With another season of Australian ‘Shark Tank’ on television at present, we all have the opportunity to cringe at the blunt feedback, cheer those who snag a great deal with a Shark and become an armchair expert on all thing entrepreneurial.
What I love about Shark Tank is that the ‘sharks’ are not afraid to tell someone that their idea won’t work or that they haven’t thought through their business model well enough. Obviously a budding entrepreneur should be passionate about their idea and love what they are doing. But the panel of Sharks bring a big dose of reality to many prospective business owners, telling them that what they love and think is beautiful, is actually pretty ugly and needs a lot of work to be viable.
So how do you balance realism and idealism? This is the ultimate, bottom line test: ‘will this idea make you money?’. If not, your idea is just an expensive hobby or a charity. There is nothing wrong with either of those outcomes if that is what you are aiming for. But realism trumps idealism when facts and figures don’t add up to turning a profit.
What do you do if you discover that your amazing idea has no future as a profiting making business? You have a choice, which is incumbent on your reason for running a business in the first place: are you passionate about your idea or are you passionate about running a business? If you cannot bear the thought of letting go of your ‘money pit’ idea and have no desire to find another idea that will work, it’s highly likely you are not an entrepreneur. As anyone who has been in business for a while will tell you, a successful venture takes tremendous hard work and commitment to the process, not the just the passion for the idea.
Your passion might be your motivation, but it has to be coupled with openness to change direction or modify your ideas if required. Without this realism, you may find yourself running a business that is short-lived.
Michelle Grice writes a weekly column for business women in The Western Weekender