Why I Am Not Rich

During my education to get my bachelors in business administration I was exposed to the life stories of several millionaires.

People who'd not built their company and wealth up from nearly nothing.

Every single one of them had a drive, a spark, a monomaniacal energy to do what they were doing and make it work.

I lack this spark.

Or rather, I thought I did.  I do seem to have it.

The trick is to find something you love and do THAT.  If you love making chicken, you open a small restaurant or stand and you make the best chicken you can.  That love means it never seems like work.

What hit me is the things that I love have entry costs that I cannot afford.

I would be a gunsmith tomorrow if I had the money to get the licenses, pay for the machine tools, a place to set up shop and a little bit of education.

I would be a gun maker tomorrow if I had the funding for the licenses, tooling and facility.

I would certainly give some of the AR makers a run for their money because the education I do have makes their errors blindingly obvious.  It seems that you need more than a knowledge about the mechanical aspects of a gun to run a business making guns.  When the strong demand falls off we're going to see a culling of the field and some makers I rather like are going to be doomed if they don't figure out how to run a business.

There are two core truths about starting a business.  First is nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Second is there's nearly no chance of success.  You will never succeed if you don't take the risk, and nearly all small businesses fail.

The most shocking point of failure is when a company starts to grow up a bit.  The nation is littered with the graves of teeny businesses that could be run by a single owner/operator that died nearly the moment they generated enough business to need more people to run them.  Failure to delegate, hiring untrustworthy people, too many orders to fill in a timely manner without help but not enough revenue to be able to afford the help.

There's no small amount of luck involved, but you'll note that the people who build a successful business do so over and over again.

Hmmmm, maybe I should do a kickstarter campaign...