Circle of Competence Revisted: What Business To Start?

You see a lot of people going to seminars, doing research and gearing up to “become their own boss” by trying to do things totally outside of their circle of competence. Bricklayers trying to daytrade. Bank tellers trying to flip houses. Dental assistants setting out to become professional bloggers, the list goes on.

A big contributing factor to this is the simple observation that from the outside looking in, anything somebody else does to make money, especially a lot of it, looks easy.

The fact is, nothing is ever that easy. Certain things may come easily to some people. More likely however, a given person has had to work very hard at something so that it just “looks easy” to everybody else. If that person was particulary fortunate, they found that given craft or activity so genuinely interesting and engrossing that it didn’t actually feel like work for them when they were putting time on the learning curve, paying their dues.

Then one day they look around and they’re an expert in their field. They may know a given industry inside and out, perhaps even for their unique locale. Or they may have acquired or developed a methodology of doing something that gives them a certain edge in their field. In any case, these people then startup a business within their circle of competence, and have a much higher chance of prospering.