Let’s be real, entrepreneurship is the new black. It seems as if everyone wants to start a business, craves flexibility to travel and wants to be their own boss.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with this. After all, I wanted to start a business and be my own boss too. But the more I go to networking events or have people trying to pitch a business idea to me, the more I realize that most people who say they want to start a business aren’t actually doing it. Here’s my opinion as to why.
They’re too impatient to start a business.
Being able to start a business and make it profitable takes time, and a lot of people don’t like hearing that.
I’ve told people to give their side businesses at least a year before quitting their day jobs in order to make sure their idea is viable and they look at me like I have three heads.
In fact, I’m convinced that a lack of patience is the main culprit as to way people fail to start a business. If people aren’t seeing results right away they want to give up, which actually brings me to my next point.
They give up too easily.
The ability to start a business is not easy. It requires resiliency, endurance, and stamina. It requires getting knocked down nine times and finding the strength to get back up a tenth time. It requires rejection, hard work and perseverance in order to see a business to fruition.
Even when you do get to a stage where you can breathe a little easier, you’ll still have to make tough decisions and go through the awkward business growth stages.
The truth is that starting a business is not for the faint of heart, so if you feel like you can’t find the resilience to see it through then you’re going to be disappointed.
They don’t work hard enough.
One of the things that irritates me the most about the online business world is the avalanche of internet marketers and business coaches out there that are promising to sell you some sort of formula that will help you start a business in a very short amount of time.
The reason people buy into this stuff is because they are looking for short cuts. And, of course, the reason they are looking for short cuts is because they likely don’t want to put in the work it actually takes to start a business.
I was actually talking about this with a colleague on a recent trip and we noticed how our circle of colleagues and friends work really hard. We’ll work from airports, we’ll work on weekends, and we’ll work until we see the results we want.
However, when we go to business events, we’ve begun to notice that most people don’t work nearly as hard as we do. It’s of no surprise, then, that they don’t have nearly the same results.
This is why Gary Vee talks about an entrepreneur’s ability to work hard. Because he understands that if a person is able to do that as they start a business, then they’ll already be ahead of the pack.
Starting a business requires a lot of sweat equity, and the reality is most people aren’t willing to put in the work.
They aren’t willing to invest.
Up until this point, I’ve mostly discussed how people aren’t willing to invest their time when they say they want to start a business. Well, there’s also something else they typically aren’t willing to invest – their money.
It’s no secret that it takes financial investments to start a business. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need venture capital or a business loan, but it does mean that at some point you’re going to need to throw down some cash to keep moving your business forward.
I admit I was guilty of this too a few years ago. I kept saying I wanted to start a business but I was too scared to invest money in the things I needed to actually make it happen. More specifically, I was too afraid to invest money in a business coach who would help me put together a basic sales funnel.
As someone who now coaches other aspiring small business owners, I run into this issue all the time. I understand it can be scary to invest money in something that you have no idea whether it will work or not, but that’s the nature of investing – you put money down in hopes of getting a return on your investment.
Granted, this doesn’t mean you’re just throwing your money around willy-nilly in the hopes of starting a business. But, unfortunately, most people think that’s what investing is. In reality, while investing in your business is a risk, it’s possible for it to be a strategic one.
I have found that aspiring business owners don’t understand the latter, mostly because we’re taught to be afraid of investing our money. But the reality is that if you want to actually have a business instead of just talking about it, then it is going to require some financial investment on your part.
They don’t take action to start a business.
I recently wrote a post on how to move from being inspired to taking action in your business. While there’s nothing wrong with being inspired, I have found that many people who say they want to start a business tend to stay inspired but aren’t taking any action.
The inability to take action is likely tied to several fears, including all the ones I already mentioned in this post, which is why people love to “Like” an inspirational quote but hate it when people show them the reality of starting a business.
The reality is you can’t think or visualize your way into a business. Those things certainly help, but they need to be coupled with action that actually moves the business forward – even if it scares you.
Final Thoughts
There’s a difference between actually starting a business and just talking about it. By moving past the blocks mentioned in this post, you’ll finally be able to start the business you’ve always dreamed of.
