The Hardest Aspect of Starting a Business?

I’m sure many of you reading have considered starting a business, if you aren’t already running one of your own. Maybe you’ve even tried and failed in the past. If that’s the case, don’t become discouraged!
It’s taken me and my business partner a solid three years of trying, planning, and failing to make even the slight progress we now have.
That’s right. Three long years of no progress whatsoever!
Yeah, we may have written out incredible business plans. We’ve thought up strategy after strategy. We’ve corrected ourselves over and over, all in hopes of creating the “perfect plan”, the “perfect road map to business success”.
Allow me to burst your bubble though, and I bet you won’t be surprised.
You’ll never come up with the perfect plan. There simply is no such thing. So, no matter how much time you take preparing for the sales process, preparing to best serve your customer, all you’re doing is procrastinating.
That’s right I said it. Many business owners will just procrastinate themselves straight towards failure. You can only think so much until you have to apply your theories to the real world. The longer you take, the more stressed out you’ll become. At least, in my case that’s how it worked.
As long as our team was discussing plans, buying equipment, preparing ourselves for the future, that’s all we were doing. Preparing for the future. I’ll take 99% of the blame for our companies’ past failures too, I’ve always been the talker, and I’ve also always been a pro at procrastinating. Much to the chagrin of my partner and business associates.
So how do you go out and successfully start a business?
All it takes, is the willingness to fail. Throw yourself in the ring. Throw yourself into the marketplace, and do your best to sell what it is you have to offer. Whether that be a mobile app, a cool T-shirt that you just know will birth a clothing line, or, in my case, a cleaning service.
You have to approach business people. You have to be willing to look like a fool. This is just a necessity, and there’s absolutely no way around it. When you do this, you’ll notice flaws in your tactics that you otherwise never would have been able to identify. You’ll recognize what works and what really doesn’t.
It’ll take multiple locations. It’ll take weeks, in some cases months. Possibly even a year or two. However, if you keep pushing, keep going, allow yourself to fail time and time again, you’ll eventually score that first client.
You know what that first client means?
You’re in business buddy. That’s all the breakthrough you’ll need. I promise you that.
The best decision I ever made was getting into the sales game fresh out of high school. For three years as we tried and failed at business, I was only gaining experience, making myself better at communicating, identifying problems, and solving those problems.
After three years of making other people money though, I decided it was time to get into business for myself, and since then, I’ve never looked back.
Instead of wasting time planning, my business partner and I simply threw ourselves to the wolves. We hit the streets. Door to door, just like in the good old days before the internet.
It took tons of time, remarkable amounts of effort, and relentless following up, almost chasing business owners to the point of them doing business with us just so we would stop, but readers I’m telling you, in business, this is the way to go.
Throwing yourself in the ring of life, is the only way you’re going to make breakthroughs. The only way you’ll make real tangible progress.
So get out of the house! Stop wasting time talking about what you’re going to do and just get up and go do it! It’s not as complicated as you think, in fact, it’s pretty damn simple! You just have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone, and approach people. Yeah, real people. You walk in, introduce yourself, and just start selling!
So my advice to all you hopeful business owners is this:
figure out the game. Study sales, learn to listen and identify problems, and fix them. Don’t be afraid to look totally stupid (because guess what buddy, that’s unavoidable), and just keep going. If you complete 25 presentations and not a single person bites, tell yourself that you’ll just have to do 50.
If 50 doesn’t work, then make it 100. Don’t stop. Learn from every failure, adjust, adapt, and be willing to keep pushing ahead. Eventually you’ll get that first client.
And I’m telling you, once you get that first client you’ll be beyond encouraged. You’ll feel absolutely elated. Like the world is your fricken oyster. Because it is!
Get that first client, get out of the house, and it’s off to the races guys. There’s no better feeling in the world than being in business for real.
