Saturday, March 3, 2012

Starting your own business

Some ideas I had:

1. How much can you afford to lose?
2. Make money today
3. Hire people now
4. don't plan (too much)


1. How much can you afford to lose?
Think of your business as an investment. How much can you afford to lose if your business fail? How much will you lose if your business fail? That is how much you can afford to invest in it.

Do like professional investors, minimize your risks, minimize your losses.
How much time, money and resources should you apply to your business? Exactly the amount you can afford to lose.

Don't quit your job if you cannot afford it. It is that simple.

2. Make money today
Why wait?? Why not make your first sale TODAY? Do you really need to borrow piles of money, buy tons of equipment, hire millions of people, in order to make your FIRST sale?? See the color of money today, don't wait.

3. Hire people now
Why wait to hire people? Why wait for the company to grow? Why do you have to do everything by yourself? There is no law saying you have to do everything alone. Of course you cannot hire full-time employees, but you can hire part-timers. You can hire friends and family to give you advice. You can hire neighbors and students to help you once a week for an hour, to help you with the cleaning, transporting, packaging, etc.

Maybe it is not a good idea to ask for free advice. Many times "free" equals "most expensive". Or even "most dangerous".  If you ask family and friends for free advice, many of them may say things like "give up!", "you are stupid!", "what makes you think you can do that?", "you will never make it!" .
That is the kind of pessimism nobody needs to hear!

But if you formally approaches them, saying you are willing to pay for helpful, useful advice, they may take you more seriously.

4. don't plan (too much)
People love to say "Failing to plan is planning to fail".

But, wait a second! Is this really true?

You can plan all you want, planning can NEVER give you RESULTS!
Only ACTION can give you results.
Planning boils down to some pieces of paper. That is all planning is.
You can't accomplish anything with pieces of paper. You need action.

Don't spend more than 30 minutes on planning. Use the rest of the day on action.
There is a time for decision, there is a time for action. You cannot waste the entire day on INDECISION, thinking about what to do, planning and planning.

Let's suppose you took the wrong decision, getting the wrong results. Ok, you lost. But now you know you were wrong, the following day you can correct your mistakes and try again! A bad decision is better than indecision.  A bad action is better than inaction. Because now you know what went wrong and how to correct it.
There are many things you will never know unless you try.

It is impossible to plan everything. That is why you should not waste too much time on planning.

Plan for no more than 30 minutes a day, everyday. Make plans for the day, for the week, for the month, for the year.
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