Internships vs. Starting a Small Business

***This is an article that I wrote for {Branded} Online Magazine. Feel free to cruise on over and check out the great writers contributing to the publication (there will be another link at the bottom of this post).

Today’s job market is fierce and in order to be competitive I find a lot of people my age are looking into internships as an experience-based stepping stone into their post-college job. Adding some “real world” experience to your resume as you are exiting college is great – which is why I am suggesting that you take that same six months and start a small business instead.

Most people initially get soft about this kind of possibility because they have some notion of entrepreneurs as swashbuckling risk-takers. Not only is this gravely inaccurate, it also prevents a lot of capable people from exploring the beauty of creating and being at risk to learn something about themselves. Starting and running a small business poses no more risk than an internship while delivering an experience that is an order of magnitude greater than working for free at CorporateAmerica.com.

Internship	Small Business
Conduct an internet search to find companies that might want to hire your skill set.	Conduct an internet search to find people/businesses that might want your product or service (coffee, cupcakes, car-detailing, etc.)
Reach to your personal network to find connections within potential companies that you want to intern at. Often you are cold-calling companies, asking for interviews.	Reach out to your personal network to find connections with potential customers that would find your product valuable. Often you are cold-calling sales leads out of the phone book, asking for meetings.
Face a lot of rejection, get a couple of interviews, face more rejection – maybe you get some offers.	Face a lot of rejection, get a couple of sales meetings, face more rejection – maybe you get offers for a second meeting.
Land a position (maybe).	Get a sale (eventually).
Work long hours for minimal or no pay.	Work long hours for minimal or no pay…at first.
You are the office bitch. No one cares about your feelings, just your ability to get coffee and bagels and occasionally be a spreadsheet jockey.	You are your customers’ bitch. No one cares about your feelings, just your ability to deliver a quality product on time and make things right when mistakes happen.
Build skills necessary to be a peon in a corporate machine and that the only way to be successful is to be politically astute enough to place your name on winning projects and subtly shift blame when things go wrong.	Build skills necessary to be a manager by applying all your “boring” undergrad classes that are now critical components to make the whole business work. If you don’t you will run out of money...fast.
Learn to appeal to authority and pull a lever.	Learn that you are more self-reliant than you originally thought. You experience ownership, working smart and creative problem solving on-demand.
Maybe you get offered a position at the end of the internship.	Maybe your company shuts down, maybe it succeeds, or maybe it sits somewhere in the middle. – the cool part is that you have much more say about the enterprise’s outcome.
Repeat. Try to explain to new employers why you didn’t get offered a position at the end of the internship.	Repeat. This time it’s easier because you avoid all the mistakes you made last time.

See? There’s not much difference in the effort required to start and run a small business over interning at a company. From a learning perspective they are the same except that they are on opposite ends of the continuum. Both put you at risk to learn something about yourself. What you want to be at risk to learn is entirely up to you.

If you plan on getting a job in Corporate America, there is (seriously) nothing wrong with that. In fact, I recommend that you still start a small business instead of interning. The reasoning behind this suggestion is rather simple: everyone you are competing with has been interning at or has been laid off from Corporate America. Think of how easy it will be to stand out from the bland crowd and get a job when you roll in with some hard-earned entrepreneurial experience.

If you want to create your own internship and want some tips for the next steps, feel free to check out my other article on {Branded}: Start Up in a Box.

Perspective

I love experential knowledge.

Learning something through an experience is an experience in itself, often because we didn't expect to learn anything as the events started to unfold. Sometimes, this learning, at an even more basic is really the just the identification of something we didn't know was there before.

The thing about experience is that it takes your preconcieved notions about anything and changes the angle by which you view it. Sometimes that means just being closer to that object or notion. I think that often we think of a change of perspective as a matter of degrees but I have found that the world, your thoughts, your biases shift significantly when you get closer to something. The details of an ideal become more visible, as if you placed an HD lens over your perspective. You notice that it's not glossy, but rough and textured. Even more importantly, you realize that it's not as solid as you once thought in your former persective, but something that can be prodded, poked, and probed.. even molded; like slightly moist clay that you need to exert significant pressure to alter. You take a moment to reassess your surroundings, gauge your reaction, then reconcile them to previous thoughts and assumptions, then move on a slightly different person.

I have many ideals that have changed the closer that I moved to them. One moment you are at a seemingly significant distance from a lifestyle (group of actions, behaviors, thoughts, value system, consequences, etc), then a conversation throws you into the center of it. Now you are experiencing it from the inside looking out. Whereas you were previously looking at it from the outside at what you thought was an solid, opaque shell; you are realizing that your assumption was wrong: it's a permeable membrane that where you can move freely.

