up for success in their ventures. Now, I have nothing wrong with natural born entrepreneurs. In fact, I'm fascinated by them and always have been but they are different than most of us. And even though I will tell you a little bit later in this episode about my own entrepreneurial journey, I think this mythical natural born entrepreneur is actually a small percentage of people who own their own businesses. Let's face it, even though we all seem to be talking about the great big corporations, the Googles and the Amazons and the Netflixes, this country, and I'm talking about the US is largely based on small business success.

So here are the things that I think are the advantages of the accidental entrepreneur. Are you ready? Okay, the accidental entrepreneur simply has more experience working with deadlines, managing priorities, and dealing with unexpected delays. Most people who start their own business have been employed by others anywhere from a few years to many decades whereas most first time entrepreneurs are coming to the business world almost straight out of high school because a lot of them skip college. They'd rather start a business than go sit in a classroom and listen to other people tell them how to do so. Here's another secret, experience with individual and shared responsibility for the outcome.

Now, if you have been employed by someone else in any kind of business, at any level of that business, then you have had the experience of both taking the blame and taking the credit for things, whether it was up to you or not. So experience with both individual and shared responsibility for the outcome is something that I think is a strength for those of us who have worked for others before working for ourselves. Here's another one, when you work for other people, when you are an employee, you may even be a top manager or even an independent professional. You have to manage your mood, your energy, and your motivation, irrespective of the reward. What do I mean by that? If you have a job, you have to get up every day even if you're in a bad mood, even if you're depressed, even if you're hungover even if it is the absolute last thing you feel like doing. Even if you hate your job, you hate your boss, you hate your company, you think everything about the place sucks, you get up and you go, don't you?

So the ability to get up and do what needs to be done without depending on being in the mood or being in the right headspace or feeling like it, or having passion to fuel you is a transferable skill. A lot of people that I know who have started their own business did so because they had a sense of purpose or a sense of passion that is very unreliable and unpredictable as a sustainable fuel source for success. You may be able to start something with passion and purpose, but as soon as you start to hit challenges or obstacles you might just fizzle, give up and go do something else. Here's another one I think people who have worked for others also have, relative to most natural born entrepreneurs, more experience with dealing with other people's expectations, handling differences of opinion, coming to compromise, resolving conflict and building consensus. It probably comes as no surprise that natural born entrepreneurs only need to find those people who will become their first customers and those who will fund them.

They really don't need to worry about the doubters, the haters and the people who frankly have no use for them or their products. People who have worked as an employee and especially those who have worked in management or leadership have lots of experience with a variety of different personalities. Bringing people to the table, getting them to talk to one another, compromising, resolving differences and building consensus. I think those are tremendous strengths that we can bring into our self employment adventure. Okay, here's a few more, dealing with management and leadership challenges and I'm thinking both up and down. Most people are somewhere in what could be called middle management. So they have a boss and they are a boss. They are also the people who are most likely to get laid off and become an accidental entrepreneur.

People on the front line are usually the ones who are providing the services and generating revenue for the company. They don't cost as much, so they have a little bit of protection. Those at the very top are the ones who are making the decisions about who stays and who goes so they have protection that way. It is the people in the middle, the middle management and that usually encompasses several layers. Those are the folks who are most likely to be laid off or have their position eliminated. They will also have more trouble getting a job somewhere else because other companies in their industry are doing the same thing. I have helped many people who were rendered redundant in their company go on to successfully start a business of their own but they never expected to be in that position. Here are a few more things that I think are strengths of the accidental entrepreneur. Most of these individuals have had a greater opportunity to develop both social skills and emotional intelligence in the workplace.

Before I started working from home, I spent several years working out of a coworking space, and the entrepreneurs who started this particular coworking space would frequently show up on the premises and would be interacting with some of the people who rented space from them, like myself, but also with their team. I became very popular with some of the young people who worked for these entrepreneurs because whenever they left the building, all the people on their team were in an absolute state of stress. A lot of entrepreneurs really don't have great people skills, and a lot of them are somewhat lacking when it comes to emotional intelligence. Now, they may make up for it in other areas, but natural born entrepreneurs are often outliers, they're misfits.

They are a couple of standard deviations from the norm. Many of them are neurodivergent, and with that comes strengths and deficits. Many of the deficits that I see are difficulty dealing with other people. This is especially true in the tech industry. Okay, here's some more. Those who have worked for others before they start their own business are also socialized to the norms of being a team player and sharing the win. Now, people who are natural born entrepreneurs generally are the superstars. They are willing to take the risks, and they want all the credit. Most natural born entrepreneurs are not natural team players, there, I said it. Now, of course, these are generalizations, and there are always exceptions. So you don't need to DM me and tell me, yeah, but what about so and so? I know, I'm making some broad generalizations because there's a very specific point I want to make here.

