Apprehension filled me as I walked towards my boss. We were outdoors, having stepped out of our open-floorplan office on a sunny, summer afternoon for privacy.
My feet came to a halt, and I stood awkwardly, the silence growing.
“I’m not sure how to say this,” I began. “I’m resigning.”
The next weeks were a whirlwind of project handoffs, documenting all I could for my colleagues, and saying goodbyes.
On June 28th, 2018, I walked out of that office for the last time, and stepped full-time into the world of entrepreneurship.
My path to entrepreneurship
How did I get here? Here’s a quick synopsis:
In 2017, I started writing the book that would ultimately become She Engineers. I wrote it on evenings, weekends, and over lunch breaks. I wrote every chance I had; I recorded voice memos to transcribe later as I was standing in line at the grocery store, or added notes on my phone when something came to me that I thought should be included in the book.
I started writing in March, handed the book off to my editor in October, and published it in January 2018.
It sounds fairly straightforward when I lay it out this way, yes? But the truth is there were many, many times when I thought that book would never get written, let alone published.
I have three kids. In 2017, my oldest child was in second grade, middle was in Kindergarten, and the baby was three.
That year, I was working more than 40 hours a week in a technical/project-management engineering role. My husband was traveling a good bit for his own work.
That year, my grandfather – also an engineer – had serious health problems the entirety of the year and passed away before the holidays.
Yet I managed to write an 80,000 word book draft that would be edited down to become the 60,673 word book She Engineers.
Driven by a need to help other women, to make sure that the things I had learned the hard way didn’t need to be learned that way by anyone else, I hit the “publish” button in January 2018.
Although I had book mentors along the way, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I had 1000 downloads in the first week, and within 30 days of publication, I had two requests to speak to young professionals’ groups. I took vacation days to travel to share the empowering message of She Engineers.
And although working full time while launching the book was beyond exhausting, the process showed me that I might be able to turn the book into something more. I might be able to launch a mission-based business that could change thousands of engineers’ lives for the better.
Over the course of the next few months, I considered what my business might look like. I worked to find the right mentors so I could have a better understanding of the potential pitfalls in taking an entrepreneurial leap.
I was equal parts scared and excited, but I knew that this was the right leap for me, and the best one I could make if I wanted to have maximum impact in the industry. It was time to not just take one small leap, but to dive off the cliff into the unknown.
The unlikely entrepreneur
The only statistics more depressing than the percentage of women in engineering is the number of small business that start and fail.
According to the US Department of Labor and Statistics:
Around 20% of small businesses fail in year one.
Approximately 33% fail within two years.
About half fail within five years.
About 66% fail within 10 years.
Even if your business does survive those early years, statistics on business revenues are also sobering:
The vast majority of small businesses in the US have no employees and have an average annual revenue of $46,978. Keep in mind this is revenue, not profit.
86.3% of small business owners make less than $100,000 a year in income.
The entrepreneurship path additionally has a well-earned reputation for requiring very long hours. The reality is that most new business owners should expect to work more to earn less, with a high statistical potential for failure.
For those reasons and many more, entrepreneurship was a path I didn’t even think about as an option for many years.
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When I imagine an entrepreneur, I think of a visionary, inspirational person like Elon Musk, Oprah, or Steve Jobs……AFTER they became household names. I think of an entrepreneur as an inventor, or as someone who thrives on taking risks.
Those traits could not be further from my personality. I will take calculated risks, but in general, I’m a risk-averse person. My creative traits run more to problem-solving, teaching, mentoring, and writing than they do to patent-holding.
Further, I enjoyed my design/project management career in the technical areas of engineering. I also enjoyed, at least for a time, the illusion of security that comes with working for someone else.
I never woke up one day and said: “Today I’m going to start my own business.” It was much more like a whisper, a curious “what if?” niggle in the back of my mind.
Over the course of several years and several changes in my personal life, my work became less challenging, less fulfilling, and I wanted to have a bigger impact in the world. I felt a call to contribute more and to forge a different path of my own vision.
That early whisper became a roar when I learned there are numerous entrepreneurs making a living AND making a difference with online business models that included books, online courses, speaking, and virtual coaching. It started to feel like the pull I felt to start writing a book wasn’t just a one-off bucket-list activity (which is honestly what I initially thought it might be when I started writing).
Instead, it was more like the first domino tipping in a very long chain to an unknown destination.
She Engineers ended up being the push that started the chain reaction to where I am today.
4 things to consider if you are thinking about taking an entrepreneurial leap
We’ve survived the first year in business (and I’ve been loving almost every minute of the journey so far!), and are well on our way to the year two milestone.
While I certainly don’t claim to have it all figured out, I thought it would be helpful to share four things I have learned on my own entrepreneurial journey to date that you’ll find helpful if you are considering starting your own one day.
1.IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO GET YOUR FINANCES IN ORDER.
Small businesses run by someone younger than 30 years old are twice as likely to fail as other businesses, according to researchers at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. You typically have debts from school, and you haven’t established yourself enough in your career in your 20’s to really understand your own strengths and capabilities, which can spell disaster if you try to start a business then. With rare exceptions, you simply don’t have the cash reserves to weather the storm of a full-time leap into entrepreneurship in your 20’s.
