Confessions of a Recovering Entrepreneur

March 02, 2010 · by Shirley Tan

My name is Shirley and I haven’t started a new business in the last 9 months.

Entrepreneurship is an addiction. Every entrepreneur is stricken with the rush of adrenaline in starting a new venture. It is all very exciting, with new ideas, new products, and new people. And the most addictive part: Success.

I have been both blessed and cursed with the effects of success. I sold my business that I had since 1994 to a publicly traded company that was a competitor. I am staying on as Director of Ecommerce of www.AmericanBridal.com as part of the acquisition. It has been 9 months, and the physical transition was smooth, but the emotional one has been challenging.

You might say that I’ve had to go cold turkey with entrepreneurship. But sometimes I yearn for that high. Like a lot of drugs, the high you can get from entrepreneurship can make you forget about the consequences and the pain it can bring.

I’m hoping that my time away from the heat of a battle that a business owner goes through will give me some perspective on running a ecommerce business and working towards an out strategy (whatever that may be).

Most addictions have a 12 step program, with the goal of brutal self examination and facing the inner demons that live inside each of us. My goal is to share with you my personal insights on my life as an ecommerce entrepreneur, the mistakes that I made, the successes that I’ve had and what I’ve learned from the experience.

Some of the things that I am guilty of are:

1. Letting my ego get in the way of making a big business decision like moving our business operation the 3rd time in 3 years to a much larger and more visible location in the Bay Area
2. Letting the emotions of frustrated employees be the deciding factor in switching to a costlier order processing software
3. Getting into a business I completely had no experience in and investing a large amount of resources to the venture before there was proof of its viability
4. Not having up to date financial statements which impaired the visibility of where the business stood financially.
5. Bringing work home to a level that is all consuming of family life
6. Failing to plan for success by not having the proven system in place to handle the trajectory growth we had in the last 4 years
7. Not having the courage to make the painful decision with letting the wrong people off my bus (Good to Great Book – Jim Collins)

Entrepreneurs are an odd lot with a long and wide streak of independence. We all have unique businesses with unique problems and a vast array of differing skills and resources. No two of us are alike. Despite our uniqueness, there are common problems that we all face.

In the next series of blog post, I hope to share what made my business successful, the challenges I experienced, what I would do differently, how I prepared to get the business sold and what I believe are the fundamentals that are needed for Ecommerce success.

Category: Ecommerce Fundamentals | Tags: Marketing, Interviews, Finance