I see far too many people have this idea that they don't know if they have what it takes to be successfully self employed because they don't see themselves as a natural born entrepreneur. And I think that most people who succeed as an entrepreneur did not expect to be one. That's been my experience, and that's the position that I'm taking today, and that's where I'm coming from. Here's a couple more people who have been employed by others, whether they are in the nonprofit world, the academic world, the corporate world, or even in government, have learned how to share ideas, take turns, wait for results, and cope with disappointment. I don't know anyone who has worked in any kind of business for any amount of time who has not been required to acquire those skills. It just comes with the experience of working as an employee, however high up the food chain you may have gone. I can say for myself.

Before I started my first business, I was the clinical director of a mental health agency with multiple programs. And I got to tell you, I absolutely learned how to be a team player, share the win, take turns, wait for results, and absolutely learned how to cope with disappointment. Because I'm a little bossy, you might have guessed, and things didn't always go my way. In fact, I often wasn't even allowed to do the thing that I wanted to do. Here's some more, in every company, there are checks and balances in place. These are the things that protect the stakeholders. They lead to fewer careless and reckless decisions by the decision makers, and they create greater safety and overall quality assurance, regardless of the size of the company. It could be a little bitty mom and pop on up to a multinational corporation. Those checks and balances are there for a reason, and most entrepreneurs don't think that way. They are the risk takers. They go out on intuitive leaps.

They are more comfortable with failure, and when the shit hits the fan, they just figure it out when the time comes. So, I think having the background of those checks and balances can really set us up for entrepreneurial success as accidental entrepreneurs, because we are far more likely to be intentional and a lot less impulsive and this is true even for a person like myself who has ADHD. All right, here's another one. In highly regulated industries and the professions, I was a licensed psychotherapist, so I came from a highly regulated profession. They instill a strong sense of responsibility, accountability, and a deep sense of regard for the impact of your decisions and actions on others. So if you are in financial services, if you are a physician, if you are a veterinarian, a psychotherapist, any industry that is regulated by the government or any profession that is licensed, you really come into entrepreneurship with a very strong sense of personal responsibility. I like that. I think that is an advantage.

Here's an example, as a coach, I am not required to maintain confidentiality at all because coaching is an unregulated industry. But because I was a licensed therapist and because I was socialized to the norms of that regulated profession, I decided to keep that level of confidentiality when working as a business strategist and a coach. I'm not required to, but I decided to, why? Because I see the advantages of it, and I decided to opt to continue it. Now, even though I'm telling you lots of great things about why you're not at a disadvantage to be an accidental entrepreneur, you might even have some tricks up your sleeve that the natural born folks don't even know about. But it's not all good, you know me, I got to go with the middle way. I am not a person of extreme views, I can always see both sides, and so it's only right that I talk about both sides. So are you ready for the disadvantages?

All right, here we go. When compared to natural born entrepreneurs, I would say most career paths really don't do a great job of encouraging us to take risks and to learn how to do what I call dancing with failure. In fact, most jobs I've ever had, and I'm sure most jobs you've ever had, actively discourage you from taking risks because if you fail, it reflects on the company and it could be anything from a costly error to a PR nightmare. However, as an entrepreneur, being able and willing to take risks and not overthink the fact that you might fail, that's where the natural born entrepreneur may definitely have an advantage. Here's another one in most workplaces most workplaces creative thinking, original thinking, out of the box thinking, coloring, outside the lines thinking is limited, opportunities for it are limited.

They may simply be dismissed, discarded, overlooked, discouraged or just not rewarded. Highly creative people who are not entrepreneurs, highly creative people who work for others. It is usually one of their biggest complaints when they decide to start their own business is they didn't have a place for their creative ideas. Their creative ideas were not appreciated, they were not cultivated and they were not respected and rewarded. So this is absolutely a disadvantage because all behavior is habit forming. If you haven't had much opportunity to practice brainstorming, to practice original thinking, to practice coming up with unique creative solutions in your workplace, you might need to cultivate your ability to do that once you are self employed.

Here's another one, most innovative individuals, and I'm talking about the really original thinkers, people who are gifted, people who are neurodivergent, people who come from different cultural backgrounds and those who have special skills often have less opportunity to develop those talents when they are someone's employee. It's simply not how the typical workplace goes. Now, I have met many people who are very unique, very innovative, very outside the box, who have worked for others but typically they expressed that creativity kind of on the side. They usually were not able to bring it into their role as an employee. And what we don't use can become less robust over time. So oftentimes we kind of need to bring those skills and abilities back online and really trust that our ideas are as good as they ever were, even if we haven't been able to develop them for the time that we've been employed by others.

