I have launched no less than five businesses in my lifetime. Well okay I had ideas for and started in my mind more like about 33. The biggest impediments to my following through with the "really good" ideas could be written on a board room wall with little room to spare. I often wondered to myself, "Why do you keep talking yourself out of this idea? What are you really afraid of?" When I ran out of the obvious answers, no capital, don't know how to write a business plan, nobody around me rallied around me, there are too many of those type of ideas already out there for the business I am considering....then I finally wised up and listened to a very loud voice in my head that said, "STOP STARTING STUFF PLEASE." At last, I was sick of myself. I was sick and tired of hearing my own excuses. So I/we launched our first business. My husband and I opened a pool hall, i.e., with pool tables and balls not floaters and sharks fins. After selling that business at what can be loosely described as "break even", it was I who would start the next three businesses in our marriage. So I feel qualified to share this with you.... STOP! Starting Stuff. And get going. Please!
Taken from, Six Lessons for Getting in the Right Mindset For Starting Your Own
Business by SOURCE/Colin McDougall:
Confidence/No Fear
Early on, I realized to succeed required getting in the “right mindset” to be
my own boss. This involved getting over self-defeating talk and convincing
myself I could do it. There is an expression in sales if you fake it long
enough you believe it. The reasoning is that by acting confident, you become
confident. So for me it became a matter of selling my self. Like any good sales
person will tell you, to be good in sales you need to know your customers’ hot
buttons, earn their trust and value and meet their needs. I sold myself on the
idea of going into business for myself, but that didn’t take away the realistic
fears and insecurities.
When I started the business there was no paycheck, no set date when the money
would arrive, and even worse I worried that the money might not show up at all.
This became my biggest fence to climb.
Contending with my own self-doubt and insecurity was one thing, but hearing
the negative concerns of friends and family voiced over and over made matters
worse. In their eyes I was working a “good job”, and they didn’t understand why
I wanted to trade a secure paycheck for uncertainty. All I heard was “you can’t
do that” and “that’s too risky”. Those kinds of comments worked against me for
the first six months and threatened to undermine the entrepreneurial “can do and
will do” attitude.
Friends and family didn’t understand the kind of business I started known as
affiliate marketing, but they felt qualified to tell me, “If I could make money
online it would probably be illegal or at best immoral.”
What they didn’t realize is that affiliate marketing is a $14 billion
industry. (Source: Marketing Sherpa) and is expected to grow to approximately
$230 billion by 2008. (Source: Forrester Research)
Taken from, Six Lessons for Getting in the Right Mindset For Starting Your Own
Business by SOURCE/Colin McDougall:
Confidence/No Fear
Early on, I realized to succeed required getting in the “right mindset” to be
my own boss. This involved getting over self-defeating talk and convincing
myself I could do it. There is an expression in sales if you fake it long
enough you believe it. The reasoning is that by acting confident, you become
confident. So for me it became a matter of selling my self. Like any good sales
person will tell you, to be good in sales you need to know your customers’ hot
buttons, earn their trust and value and meet their needs. I sold myself on the
idea of going into business for myself, but that didn’t take away the realistic
fears and insecurities.
When I started the business there was no paycheck, no set date when the money
would arrive, and even worse I worried that the money might not show up at all.
This became my biggest fence to climb.
Contending with my own self-doubt and insecurity was one thing, but hearing
the negative concerns of friends and family voiced over and over made matters
worse. In their eyes I was working a “good job”, and they didn’t understand why
I wanted to trade a secure paycheck for uncertainty. All I heard was “you can’t
do that” and “that’s too risky”. Those kinds of comments worked against me for
the first six months and threatened to undermine the entrepreneurial “can do and
will do” attitude.
Friends and family didn’t understand the kind of business I started known as
affiliate marketing, but they felt qualified to tell me, “If I could make money
online it would probably be illegal or at best immoral.”
What they didn’t realize is that affiliate marketing is a $14 billion
industry. (Source: Marketing Sherpa) and is expected to grow to approximately
$230 billion by 2008. (Source: Forrester Research)
I may never become super rich working for myself, who knows? But I can promise you this, having tried it my way and having the tenacity to finally STOP STARTING STUFF and start TRYING stuff has made my spirit richly satisfied.
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