Start a business or get a job?

What do you see yourself doing five, ten, even fifteen years from now? Hell, what about even after college?

The question rolls through my mind every hour of every day.

Should I be focusing my time on starting a business or looking for worthwhile internships?
If I spend all my time and energy on researching trends, problems, industries, etc. will I find that million dollar idea? If so, why am I wasting my time at an internship to build my resume?

After a rigorous conversation over Gmail chat, I came to re-realize something.

There is still time.

As long as I am moving forward, I will be successful. But, I will always have that drive and hunger for more. We need to cultivate it into something productive.

As far as starting a business goes, it will be inevitable. I just need to figure out what business, industry, and when to jump in.

Until then, I need to build my resources and contacts.

One possible way of doing this would be to get into consulting. I've always had a deep passion for strategy, and being a "green" personality type, I know that at work I am a conceptual thinker. What if I go into strategic consulting for a few years to generate contacts and credibility, build a business on the side, make sound investments, and when the time is right move out of the big corporate job into my own part-time consulting and run my business? All while searching for that million dollar opportunity. Sounds like the life to me.

For now let's focus on what I can do today. Experience, training, and reading.

I'm beginning my research on corporate cost savings, energy savings, and the green industry. Where can value be created during this recession for businesses? Is it green? Where is spending hemorrhaging? Also, what are people complaining about? What is the problem?

These are the questions to be answered in the near future...

my first blog

I'm new to the blogging world. But basically I am starting so I can have a way to gather my thoughts and get feedback from whomever! I'm gonna jump into it right away.

This is something I sent to some of my buddies that are just as anxious as I am to make an impact on the world and make that cash....




It's basically inevitable that we need to find a way to work for ourselves, whether its starting a business or just managing our investments on the side. Our motivation stems from the idea that the more work we put in, the more we will get out of it; whether it's money, making an impact, growing a business, or causing change in your world.

But anyways, right now in our path to success we are still learning. We can have good business ideas, but to make them great we have to learn how to build a business behind the idea - and that's what we need to find out how to do. The best way to learn how to build and run a business is through experience, training, and reading. They are self explanatory but let me elaborate.

experience - start a business, run an organization, work on a project to learn from mistakes and successes
training - work for an entrepreneur, small business, or a large company to learn "best practices" (in the industry, presentation styles, working on teams/with clients, everything)
reading - read books, articles, go to seminars to learn and apply techniques

I am currently doing all three. Training (internship @ nationwide, past internships, future job, classes, group projects), reading (books, articles, discussions), and experience (past small businesses, BBQ club - learning how to manage people, raise money, how sponsorships work, budgeting, marketing, membership, providing services, secretarial work, planning, new ideas and following through, etc - running a business type of stuff).

So we need to focus on perfecting our business skills NOW. We have the drive and personality traits, we just need to develop our skills.

Use the stress, anxiety, worrying, etc. as motivation to train yourself. When the time is right to start a business or jump on an idea, we will know. So for now, focus on how to make yourself a better businessman.

I hope this makes sense.

So let me ask you: what experience, training, and reading are you doing?
(This is a good exercise)