Beth Haselhorst: You’re an entrepreneur at heart and you’re ready to start your own business but you’re not sure what that business should be. Do you do what you love or do what you’re good at? To provide some insight in to that question is the man known as the “Business Plans Coach”, Tim Berry. He’s the founder of Palo Alto Software which produces the nation’s leading business planning software. He’s also a successful author of several business planning books. He’s here with us today to his experiences in starting his own business as well as his experience consulting others on how to do so. Welcome to SBTV.com Tim.
Tim Berry: Thank you very much.
Beth Haselhorst: So, I’ve heard this question before about whether you do what you love or do what you’re good at.
Tim Berry: I got that question in e-mail about three weeks ago and ended up doing a post in my blog because I’m fascinated by this. I don’t know. I really don’t know. I will say, I’ve been very lucky and sometimes I think you know the old thing about, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”? I kind of built a business running from boredom. So my Palo Alto Software business is about business planning not because I looked out and said, “That’s going to be a great business.” It’s because I really wanted to make a living, but I didn’t want to do things that bored me. And so I found ways to sell what I was doing and then after a while it became sell product’s not ours and then it went from consulting to software. And I know there’s just one story but I can give you examples of other people who said, “I want to own my business.” And they do a search, and here’s the good business and they get involved and if they’re smart, hardworking people, and they do it, they’re successful. So, there’s no formula but it’s a fascinating question.
Beth Haselhorst: If you have a passion for something, say its home improvement but you have trouble just changing a light bulb, is that something you should pursue?
Tim Berry: Yes. No, that isn’t something you should pursue. I have trouble giving advice because it’s hard to generalize but you’re reminding me of some other e-mails I get where it’s just not going to work if you don’t like it. So maybe, I’m contradicting myself because I think I fall towards passion on this but even in what you do, I mean, my business again, and I’m sorry it’s a real story so I talk about these real things, has still been through the years full of long boring days, even though I was escaping from boredom. Because you get involve and you do it and you have to do it. When I think of, well, here’s the real question for you, are you good at what you love? Who knows on that one, because that’s the real mystery? I tend to think yes but what do you think?
Beth Haselhorst: That’s sounds like the idea of situation.
Tim Berry: We hope we’re goof at what we love, but then can we make a living? Can we do a business? I always envied the people who can survive as artists or poets or something that they so clearly love and then the rest of us are out minding cash flow and things like that. This is the core. This is what makes small business so fascinating. There are no generalizable right answers but I will say to you and to audience here, you’re going to spend a lot of time on it. The real flow of a business has to do with, “You got to get in to It.” And if you don’t love it when you start, if you hate it, get out.
Beth Haselhorst: Tim thanks for joining us today. Be sure to visit www.timberry.com to learn more about Tim’s book, his work and his blog. And you can find more segments with Tim Berry in the small business growth series here on SBTV.com, where small business is our only business.
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