Do You Want To Start A Business?

 Being successful at anything requires energy, discipline, expert advice and a lot of patience.  It’s knowing your strengths and honestly recognizing you can’t do it all. The doing it all part will really bite you as you go along, slow your efforts and ultimately kill them off completely. Sheer exhaustion is often the number one culprit.

 PLAN. We often begin with a dream and dive right in. After starting a number of businesses — my own and others, diving is painful. Everyone needs a map of some kind and creatives aren’t always great at the mapping and planning aspects. This may be the area to get some good help exploring and getting those ideas organized on paper. 

ARE YOU BEING REALISTIC?  What have you discovered in working at your craft that makes you believe you can take it to the next step?  AND, can you sustain yourself during the months and years it might take you to get your ideas off the ground? 

 ARE YOU WILLING TO WALK THE WALK? If you don’t have a handle on social media and how to leverage it to get noticed and help your business grow — get it! Where else can you attract the attention of millions of people every day? Learn about the different platforms and find the one that resonates. And then hire some experts. There are plenty of people who can help you get started with your social media who won’t cost you a fortune.  But don’t rely on them to do your work.  You still have to do your research and put in the hours. 

We are a culture of overnight delivery and that mentality can seep into our dreams. We are often guided to believe we can do it all and make it happen quickly. Talk to a few successful people and you will soon learn that there was no workshop, ecourse or easy way that is getting them results.

DECIDE IF YOU REALLY WANT TO DO WHAT YOU THINK YOU WANT TO DO  — What I mean is that you really have to love it. You need that kind of passion to keep you moving forward because regardless of what you are seeing on social media, the instant success that seems to be happening to some people is not the real picture. Those success stories are happening because the creators are working diligently over time to make it so.