How to fail at entrepreneurship
My best business idea and why it failed
In 2000, I was rejected for for a mechanics apprenticeship. So, I decided to stay at university. My degree was as boring as batshit, but I had a few electives available and chose one called ‘Entrepreneurship’.
The fact that university even offered a course on the subject of entrepreneurship was kinda cool… and it was actually pretty good.
As students we had to make up a business idea and then go through the planning process of what we could do to put it into action.
I wish I still had my notes, but in those days there was no such thing as Evernote. Back in 2000, we used to dogpile and hotbot to search the net… but there wasn’t really much on there.
To get information for assignments we went to the library. The thing that saved me in my HR degree was finding a CCH manual about human resources. We stumbled across this in the library and hid it so no one else could find it. It couldn’t leave the building — it was too powerful.
It contained all of the secrets for managing human resources. It told us exactly how to hire and fire, how to recruit amazing talent, how to manage change, how to build a team and how to train. It was the holy grail of HR.
So anyway, back to my entrepreneurship course.
I had no idea about what business I would start or why I took this course. But after the CCH HR manual discovery, I thought “What if you could go on a website and get access to all of the forms and processes required for best practice HR. Position descriptions, employee surveys, HR Audits and training programs on various topics. That would be cool? Wouldn’t it?”
I spent 6 months (!) planning out the idea, working out exactly what topics I’d include, how we’d deliver the documents, how we’d charge and how we’d employ writers (that part was very thorough, I was a HR major after all).
At the end of the 6 months I had an epic plan all figured out. It was a great idea, people were actively paying thousands of dollars for HR staff to do this all the time. They would definitely pay a few hundred for some templates. Nothing like this existed as far as my limited research revealed. I was very organised, meticulous and thorough.
I submitted my final plan and I got a distinction for the subject. Boom!
But there was a problem.
I didn’t launch the fucking thing. It wasn’t part of the marking criteria.
I know if I did launch it, it’s unlikely that I would have had the patience or knowhow to follow through and make it into a business anyway.
I do wonder though, what an idea like that could have turned into in the year 2000. The timing was perfect… it was just after the crash and everything was moving online. HR documents and policies are a great fit for buying online too. I’m sure it could have been a 7 or 8 figure business if everything fell into place.
But I didn’t launch.
This was 6 years before I actually launched a business and 13 years before I launched one based on a decent idea.
I had everything there except for the only thing that every single successful business has in common.
They launch.
This has been one of my big lessons in business: don’t die wondering.
Now, we launch very quickly. This year I’ve had 3 ideas, and we launched each one in 7 days. This helps me to avoid writing more shoulda, coulda, woulda posts like this in the future.
If you are reading this and you have an idea — I have some advice for you.
Stop talking. Stop planning. Stop ‘strategizing’.
Launch.
You don’t get a pass on entrepreneurship until then.
Dan Norris — Startup Chat Podcast & WP Curve
