You may have noticed from other posts on this blog that I’m a fan of Pamela Slim, author of Escape From Cubicle Nation.  That’s a great book for people looking to migrate from a corporate job to their own business, and Pam is touring recently, giving a great workshop on the same subject. I was a guest speaker at her event in Portland a couple of months ago.

Escape from Cubicle Nation
by Pamela Slim Read more about this book…

So I may be biased, but I enjoyed her post You Aren’t Crazy, You’re Just an Entrepreneur on the American Express OPEN Forum. Borrowing from her mentor Martha Beck, Pam summarizes four stages of entrepreneurship:

  1. Death and Rebirth: when you leave your day job and get started. “I don’t know what’s going on, and that’s okay.”
  2. Dreaming and Scheming: you get comfortable, begin to brainstorm. “There are no rules, and that’s okay.”
  3. The Hero’s Saga:  whittling ideas down to the one that’s viable. “This is much worse than I expected, and that’s okay.”
  4. The Promised Land: you get through the growing pains and stabilize. “Everything is changing, and that’s okay.

Pam finishes that with this link to “an in-depth, multimedia overview of the change cycle that entrepreneurs go through.”

Tim BerryTim Berry

Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.