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All analogies and stories aside, it takes courage to start a company. It's not just once you have started it, but it takes courage to keep it going. It is being responsible for payroll for all the people you bring into the company, that once a month, every week or every two weeks. Making and maintaining payroll should be your highest priority. Besides the courage it is manifesting and maintaining the vision and dream of your enterprise and making sure everyone in the company knows it and believes it. Starting a business is not like raising a baby or any other experience you have had before because nothing you have is at risk. When you start a business, everything you have, including your self image is at risk. When you work for a company you are protected by the insulation a company provides to each employee. Some insulation is thinner than others granted, but its there none the less. When you start a company, you as the entrepreneur aren't given any insulation; you have to make it and maintain it and provide it for each and every one of your employees. Without people, you have an idea, a dream. That's it, just an idea or a dream. Entrepreneurs convert ideas and dreams into products and they do that with people but you have to pay and reward them. Don't be greedy, it isn't all about you as the entrepreneur. Here are some ideas for your journey.

The first thing to focus on even before you start the business is the invention or inventions or the idea. The heart of any good company is its intellectual property whether it is a patent or trade secret. Hand in hand with the ideas and patents, as I said before are the people, the team. When you look at any start up, you find a unique approach to business, a patent or group of inventions or trade secrets that enable the product to have a position in the market that is superior and more creative, efficacious or just plain stunning; over the competitive products in the same market and a team to make it all happen. This doesn't mean that you as the entrepreneur have to be the inventor; it can mean that you are able to identify good, new or exciting breakthrough technologies and marshal the necessary resources, capital and people, to turn the idea into a product in the market. Sometimes being the entrepreneur does mean you are the stupidest guy or girl in the room, that's ok. Just don't be stupid about everything.

The second most important thing to focus on is your 'team' of employees. You will notice I avoided the use of

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