A Facebook friend – not from Connecticut and so unlikely to read Career Counseling Connecticut’s blog – is starting a business. His Facebook friends are encouraging him.
I’m never one to balk at “business ideas” as if my entrepreneurial success makes me the arbiter of what will succeed and what won’t. For most businesses, execution is the reason for success or failure. In my first career book, Career Path of Abundance, I cited the Austin Powers movies as examples. I doubt the idea of spoofing 1960s British spy films sounded amazing. But Mike Myers executed brilliantly and a near billion-dollar movie franchise was made. As a less dated example, I don’t think the idea of turning an incredibly complicated fantasy world based loosely on medieval times was what made Game of Thrones become the TV show of the last decade. The show runners executed brilliantly.
Suffice to say, an idea has to be really bad for me to suggest that it will lead to failure. The business idea at issue requires enormous labor time, has thin profit margins, no scalability, and a lot of competition. There is also very little that distinguishes his fledgling business from others in the field and his one distinguishing feature is so time-consuming that it is near impossible to envision how he’ll pull it off if his business gets popular.
But… his Facebook friends are rooting him on. “Great idea.” “This is an awesome business.” “Go for it….”
Why? (1) They mean well. They are offering support as friends should do (2) They are being glib. They haven’t thought through the business. Even those who are not entrepreneurs should be able to spot the obvious flaws in the business and (3) They have no entrepreneurial know-how.
So, why do you or your children need a career counselor? Because when you/your children choose a career, you/they will face the same chorus. Your well-meaning friends will support you because they want to be nice, they will not really think through whether what you are doing makes sense, and/or wouldn’t be able to give advice even if they did think the matter through because they don’t have career counseling expertise.
The danger: you or your children will get encouragement to pursue something like my Facebook friend’s business. Disaster will follow.
We can help.