Why I think finding what you love before starting a business is crucial
I have wanted to start a business for as long as I can remember. I even learned how to code in order to be able to create an online product because I thought I have more chances of success with an online business rather than an offline one.
Anyway, I had no clue how to start a business, but I knew I wanted to. As the years went by I started to find out how not to do it rather than how to do it as I read more books on the subject, talking to people on forums and listening to lots of podcast on my way home from work. By the way, eventually I went from being a business analyst to a web developer.
However, I also narrowed down the possibilities of how to do it. By far, one of the most clever way to get started, in my opinion, is with customer support paradigm popularized in Steve Blank’s “The Startup Owner’s Manual” that says: validate your idea with your target customer before actually building the product.
Basically, you have to think of needs that potential customers have and then go talk to them. In most cases, this literally means talking to them by “getting out of the building” how is very nicely put in the book. You have to talk to your customers because at this stage all you have are guesses or more scientifically said, hypotheses. You then find out how are your hypotheses standing against the harsh reality of the market and depending on the outcome you can go back to the drawing board or move on with the process. If you want to know more than that, I kindly recommend you to read the book, you won’t regret it.
Well, I’ve followed this process a couple of times. Sometimes, what made me stop and go back to the drawing board was a question I’ve been asking myself: “Do I really want to create, maintain and improve this product for the next couple of years?”. In some cases, the answer was NO. You see, for me doing a business is something I want to do for the long run. That means to spend at least the next 5–10 years working on it and making it better. The thing is that I don’t remember doing something with a constant discipline for 5 straight years. So, I think the question I need to ask myself is “Do I have enough passion for this product to spend the next couple of years create, maintain and improve it?”.
The greek philosopher Thales said that “The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself”. Hence, I think I should know more about myself before finding needs to be solved for potential customers. I have to find what I genuinely like, love and I’m passioned about. But, how do I know I found it? I think a good heuristic would be to find something I like to do even when I don’t feel like doing anything, and then I will know I have found it.
Maybe that’s how I will be able to create a business: mixing passion with discipline. Passion alone won’t take me far, I guess, because passion varies, it cannot stay the same every single second, so you need to also be disciplined about it. Ok, but how am I going to do that? Writing. I will write about what I read, feel, experience and anything that crosses my mind. Writing will be my self discovery tool, or so I hope. Now I’m reading “The Personal MBA” by Josh Kaufman, so I will probably write more about business related things.
That being said, thanks a lot for taking the time to read my thoughts and feel free to tell me what you think in the comments below. I can’t wait to read it. Also, you can find me on twitter @RautaAlin.
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