I've never been much of a joiner, and suspect that many entrepreneurs are of that mold. The concept of incubators as a sort of real world B school makes a lot o

I've never been much of a joiner, and suspect that many entrepreneurs are of that mold. The concept of incubators as a sort of real world B school makes a lot of sense to me, sure it works for many people. For those who choose to follow their own path, the following advice served me well. * Position yourself as an expert on X, where X is a skill/trade/industry that is hot but not overcrowded (and where you can stand out, even if you're not the smartest person in the room) * Get consulting gigs, which should be pretty profitable if you avoid tournament type situations with too many people chasing work (see above) * Work on a couple side/hobby projects that could turn into a business, experiment with them, and watch results * When something starts to roll, scale back on consulting biz * Archive every contact you have, always be networking by sharing ideas with people (versus networking by hard selling). Odds are any one of your ideas sucks. Eventually one of your ideas will click with users, and you'll be in a good position to build on it. Until then, you're building skills, network and stashing cash for future use, plus you're not under arbitrary deadline pressure to succeed or else.