Personal Considerations in Starting a Small Business: Life, Parents, Job Loss, Education

Life experiences can play a large role in determining success in a small business. Parental influences are one aspect of this; children of parents who owned small businesses may be more inclined to do so themselves. The values that parents impart on their children can lead them to be more, or less, inclined to start a small business. The desire of a person to be the master of his or her own destiny is something that can clearly be absorbed from parents who live their lives this way. The ability of a person to take the risk of starting a small business may also be behavior that was learned from parents who behaved in a similar fashion.

Career displacement can be an additional impetus for starting a small business. There are undoubtedly thousands of newly jobless individuals who are formulating some type of business plan at this very moment! The success or failure of these businesses can depend on how determined the individual is to make the business truly successful. No one starts a business with failure as their goal. But a person who has lost a job later in life may see no other options. This may be the only hope for them to continue providing for their family, finish sending their kids to college, and have a pleasant life during retirement. Suddenly losing your livelihood can give an intense focus and concentration that was not there before.

Education may or may not have an influence on success in small business. Certainly it can for some people, but the available statistics do not yield a clear answer. Obviously education in general is far superior to ignorance, and can give a broad basis for success in any field. However, the educational system in the US may not be capable of producing enough entrepreneurs to keep us on top in today's global economy. Steven D. Strauss, a specialist in small business and entrepreneurship, states it this way: "We need an educational system that, while teaching math and science and reading and writing, also stresses creativity, initiative, risk analysis, and thoroughness; namely, the same sorts of traits that help make one a good entrepreneur and an informed, smart citizen. We are living in an entrepreneurial age, and that will only increase as the century progresses."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/columnist/strauss/2006-06-26-education_x.htm