People start businesses due to circumstances.
Circumstance: a fact or condition connected with or relevant to an event or action, such as starting a business. Many like to call themselves accidental entrepreneurs, people that started a business due to circumstance are actually much more common than we expected.
It is important to note that circumstance alone is rarely enough for someone to start a business but it is clearly a strong nudge. From layoffs to personal circumstances that made a traditional 9 to 5 unlikely as well as partnership opportunities; people started businesses due to circumstance.
We found 15 reasons why people start businesses.
For a look at the 15 reasons as well as the personality traits that are most commonly found in entrepreneurs please visit the full study here: Why people start businesses.
Business owners that started a business due to circumstances.
I became an entrepreneur when my corporate position was eliminated after 25 years in the industry. Rather than re-enter the workforce advancing someone else’s vision, I created my company to find and pursue my own vision. In doing so, I’ve found a new freedom and greater levels of income and satisfaction.
Melissa Drake, Uncorped Influence
I started Redhead Marketing & PR when I got laid off from another marketing agency at the height of the recession. It was spontaneous, but it has been a success and we are now celebrating 10 years!
Hilary Reiter, Redhead Marketing PR
I was a competitive swimmer growing up. I had a dream of building a career from it. Unfortunately, I got injured during my twenties and had to quit swimming altogether. As I was grieving, I still wanted a job related to
swimming. That’s why I started my pool care business.
Rick Patterson, Poolonomics
I started a global branding and marketing firm 19 years ago in Cambridge,
MA. I did not plan on starting a company. I always wanted to go work for a
large multi-national business and be a Fortune 500 CEO. When I was a
student I looked at leaders like Meg Whitman & Ursula Burns as my role
models. I started my career on Wall Street in the 80s and had a successful
career in Corporate America at companies like Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola and worked at 3 different startups as the head of marketing. I became an entrepreneur and took the leap right after 9/11 when the company I worked for cut their marketing. I had nothing to lose. It has been a lot of fun, I joke that I am the accidental entrepreneur. When I started the firm I
jokingly referred to the women as the Marketing Mavens & the guys as the
Marketing Moguls & for short I called them Mavens & Moguls as a working name but never expected it would stick. I did research over e-mail with
prospective clients, referrers, media, etc & tested ~100 names. Mavens &
Moguls was one choice on the list & to my great delight & surprise it came out as a clear winner. It has helped us be memorable and stand out from the pack.
Paige Arnof-Fenn, Mavens & Moguls
I was working in TV and had been unhappy for a while. I knew that, soon, it would be time to move on. But I still needed the income and I hadn’t been able to find a suitable alternative. Then one November morning in 2014, I was told in an all-too-brief phone call that a long-running show I was working on had been canceled. I had already started working on the new season of the show, but just like that, with no previous warning, I was told that I wasn’t getting paid for the work I had already done (but that I was welcome to pitch for a new show!). That was the last straw for me – I wasn’t
going back.
Somi Arian, Smart Cookie Media
I had an unexpected job loss in the fall of 2016. By July of 2017 my
unemployment benefits had ended and I had no viable job opportunities. I
started my business as a way to survive. I created my own job because I
couldn’t get one otherwise.
Clarene Mitchell, TCM Communications
