Humans generally make decisions based on emotion and then try to use logic to support their decision. Case and point: Many people start a business because “its their passion” when really it should just be their hobby and not a business. You may wonder why so many people want to start restaurants and spend their life in one building? Is it because the profits are so large and every restaurant owner is a millionaire? I don’t think so!
My university professor in my Venture Capital class had us create a project. He had one rule: No restaurants unless we had an idea no one else had tried. Why? In many cities restaurants stay open less than 2 years. You have most likely heard one of the many stories of restaurant owners working 7 days a week on their business. Does it mean they are lazy and unfocussed? Possibly but I am certain most would say they are trying their best. The vast majority of people going in to a business are just following their “passion” when they should have been 100% certain their business venture was going to be very profitable because of their well thought out plan. A plan that includes an exit strategy.
Most people don’t naturally think like this. So they need to read and study how successful business people think. They need to study business people that aren’t tied to their business ideas. Very successful businesses are designed to solve actual problems instead of just offering another version of products already out there.
So how are you going to make decisions? Are you going to learn as much as possible about your line of proposed business before or are you just going to wing it? Or are you just trying to figure out what to do and how your talents would be best used after things are up and running?
My advice would be to do something that gives you pleasure, solves a definite need, and has a clear growth plan. Show your business plan to people with a business net income of more than $200,000 to figure out what things you may need to do.
One the most important things you can focus on is improving your strengths. It doesn’t mean you don’t need to improve weaknesses too. Some weaknesses may really be holding you back. In some cases you may want to hire others to do things you aren’t good at doing. If you are good at negotiation and math you may want to handle that side of your business and let others do the managing part. Whatever you know your strength is, get really good at improving that.
For example: my dad was not the fastest worker—in fact he was probably always the slowest on his roofing crew. He was good at dealing with people however and I am sure if he wasn’t good at dealing with people we never would have survived as a family. My mom literally kicked him out the door to go find work. He wasn’t that great at management either. However, because he was good with people, things mostly worked out. Jobs got done and his workers picked up the slack for things that he didn’t figure out. I worked on his crew for a while and ended up managing the work expectations for the crew. I was continually frustrated by how slow he would go. But later in life I realized I should have appreciated the things he was good at. Being good with people is really one of the best skills in life to learn. Saying that, he never earned much money because he never had the goal of growing his business and we remained poor all of my childhood.
There is good news. You don’t have to run a business that just barely gets by. You can figure out how to be the leader in your market because you are willing to do what no one else is doing!