This is the number one thing that will determine whether a business starts making money in the first 30 to 90 days or it inches forward over the years only to shut down because it was simply too slow to gain traction and the stakeholders ran out of money, customers ran out of interest, employees ran out of confidence and business owner ran out of persistence. And that one this is: how much time you spend ‘on the fence’.
Let me explain:
Business commitment isn’t all in or all out and most people go through a gradual increase or decrease in commitment, in fact, it is often cyclic. And most people will spend too long on the fence being hesitant or skeptical, worried about people’s judgement or doubting whether they’re good enough etc. And this casue them to delay their own progress, it is as if they’re standing in their own way. Stoping their own success and financial FREEDOM.
To illustrate this I have created some hypothetical but realistic stages of commitment.
Dipping your toes
Most people do not start a business overnight. It all starts with one flirtatious idea, whether it springs from a tv show or real life problems or podcast or whatever. If you’re the entrepreneurial kind you’ll be hit by some inspiration from somewhere. It’s just inevitable. And then starts the flirtation or bantering phase, a will they won’t they kind of situation in your head. Eventually leading to some sort of rupture — be it a financial necessity or one’s boss yelling — where you decide you would want to pursue entrepreneurship if possible.
It’s still in a fantasy phase but you allow yourself to dip your toes by looking for some blog posts or calling their entrepreneur friend or watching some YT or TT videos etc. There begins your education in entrepreneurship.
Initial rejection
Then comes the first rejection. While continuing your education on entrepreneurship you’ll stumble as across entrepreneurial success stories, their struggles and practical lessons from other entrepreneurs failures, inspiration etc. And if you’re like anything like me you’ll make a mistake by either accidently or intentionally spilling the tea.
All this new interest and knowledge is bound to spill out in communication often with your closest friends or family. Where it’s highly likely to be met with either ridicule or worse a blank stare or a renowned statment like “only one in a million succeeds in entrepreneurship” or “Geniuses are cut from a different cloth” etc.
And this is bound to — even if temporarily — discourage one. Often leading to temporary silence or pause on this topic or even a permanent abandonment of one’s dream.
Secret Nurturing
Now then if you didn’t quit you have learnt your lesson. Some people have negative thought for every positive one. I call them energy vampires or positivity blackholes. They’ll suck anything good and leave you drowning in hopelessness. So you’ll learn to keep your positive ideas to yourself and nurture them in secret until you find the right space and time to express them.
Soft Launch – Product Marketing Fit
As you move along nurturing your business idea the universe will provide you with some opportunity to test it out. There’s almost a magnetism that will draw you to your first client or your first follower or team mate. It is this follower which will turn the lone nut into a leader eventually leading to the first sale. It probably won’t pay much in monetary terms but it will be a great opportunity to test waters, to arrive to a product market fit. This is yor first realisation that you have something real here.
First Testimonials – One foot in
The first positive testimonial or positive comment, that small interview on a local blogger’s webpage or invite to a podcast etc. will be like the much needed wind under your wings. It’s will make you proud, puff up your cheat a bit, raise that chin few degrees higher. After all there’s someone finally recognising your efforts. Months are months of private struggle is finally being seen and recognised by someone. This will make finally commit to this as your life path. You are still not 100% sure but you see some light at the end of the tunnel. There’s a new excitement coupled with naïveté. This is your first serious change in self identity. You can finally heave a sigh of relief and take a moment to celebrate before your roll your sleeves and get back to work.
Crickets – why is no one coming?
Remember that naïveté I mentioned? Yes? That is coming into the limelight. You are working your ass off, perfecting your craft, doing everything right and yet nobody’s showing up. Perhaps because you’re still not good enough at communicating value or your circle is too small to find new customers. But for whatever reason no one’s showing up, it’s crickets!
Self education – busting the myth of automatic sales
This is finally the stage where you’ll finally find the myth “if the product’s good enough the customer’s will come” busted. And your ass is on the line.
This is the real problem with first generation entrepreneurs. We’ll always go back to fixing the product. Of anything happens we go and meddle with product assuming something’s wrong with it. Spending all our time on it. Fixing product and pricing rather that working on places and promotion.
Multi generational player will always work on the latter two even when sometimes they could use some work of the former. But they’ll still survive at least for a bit because their focus is always more on distribution and less on product development. But the long term successful kind focus on both. And this insight will hit you like a lighting strike.
The Reality Kicks in – All in or all out
Now you’ll face the choice of your life viz. whether to give in to the pressure and quit or go all in. You almost have ebe delusional to go in but also remember that it’s only delusional until you’re proven right.
Better Communications, Sales and Marketing
So now you finally focus on developing skillset required for distribution namely communication, sales and marketing. You perfect these as much as you can. You start networking, you give 3x more value before you ask for introduction or help, you change how you introduce yourself, you start talking about your business fearlessly, because one sure way to sink your business is to run it in secrecy.
And soon you seen people coming in, sometimes from referals, sometimes from your blog, sometimes from social media but often the most from irrelevant activities you do like playing golf or aikido class to took that summer or that random person you met on flight to Dubai etc.
Shrinking Again
You make profits but it soon dawns on you the amount of effort it takes to constantly sell yourself perhaps because it’s not automated yet and requires ton of consciousn effort or perhaps because you have not yet honed in on your own style of promoting, marketing and selling yourself. So it leads to burnout, almost a nervous meltdown to be honest. This can keep happening untill you figure out a relatively effortless way to do this because there’s no escape. It has to become your second, nay, first nature.
Consistent Clients, loyalty and Incentives
Now since you have mastered the art of sales, you think that you have in a way mastered the art of entrepreneurship but one skill still reamins.
Hiring your first employees & Delegation
Most people who call themselves entrepreneurs are actually self employed, the work for themselves but in order to truly become a business owner and strike somekind of — for lack of a better phrase — work-life balance you’ll need to quickly learn to hire, train, delegate and fire employees. Without this skill you’ll work yourself into the ground.
Location, location, location
Now is the time to move your company out of your basement and into a real location. Or to expand your mom and pop convenience store into a second location.
As you enter this level there’s a whole lot of new challanges. You’ll learn the value of good debt, hiring the right kinds of accountant, lawyers, business managers and real estate brokers. Perhaps this is the time to form LLC or incorporate.
Soon this will teach you the importance of location, pricing competition, markets, oligopoly from game theory perspective. You’re in the market now and a great location and right positioning will bring half if not more of your customers
Automating Expansion
Remember all those amazing people we hired and trained and built relationships with?
Now it’s their turn to run the business as if on autopilot. So you can focus on expansion. And now they’ve been qualified to train new employees and new managers. This is why you retain your best employees by giving them raised and promotions. Because they’re actually the ones that create higher level roles by growing the organisation. You don’t!
This whole thing you started from your bedroom on sheet willpower and caffeine has almost become like a bee hive and you are the queen bee. Your business is essence has grown beyond your personal identity. Now you can go public, sell, pass it on to the future generation or whatever. That’s the beauty of this. Your children will never have to start from zero. Whereas in a job they always do. You have created a legacy! And inheritance!
So, after reading all the stages. Do you still dare to be an entrepreneur? Does it shake you with thrill or with fear? Do you have any questions? Feel free to email me or leave them in the comment section below.
And if you are still on the fence about pursuing entrepreneurship or quitting your job check out our books “Before you quit your job” and “The Business Catalyst”. If they honestly — cross your heart — don’t help just shoot me an email and I’ll refund you. No questions asked.
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Peace and Love✌️❤️
Your Truly,
Krupal
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