August: The Cruelest Month of the Year for Entrepreneurs

The life of an entrepreneur is a 24 x 7 dash for customers, investors or lenders. For the first year or two of a start-up, it's a race against the burn rate. Every day you are spending money on employees, rent, supplies, whatever. The goal is to reach break-even before you run out of cash.

And so every start-up entrepreneur runs a race - trying to get more cash in the door than is going out. Trying to get to break-even while there is still something in the bank.

The race is especially hard during the month of August.

The race is about getting people who have money - consumers, investors, lenders - to part with it and hand it over to you, the entrepreneur. People are always reluctant to do that but in August, the last thing they are thinking about is a new product, a new venture or a new borrower.

August is when normal people take vacations. August is when people who work for corporations, banks, venture funds and the government - for the most part, people on salary - have no interest in a pitch from an entrepreneur. And so the entrepreneur, who is pretty much running uphill all the time anyway, finds the hill that much steeper in August.

Jim Randel is the Founder of The Skinny On™ book series. See www.theskinnyon.com.