A wantrepreneur is someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, but they never quite get around to it. They have an idea (or ideas) and they are mesmerized by the thought of doing something innovative. Yet, there’s a lot more thinking than actually doing.
Does this sound like you? If you’re stuck in a slump and you’re ready to move forward, here are some tips to get you past being a wantrepreneur.
Focus On One Idea
It’s awesome to have many ideas. After all, entrepreneurs are “big ideas” people. New and innovative ideas push our society forward. But, having too many ideas can actually leave you stagnant because you’re not acting on any of them.
Understand that no idea is perfect and the journey to bringing any of your ideas to life probably won’t be idealistic. Too often we get a great idea and we get an initial high while envisioning success, but that high fades when we actually starting doing the work.
You have to do research, build a website, perfect your product, and hone your sales pitch — not to mention many other tasks — before the success happens. This is a lot less fun than dreaming about being the next Zuckerberg so you throw in the towel until another exciting idea comes along and the process continues.
Write down all the great ideas and start to brainstorm the benefits and viability of each one. The one that appears to have the most opportunity attached to it should become your focus for the next few months. By committing to just one of your business ideas, you’ll be able to keep your mind solely on the strategy and tactics necessary to flush it out into a company. If you discover that it’s not going to work, then you can go back to the list you created and focus on the next idea that showed potential.
Stop Reading Social Media
I challenged myself in March to stop going on social media and consuming content from my favorite influencers. I wanted to see if this activity was lowering my productivity.
Turns out the challenge worked. I created a training series in one weekend and sold 10 of them within the first week. Also, I published 24 pieces of new content on my blogs.
If you’re consuming a lot of information from other sources, there’s a good chance that you’re not acting on any of it because your time is being spent on the wrong thing. According to research, 95% of us have a drug in our pocket that’s always turned on. It’s our smartphones.
Take a break from that distraction and start doing some actual work. Source materials for your products, do sales calls or create content. Although it may difficult to break the habit, start with just decreasing the time by limiting yourself to social media during specific hours of the day. As you progress, reduce the time on social media further to just an evening, morning, or weekend check-in.
Start Small and Remain Lean
When you have grandiose ideas about what entrepreneurship looks like, it can feel overwhelming. You may think you need to scale up right away by hiring staff or making significant investments in equipment, marketing, and product development. Although your business needs will vary, it’s better to start small and remain lean.
Also, don’t compare the start of your business to a full-grown business. There are extreme differences between a startup and an enterprise that’s been operating for many years. Cash flow is one of the biggest contrasts between a new and existing business. You may not have the cash right now to invest in all of the bells and whistles that other businesses have, and that’s not a problem. Just start somewhere and reinvest in your business as the revenue grows.
In the meantime, staying lean in terms of your budget helps ensure that you can stretch available funds rather than running out of money before launch. It is also a good financial habit to continue using even after the money flows in because it creates fiscal padding to use for emergencies, economic downturns, or any other unexpected issue that might otherwise hurt or kill a business that has not kept a lean approach to spending.
Final Word
The main differences between a wantrepreneur and an entrepreneur are action in spite of fear, self-doubt, and external obstacles. You will experience failure during the journey, but these are important lessons for every entrepreneur.
Not acting because you fear failure is a surefire way to stay a wantrepreneur forever. To move past the role of a wantrepreneur, choose one idea to commit to, act on that idea in a stepwise fashion, and shut everything else out. This entrepreneurial mindset will help you as pursue your current business and any future ideas you want to develop.
