There are two types of motorcyclists, those who have been down and those who are going down.

I heard this saying repeatedly after buying my third bike, a 2006 Harley Davidson Road King Classic and I count myself fortunate for never having felt the unforgiving impact of pavement (close only counts with hand grenades and boccie ball).  Today, I wondered aloud to my partner in crime whether being a motorcyclist is similar to being an entrepreneur. It was pretty easy to come up with all sorts of similarities; freedom, responsibility, risk, protection, speed, strategy, navigation, balance, vision, execution. Off we went to do a little research…

Stop the presses…statistically motorcyclists are NOTHING like entrepreneurs! Mainly because in 2007 over 5,000 people died in motorcycle accidents and I can’t recall the last time I heard of an entrepreneur dieing as a result of being an entrepreneur. Perhaps we had conjured up a poor comparison to begin with but after a bit of research the similarities were down right disturbing.

Statistics Leaving Bugs in My Teeth

1. Only 21 states have universal helmet laws requiring all riders to done lids
2. 31% of motorcycle fatalities are related to alcohol impairment, 27% of which were over the .08 blood alcohol content legal limit
3. $230.6 billion a year – impact on US health care system

Thinking that perhaps I was being a little too literal, I decided to see how many small businesses “go down” each year since my search for “entrepreneur+fatalities” wasn’t giving me much info. Sadly, those numbers aren’t much better;

1. Two-thirds of SMB’s survive at least two years – Translation: 33% go down
2. 44 percent survive at least four years – Translation: 56% go down
3. 31 percent survive at least seven years – Translation: 69% go down

On second thought, maybe our idea of comparing motorcyclists and entrepreneurs wasn’t as far off track as I originally thought. Granted, I couldn’t find an entrepreneur that died as a result of being an entrepreneur but entrepreneurs typically have a significant personal investment in a business, so for argument sake we could say that an entrepreneur ‘is the business’ and vice versa. The track record for motorcyclists and entrepreneurs may not align as nicely as we might have liked but we managed to draw a couple comparisons worth mentioning.

Motorcyclists & Entrepreneurs Take Heed

1. Enjoy the freedom of the ride and take responsibility for your actions
2. Accept the risk while getting as much protection as possible without limiting your ability to operate
3. Speed is crucial but fast is not always better, you have to have a strategy
4. Sharpen your navigation skills and learn to balance distractions
5. Have a vision of where you want to go and execute on it

Lingering questions: How can we reduce the increasing fatality rate of motorcyclists? Likewise, can the number of businesses/entrepreneurs going down be remedied?