Here's another one, in my experience, many individuals who come out of corporate, academic and nonprofit career paths and also professionals like myself have learned to follow a highly structured path. A path that encourages them to frankly conform to the norms of their professional discipline, their industry or business model. And this actively discourages individualism while not frankly calling it out. And I'm going to give you an example, when I was working as a psychotherapist, even in a private practice, which is as close to being an entrepreneur as you can be while still being in a highly regulated industry, I did not feel comfortable letting my clients see my tattoos, for example. I did not swear with my clients, and there were just aspects about my personality that were distinctive that you now get to experience on this podcast and elsewhere, but they really were not considered professional or appropriate as a licensed mental health provider.

And I think all of the professions and many career paths that really shape us, they shape our identity, they shape our thinking, they shape our worldview, they shape our mindset. And it can take a little while to reclaim your individual identity and thoughts and behaviors when you go out on your own. That has certainly been my own personal experience and the experience of many of the clients that I have worked with over the last decade. Here's another one, entrepreneurs absolutely need to bet on themselves. They need to go all in on their ideas, their ability to overcome obstacles, solve problems, perform well under pressure, and they need to be able to do that mostly with a complete absence of feedback or support. Becoming a lone wolf as an entrepreneur is often the biggest adjustment that I see women having to deal with, because in most workplaces, you have some peers, you are part of some sort of a team.

You have a cohort of other people with a similar title or working in the same department. As an entrepreneur, even if you have a bunch of investors or a bunch of people who work for you, you are where the buck stops. So you have to have a level of ownership of your ideas and a level of confidence in your ideas. Sometimes it feels completely false. Sometimes it feels completely disingenuous, and sometimes it really feels like, oh, I hope this works out, because I'm sure not feeling it. But it's a totally different experience than when you're an employee. And I think it's something that we need to actively cultivate, develop a comfort with knowing that we are literally where the buck stops. Now, I think once you've made that shift in your identity, you actually love it, because most people who end up with their own business accidentally or intentionally and like it, one of the things they tell me they like the most is that they have control. It is one of the things that I hear most often about people who have decided, I'm not going to look for another job.

I'm going all in on my business, even though I don't feel safe, even though I don't feel certain, even though I have doubt, even though I'm afraid. That's all true, but I want to be in control. So a natural born entrepreneur has already learned to bet on themselves and their ideas and their ability to solve problems and kind of wing it and fly by the seat of their pants. And many of us who are accidental entrepreneurs need to learn that. If you're anything like me, you probably had some of those traits earlier in life and you unlearned them and I'm here to tell you, you can get them back. But here is my last example of the disadvantage that I see for the accidental entrepreneur and one that I think is really, really significant.

Women, by and large tend to struggle with overthinking, second guessing, ruminating, perfectionism and impostor syndrome far more than men. And unfortunately it is these things that interfere with our ability to trust our intuition, rely on our instincts and take decisive action when conditions are uncertain and when are conditions not uncertain in entrepreneurship. This, I think, is our biggest challenge. Now, I've spoken a great deal about perfectionism and impostor complex and self doubt on other episodes of the podcast, so feel free to go through the back episodes and re listen to those again. But I hope you are hearing in everything that I'm saying today that it is absolutely possible for you to create sustainable success whether you ever intended to own a business or not. You may be late to the party, but now you're at the party. Now, if you are new to the Driven Woman Entrepreneur podcast, you might not even know my own entrepreneurial story. It's almost cringeworthy, but I've told the story a few times, so I'm not even cringing anymore.

90%. That's 9 0, not 19, 90 percent. So if you consider yourself an accidental entrepreneur or you think of yourself as someone who started a business without really intending to, you might want to listen to this one a second time. But I also recommend that you check out these three episodes from the back catalog number 145 Navigating the Crisis of Confidence for Female Business Owners. Number 40, The Fierce Female and 50 Something Entrepreneur with my good friend Rhonda Glynn. And hop into the wayback machine and go all the way back to episode number four and that one's called The Six Attributes of An Entrepreneur. Now, links to these three are all in the show notes and if I can help you close the gap between where you are and where you want to be in your business, you already know that it starts with a free consultation, right? And guess what, that link is also in the show notes. So that's a wrap for now, I will be back next week with another fabulous client success story. You are not going to want to miss that one.