As I get further along in my college career, I also get closer to the "real world." My chosen profession is 'change agent', the world calls it entrepreneurship. I want my job to be invovled in start-ups. To many, this lends a sense of arrogance. I know because I felt the same way last year, when I was on the outside, looking at what were my (erroneous) assumptions about the entrepreneurship lifestyle. But I have been allowed to continue getting closer, and it's not some sugar-coated shell of wealth and adventure. Sure there's adventure, but there's massive sacrifice. I have learned about personal burn rate. That there is no trade-off, no tit-for-tat on focussing on one area of your life at the expense of another. In order to do this you have to change your perspective. Because of my passion for making awesome ideas a reality, I can align my personal life (what's that?) with my "work life".

To drive the point further, I am realizing that being an entrepreneur is an "all the time thing, not a some of the time thing". For those of us who played sports and excelled at them, we know that phrase is often Vince Lombardi's mantra on winning. Excellence, a critical component of anything that amounts to anything you do in life (should you so chose), is a state of being not something you turn on and off at will. So I have found a way to make my passion be the solvent and dropped the things in my life I thought I could compartmentalize to be dissolved into a whole new solution, spinning in the beaker of my life.

For years, up until a few weeks ago, I had no idea that I would have learned the things I just described, mainly because I didn't know they existed -that they were constant elements you had to accept as you walked through that membrane. Does it sound harsh? Well it depends on your perspective... The same company looks very different if you are viewing it through a corporate or entrepreneurial lens. Even more so depending where that particular lens is positioned.

But then again so is life. I once read that you actually train yourself to be a fatalist or opportunist. Even more interesting is that you can, through training, change. Your perspective, the lens in which you view anything, can be changed. Sometimes you move it under you own choice (intentional or not), sometimes life moves it for you. Or give you another one.

My challenge is this: take anything, anything, in your life that you feel absolutely certain on and change your perspective of it. Move the lens, adjust the focus, or get a new one altogether. See how things change and take notice of how you change in reaction to the new information. Then do it again. And keep doing it and see if you can alternate between all of these perspectives quickly and accurately. Then move on to something else, then let me know your reaction.

The Price I Paid

A few months ago, I was asked to write about my reflections on the cost of a mistake I had made. It asked me to examine the financial, relational and psychological costs. Below are some excerpts from what I've written:



"To be honest, I haven't accounted for every little price or loss or cost. I work and study and live a productive life- to count every cost, to audit every expenditure in the framework that I have to repay for the worst night of my life is in itself a price I cannot afford to pay. Rather I take stock of my life before, after and onward from that night.




The fact is this: The notion that I have paid a price implies that an exchange has occurred.



Looking back, it's easy to say that I mortgaged my early 20's for a gamble that I lost. That I was overleveraged and the risk was too great to rebound from. But taking snap shots of my life now compared to my life then illustrates that the aforementioned costs have really been exchanged for a life of focus, of discipline, of realism. For I have been forced to deal with my demons, to eradicate my bad habits, and to clear out the cancer of insecurities that plagued my life. Friends lost weren't really friends at all. My situation became a litmus test for the shallowness of aquaintainces and proved the resolve that lies within the people that truly love me. The ones who stuck by me in during the dark winter nights and waited, beck and call, for news of every progressing detail.



I have aquired better time management skills, learned to be more punctual and make better decisions. I traded a life of pretentious arrogance and fashion labels for one of utility and legitmacy. A life of empty promises with no intentions of fulfillment, exchanged for the truth of a harsh but doable reality. Clear purpose and achievable steps to my goals replaced the ambiguity and fear of failure. Where remained a dark, cold emptiness -a looming, bottomless doom beneath my feet- has now been replaced by a solid foundation found only when one has reached rock bottom. I have recieved a stout re-training in the behaviors and tactics to lead a life not jeopardized by temporary pleasures.



I have gained new friends, born as a direct result of my mistake. Friendships that would never have been forged otherwise. People who barely knew me, coming to my aid at my lowest points. People who were willing to enter my life when I had nothing to offer and everything to take.



What price have I paid? $10,000? $20,000? $50,000? It doesn't really matter, for I have recieved my life. And though its not perfect, I am in less debt than before the events that transpired on November night. I have better quality friends. I have the love of my family. A promotion at work. And a humbleness that merely being a good steward of my life is repayment for the countless hours and money that others have spent to continually support me.



And finally, the realization of this inevitable truth: make good decisions. They are no more harder than the consequences of bad decisions. While the changes and progress made has not been for the reasons I hoped for, or paid in the form that I expected, I have certainly profited. For the time and money spent on this mistake and its subsequent consequences have been large, it is a small price to pay in exchange for the person I am becoming and the life I am beginning to live."



Challenge: How do you view the mistakes or problems that you've dealt with in your life? Were they situations to be merely survived or chances to clean house and start right? As I've tried to commnicate in my last blogs, your attitude is one thing that makes all the difference. Instead of hoping to survive the consequences of every negative event in your life, view these as part of the exchange to becoming a purer YOU. A you unshackled by the insecurities and fears that weigh you down and keep you from doing what makes you come alive. For it is then when you can truly make all the difference in your life and the lives of those around you.