I was 38 when I founded Engineers Rising LLC. I knew going in that very few businesses make any sort of profit until year two, and even then those profits usually need to be rolled right back into the business.
Even given my general aversion to risk (which is a subject for an entire blog in and of itself), my family and I were OK with that because we had made sound financial decisions, including a priority of saving, investing, and living below our means, for a solid decade prior.
One of the primary reasons I was able to make this leap was because I didn’t have the pressure of needing to immediately turn a profit (which frankly is not a reasonable expectation for most new businesses). I wasn’t immediately dependent on my business income to pay the mortgage or feed my family.
That meant I could focus on providing maximum value for those I serve and think long term, which has been hugely valuable for establishing myself in the market.
2. VALIDATE YOUR BUSINESS IDEA WITH A SIDE PROJECT.
I validated my business idea with a book and speaking before jumping into it full time, giving me a lot more confidence and certainty that I could succeed. That is a path I’d recommend for most engineers, especially if your business idea is related to information, consulting or service-type products.
The obvious exceptions are if you’re planning to start a company that is a competitor to your current employer, or if you’ve signed an employment agreement indicating that all of your intellectual property is owned by your employer. Even then, you could still establish your authority in your field by publishing technical articles on LinkedIn or even on your employer’s blog.
It costs very little to start a YouTube channel, website, blog, or podcast on a potential business topic. It’s straightforward to set up a shop on Amazon, Shopify, or Etsy. A book is a bit of a bigger commitment, but it was the right one for me (it may not be the right one for you).
These “side projects” certainly require time, but they are not difficult if you apply yourself and many things can be automated if you allow a small budget for the automation software needed. If you want it badly enough, you will make the time. If you can’t make the time……well, then perhaps entrepreneurship isn’t the right path for you.
More importantly, these types of projects force you to push out of that comfort zone regularly, a must for those thinking about an entrepreneurial path.
Many of the most successful entrepreneurs today took years to establish themselves. Overnight success stories are myths. Starting a side project first allows you to use your day job to support your dream, without the financial downside of going all-in on a half-baked idea that may not even have a market.
3. VALIDATE WHO YOUR CLIENT IS BEFORE PRODUCING A PRODUCT.
We’ve all the heard the phrase, “If you build it, they will come.” That very rarely works when you’re first starting out in business, especially a service-based one.
It’s like getting struck by lightning or winning the lottery. It’s possible. We’ve heard of stories of it happening. However, it’s very rare and not something upon you want to base your livelihood.
According to a study by US Bank, the #1 reason businesses fail is that they create a product for which there is no market. That seems pretty obvious, but it’s also one that I think many potential engineering entrepreneurs will struggle with the most (as I did).
Here is where your engineering intelligence has a dark side. Because the sales/marketing part of the business does not come “naturally” to us (most of us have never been trained in it), it can be tempting to sit at your computer, do online research, and decide what product your potential market wants without actually asking that market.
“I have this great idea,” you say to a friend over happy hour one night. “I should create this and see if anyone wants to buy it.”
Then, you spend a whole bunch of time and money creating this amazing product, that no one actually wants to buy.
It turns out that this is exactly wrong approach, as evidenced by the #1 reason businesses fail.
Find the market BEFORE you create any products. Find the type of people and clients that you will be excited to serve, even when you are working very long hours and not making any money (yet).
How do you do that? Create a customer avatar (imagine that avatar as a real person!), and then start publishing consistent content for that avatar on that blog, YouTube channel, podcast, or website you started in your side project.
4. FIND ENTREPRENEURIAL MENTORS AND PEERS.
As an engineer, you would never expect to show up at work on day one and get everything right, especially if you were the only engineer in the office.
Entrepreneurship is no different. That’s why the difference between success and failure for many is going to be finding the right entrepreneurial mentors.
None of the four points I’ve made above are my own original ideas. These are concepts shared and pieced together by multiple mentors (most of them paid mentors).
I have mentors who are experts in writing and publishing books.
I have multiple business mentors who have expertise in areas I knew little about when I founded Engineers Rising LLC, like marketing and sales.
When I began creating an online course based on She Engineers, I found an expert in online courses to guide me through the process.
When we decided to create my first virtual summit in 2019, I found an expert to mentor me through that.
I suspect I cut my own learning curve by years in using this approach because they know what works and what doesn’t through years of their own work, even though I’ve never done any of these things before.
One of the biggest challenges in becoming an entrepreneur is the shift in your own identity that must occur for you to be successful. As a start-up founder, you are (at first) the person who does everything from technical to marketing to accounting to strategy.
You both the face of your business and the person doing the grunt work.
The vast majority of things you do as an entrepreneur are things you were never trained for as an engineer.
For this reason, the difference between success and failure (and remember – the odds are definitely stacked against you statistically speaking) is having access to other entrepreneurs whose businesses have had the success you want to have.
Give yourself the best possible chance for success.
Are you considering entrepreneurship as a potential path for you? Why or why not?
