I’ve also heard it described as you are building an airplane while gaining speed on a runway heading for a cliff and you are scrambling to get everything together before you reach the cliff and everything keeps changing. What a thrill…it’s the extremist sport out there!

Yes, life is too short not to live your dreams. BTW, I liked your site!

Aruni

Most of the time you’re flying without a net and thriving on the feeling of truly being at the steering wheel of your own destiny. Most of the time there is no road map, no gps.

It’s like putting together a puzzle without having a completed picture to reference. (except that picture is ever evolving in our own imagination)

And therein lies the beauty.

Live Your Dreams,

-Jill

@Petula – thanks for the kind words. I hope Wendy invites me to do a guest post again. I had a fun time pulling this one together.

@JoLynn – no problem!

Great additions to the list!

I’m fortunate that my husband has a ’stable’ job and we get insurance through the University here….but I think that will change soon as he starts looking at finding a start-up to join.

I remember when he left our last company, he was offered COBRA but when I priced out buying insurance for ourselves directly from Blue Cross: http://www.bluecross.com/ or Humana: http://www.humana.com/ it was much cheaper with a slightly higher deductible. We had our son on Humana and we were on Blue Cross for about 4 months. You can enter basic information on the sites and I think they will give you an estimate on how much coverage will cost.

As an entrepreneur, you have to have a “fix it myself” mentality, or you won’t stay an entrepreneur for long.

Is it a blessing or a curse? A bit of both, but much more a blessing I think. Even if you choose to get a job, the can-do attitude and creativity of an entrepreneur will make you shine as an employee as well.

“what traits have you seen in non-entrepreneurs”: the desire for security and rules that come with a J-O-B.

“If you are an entrepreneur, do you think it is a blessing or a curse or a bit of both?”: I think it is a bit of both…On the “curse” side, I actually put in more time than I would with a J-O-B and I often feel like I’m still not doing enough.

On the blessing side, I think that having the freedom to set your own schedule is the best.

Here’s a question I have for any single entrepreneurs: what about medical insurance? Are you concerned about it, or have your found an affordable option? I’d love to hear any input from any 100% self-employed entrepreneurs out there.

I agree with lornadoone’s comment re: confidence….entrepreneurship pretty much comes down to “if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will!” You really have to be on top of things, be organized, have your goals written down, and follow-through with the action.

I haven’t mastered all of this yet, so I’m still working on it. I’ve always felt, though, that I didn’t really “fit” in the 9-5 (or 9-10!) mold, and agree that entrepreneurship has to include being flexible…probably comes from us wanting the flexibility to set our own hours!

@Kelly – Sounds like a great book! I love reading things with some humor thrown in. As they say, if you can’t laugh at yourself then you have a tough road ahead.

@Laura – mistakes and failures…we try to forget about those but those are the times we are truly learning how to do things better the next time around. In the high-tech start-up world they refer to those as scar tissue. they show that you have been through the firing zone and survived!