What Is the Intrepid Entrepreneur?

Today I decided to become a real deal blogger. You can read about how that happened and what it means to me on my Family Wealth Secrets online magazine, where I will no forever more only write articles related to building and passing on Family Wealth and no longer write about my journey.

If you want to hear about it, this is the place and I thought I’d start by telling you how I set up this blog all by myself (shocking!) in the middle of the night without any help from my team and how it got it’s name an d what I’ll be talking about here.

The first thing I had to do was pick a blogging platform. My choices were WordPress, Typepad, and Blogger. I chose WordPress because that’s what my current favorite blogger Penelope Trunk is using and that’s what my other sites are built on and figured I’d be able to figure it out. As you can see, I did.

Next, I had to pick a name for my blog.

I chose The Intrepid Entrepreneur. Again, following Penelope’s lead (is imitation really flattering or is it just weird?) her site is called the Brazen Careerist, which I gather is because she has taken a bold career path and encourages others to do the same. So, I wanted something similarly descriptive of my path.

If there is any label at all that describes me well it is “entrepreneur” and while I generally try to avoid labels, my ego was quite thrilled when Michael Gerber told a room full of us that none of us was a real entrepreneur but then after hearing me talk for a few minutes took it back and agreed, I am. More about that another time.

Then the word “intrepid” popped into my head and I thought it meant things like “uncertain” and “scared to go there” and I loved the way it sounded with “entrepreneur” and thought it would represent the fact that to be an entrepreneur you just have to push through that fear and do it anyway. How cool when I looked up “intrepid” and found out it actually means “resolutely courageous; fearless”!

I love the idea of resolutely courageous! That is exactly what is needed to be an entrepreneur, resolute courage.

To be successful as an entrepreneur, you must resolve to move forward despite the absolute terror you will experience on a regular basis. The way I see it, if you aren’t afraid, you aren’t living half the life you could be. On the other side of that fear is all of your dreams coming true. At least that’s been my experience.

Sure, there’s a part of me that longs for contentment and security, but every time I get there I start to feel the itch. I’ve finally accepted, it’s an itch that’s only scratched when I’m outside my comfort zone and I’ve begun to look forward to that feeling I get in my gut when I’m there.

Thus, the name … The Intrepid Entrepreneur. Fitting, I think for every entrepreneur.

Then, I had to choose a tag line – I chose “Being Afraid and Doing It Anyway” – enough said.

Next, I had to pick a WordPress theme and spent far too much time playing around with various options before settling on this one, which will no doubt change when I decide to customize the site. But, maybe I won’t customize this one – we’ll see.

Anyway, I thought the mist in the header was cool because I often experience that mental mist when I’m in fear. I find my mind getting foggy and it’s hard to think about things clearly. I’ve started to recognize that as a symptom of fear and that if I can focus through it, it clears and I find the answers I’ve been seeking. I don’t like the font or the way the links show up on the site, but I’m out of time for playing around with themes because my alarm is going to go off in three hours so I can take the kids to a cheer competition an hour away, so this will have to stand for now.

* Note – sorry, I’ve now changed the theme twelve times since writing it and there isn’t mist in the header any longer, but I like the fonts way better and now there’s only 2 hours before the alarm rings.  Yikes!

So that’s how The Intrepid Entrepreneur came to be. While you are here, I hope you do two things:

1. Subscribe to my RSS feed so you get notified whenever I make a new post. I won’t be emailing you to let you know about these posts, so it’s up to you to keep coming back if you think what I have to say is interesting and/or worthwhile. There’s an orange button in the upper right corner, click on it and follow the instructions. I’ll make it easier soon as I find someone who knows how to make some edits to the way the site looks (ha, see, I’m already planning on customizations. My plan to not customize lasted about 5 sentences; I just can’t resist!)

2. Tell a friend about The Intrepid Entrepreneur if you think it’s cool.

3. Post a comment. This blog is about dialogue, not a one way conversation. So, please join in.