A New Era Of Entrepreneurship

 May 13, 2010

Interview with Tom Anastasi, author of the book The Successful Entrepreneur

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Mike Carruthers:
Starting a business may sound glamorous but typically it’s not the road to fast riches.

Tom Anastasi:
Most entrepreneurs will make the same or even less than they would as an employee. The difference is they get to be their own boss and they go to work smiling most of the time.

Tom Anastasi, author of the book The Successful Entrepreneur, says people often start businesses without really realizing what they’re getting into or how much they can make.

Well there’s a way to find out to how much money you can plan to make, it just takes a few minutes. You call up other business owners who have businesses similar to the one you want to run. You ask them what can I expect as far as revenues, what can I expect as far as expenses. And after talking to 3 or 4 of those people you can get a pretty good idea of how much you can expect to get.

Being a successful entrepreneur is a bit of a numbers game, so you have to realize that…

About 1 in 10 businesses are going to be successful from a financial viewpoint. So what you do is you take the 5 or 6 or 7 hours needed to investigate each idea and realize you’re going to have to replicate that 9 or 10 times before you find the one that works.

If you do need money to start your business you could try to borrow it but that can be tough.

The second way is to get a little money from a lot of people. It’s much easier to get $500 from 50 people than $25000 dollars from one, especially since you’re going to offer them some sort of stake in the business.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here