> "Successful entrepreneurship is like a lottery"
>
> I disagree with this statement. [...] I'm on my fifth company and my current one makes over six figures
So what? You winning the lottery doesn't make it any less of a lottery!
I agree 100% that it's a lottery, my father was an entrepreneur nearly his entire working life, and simply by a) keeping at it, b) never getting in too far that it bankrupted him or put him in jail like the fathers of some of my schoolmates, he managed to become a multimillionaire. Of course, he had intelligence, talent, skill and increasing experience, plus the help of my mother who's no slouch at any of those, but the key thing was not giving up, and to a certain extent banking the proceeds of the successful ventures.
Ah, yeah, one other key was his ability to know when to sell out, and an ability to sell such companies; as a matter of fact, he made more than a little money on commissions in helping to sell other people's companies, exiting when you have a small to medium sized company without any unicorn like characteristics can be quite a trick. Arranging for some steady sources of income from commercial real estate also helped in terms of riding out the harder times, as well as paying off the family home as soon as was possible.
Ah, yeah, one other key was his ability to know when to sell out, and an ability to sell such companies; as a matter of fact, he made more than a little money on commissions in helping to sell other people's companies, exiting when you have a small to medium sized company without any unicorn like characteristics can be quite a trick. Arranging for some steady sources of income from commercial real estate also helped in terms of riding out the harder times, as well as paying off the family home as soon as was possible.