I recently complete Scott Shane’s “The Illusion of Entrepreneurship.” Professor Shane uncovers a lot myths of business ownership that would certainly be useful for anyone considering quitting on their business dream.

The most common myth is probably the one that says 90% of all startups fail in the first year. The fact is that out of every 100 businesses that start today, 29 will still be around 10 years for now.

The statistics are even better for the self-employed: 41 of every hundred employees will still be working on their own 10 years from now.

One of the factors that plays into the notion of a high level of business failures is that many people fail to take into account the age of the average entrepreneur.

The person most likely to strike out on his own is not the college graduate or the dropout: the average entrepreneur is 45 or older.

Most people are likely to start their own business when the job market suffers as it has been for the last four or five years.

Consider the number of men and women 55 and older who lost their jobs due to downsizing and outsourcing. Just because they choose to retire at 62 and their home business no longer shows up in public business records does not mean that their business was a failure.

I recently covered 8 factors that are common to all successful businesses. I really believe anyone who knows the realities of business ownership going in can and will be successful–providing, of course, they adhere to these 8 actions.

I totally agree we need to let go of expectations. Often that which we “expect” is less than what’s actually possible. If we “go with the flow” (for lack of better words), we often are pleasantly surprised at the outcome.

I also believe that not only should we ask ourselves “why am I really doing this?”, but to keep asking until we get to the “root”. Our first answer is often not the truth.

Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..How To Get Your Blog Blacklisted

Hey Jesse, being happy when working on a project brings out the love for work. That’s when great things are completed.

“What was your most important reason for sticking with a difficult project?” We have to look deeply into our “why” by questioning our deepest motivations form the beginning. Try these questions. What were we looking to accomplish by completing this project that we couldn’t accomplish otherwise? Why is that important to me? What would that give me that I don’t have now? What else? What else and then what would that give me? By continuing to drill deeper we can often find a why that has meaningful staying power. Only then should we persist.

“When do you know that you’ve hit a dead end on a bad project and it needs to be released?” When it feels like an obligation to work on it. Once the eagerness is gone we need to step back and re-evaluate. Sometime an adjustment can be made where we don’t have to dump the whole project. Some part of it could still hold excitement and eagerness for us. If not run like hell!

Tom Volkar / Delightful Work’s last blog post..Believe It Or Not