Interested in Starting Your Own Business? (3 min read)

Written By Millionaire’s Digest Team Member: Jamie Irvine

Founder & Owner of: Influence Revenue

Millionaire’s Digest Team, Contributor, Blogging, Books, Business, Entrepreneur, Family & Life, Sports and Technology Writer

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Starting your own business is a noble goal as it provides you with the platform to create and accomplish amazing things. It is also a journey that is full of danger and adventure.

If you’re really serious about starting your own business then I invite you to allow me to be your guide on this journey. Let’s get started.

Being an entrepreneur is one of the most difficult things I have ever done! Hands down the most difficult and I have been through a lot. That being said, being an entrepreneur has taught me things about myself and others I never knew, it has opened doors that never would have been available, and it has provided me with a wonderful way of life.

Enough about me. Let’s talk about you.

Why do you want to start your own business?

• You have a great idea
• You don’t like your job
• You are great at your job and you think you should be the boss
• You need to make more money and people always say “the only way to make real money is to work for yourself”
• It’s just something you have to do, a relentless urge that keeps you up at night and just won’t go away

Regardless of your reason for wanting to start your own business, you have had what Michael E. Gerber calls an “entrepreneurial seizure”!

How to Get Started – Understanding What is Involved.

Let’s be clear.

You’re going to fail.

96% of small businesses fail in the first 10 years.

Do you still want to start your own business?

Yes.

Good.

Starting Your Business Starts with You.

You need determination, grit, persistence, vision, a dreamer’s mind, emotional intelligence, open-mindedness, balance, strategic and critical thinking skills, knowledge, focus, and the list goes on and on.

Being an entrepreneur requires a host of internal qualities that you, in some cases, will have naturally and will also need to train and develop over time.

A Business Idea that is Viable.

Your business idea SUCKS if no one will buy it.

Your business idea, no matter how profound and altruistic, no matter what benefits it provides your customer, no matter how environmentally friendly it is, no matter how passionate you are about it, SUCKS if no one will buy it!

The reason I said it twice in two different ways is that it is so very important for you to understand this concept.

You’ve got grit, persistence, and a viable business idea. That’s not enough, you still need two more things to successfully start a new business.

Develop a Business Plan.

I’m not just talking about sales projections, cash flow statements, and expense budgets, although those things are part of it. I’m talking about a framework for your business that addresses every aspect of your business.

A clearly defined vision of the business, who it serves, what it will do, how it will do it, why it will do it, what it will look like when there is one location, how it will scale, what it will look loke when it’s done, and who you will sell the business to.

How do you do that? How do you see that far into the future?

Well to start with you won’t be able to accurately describe and anticipate all that will happen on your journey. That being said, if you can’t at least develop a clearly defined plan perhaps you should rethink starting this business because without this plan in place you won’t know where you are going.

Without knowing where you are going, you won’t know if you are moving toward your goal or away from it, you won’t know what you are doing and ultimately you will never do the strategic work necessary to build a business that can scale and can be sold.

You will end up like the 96% of business owners that fail in the first 10 years. You will become a “master technician” to borrow a term from Michael E. Gerber’s book the E-Myth Revisited. What that means is simple, you will become so consumed by “working in your business that you will never work on your business” and when that happens all that you are dreaming about right now will soon vanish.

All that you are dreaming about right now will turn into your worst nightmare, a nightmare that you can’t wake up from without facing disaster. In the end, you will have nothing, all your work will come to nothing, and the business that you start will be nothing.

It really is that important that you slow down and create a real plan. A roadmap if you will, a light for your path in an entrepreneurial world of darkness.

All You Need is an Opportunity.

No matter how great your business idea is you still need an opportunity.

That opportunity could come in the form of developing enough financial runway for yourself that you can quit your job and survive until the business starts paying you.

Warning: Triple the amount of cash you think you need and quadruple the amount of time you think it will take.

There is another way.

I started a business with $700.00.

Not exactly enough money to live on for very long.

My opportunity came when a general contractor made a deal with me, he loaned me the equipment I needed and supplied me with enough work to pay all my bills, so I invested the $700.00 in a trailer so I could get the equipment to the job sites and my company was born.

Sometimes it really does come down to being at the right place at the right time.

Think Ray Kroc selling milkshake machines to the MacDonald’s brothers, Steve Jobs grew up in Silicon Valley, or Mark Zuckerberg going to Harvard.

How do you be at the right place at the right time?

You need to put yourself in the path of opportunity in a systematic way.

How do you do that?

I’ll use my own personal experience again to illustrate how you might do this.

At the beginning of 2017, I decided to launch a personal brand. I started this BLOG, I wrote articles on Linked In, I applied to be on Podcast Shows, and I wrote for other BLOGS including the Millionaire’s Digest.

The result?

Within 6 months I had been interviewed on some of the largest podcast shows in the world, I got to speak to one of my business hero’s Michael E. Gerber, and I am only one degree of separation from Brian Tracy another one of my business hero’s. I’ve had job offers and entrepreneurial options that never would have come my way without putting myself in the path of opportunity.

Where is this taking me?

I don’ know but I’m going to keep going and find out.

Can you put yourself in the path of opportunity?

Of course, you can and you must if you ever want to be at the right place at the right time.

Conclusion.

Starting a business is as much an art form as it is a science. If you are thinking about starting a business or you have started a business and have gone off course I strongly encourage you to follow the steps I outlined above.

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Article Credits: Jamie Irvine

Millionaire’s Digest Team, Contributor

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