photo credit: Christine & Eric
If you want to be good at something, practice it until you’re good at it.*
Haha! Isn’t that hilarious? But it’s true. Here’s a conversation I’ve had too many times to count…
“Hey Mark. I want to start my own business.”
“Really? That’s awesome! You know what I think of that! It’s the best way to financial prosperity – Kapow! And now let’s do a dance of celebration!”
“Yeah, yeah. Anyways, I’m kind of stuck. How do I start?”
“Well, what do you want to do? Do you have a product or service you want to sell? A unique idea that you’re not sure how to capitalize on?”
“You see, that’s the thing. I want to sell X but I don’t know how to do it!!”
“Ok. Totally. But why don’t you start by looking at where you want to go with X and then reverse engineer your success?”
“What do you mean ‘reverse engineer’ my success?”
“What I mean is, what’s your goal? Define what that successful business would look like and then deconstruct the steps it’d take to achieve it. Figure out what you need to know that you don’t know yet and then learn those things as you take those steps.”
“Yeah…I should go back to business school I guess. Get an MBA or something. Then I could start.”
And from there the excuses for not starting pour in. And they’re all very credible excuses at first glance. I’ve had many versions of the above conversation ranging from “I just can’t learn how to use this program therefore I can’t do X therefore I’m a failure.” to “I need to get my sub chapter S Delaware LLC set up with my iron clad operating agreement in place before I can get started.”
You don’t have to have a degree, pedigree, trust fund, bank loan, bank account, advisor, mentor, board of directors, letter from your mom or have “The Secret” memorized to get started down the path towards success. What you do need is a determination to learn and practice. All of the other stuff will happen as it needs to happen.
*I realize this whole post is an over simplification of a process that has a thousand sub-components but it’s the truest thing I’ve ever written.
