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5 Questions to Answer Before Starting a Business

- May 4, 2016 | by April -

5 Questions to Answer Before Starting a Business

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone.

It’s not for the person who thinks a 40-hour workweek is a busy week. It’s not for people who can’t stand change. It’s not for people who lack drive and motivation when they’re working for themselves.

And, that’s okay.

We need people who aren’t entrepreneurs in this world.

Before you invest time and money into getting your business off the ground, I recommend that you get really honest with yourself.

Only you know whether or not running a business just sounds cool but isn’t the day-to-day life that you want to live.

It might sound nice to have a respected blog with thousands of readers, but if you don’t love to write or create videos, you probably shouldn’t start a blog. You might like the idea of being the boss but can’t get going in the mornings without deadlines imposed by someone else (and three Red Bulls that erode your stomach lining). You might think an Instagram following of 300,000 sounds like a dream but you don’t want to learn how to take beautiful photos or ever have to sit down and read your camera manual.

Reality is often different than perception. Do you like the reality that comes along with running a business?

Answering the following five questions will help you figure out whether you should go for it or stop before you ever get started.

1. Do you REALLY want it?

About half of the emails I receive from people who want my advice or help with something follow this pattern:

“I really want to do x but y and z are in my way.”

Some examples: I really want to start my own photography business, but I don’t have the money to buy the equipment. I really want to start a blog but I don’t know where to start and I have three young kids so I don’t have a lot of time. I really want to start a life coaching business but I suffer from chronic fatigue and I don’t know if I’ll run myself down.

If you’re in this type of situation where you want to start a business but you’ve got reasons why you don’t think you can, I’m going to tell you something that might hurt your feelings. You’re not special.

We all have reasons why we can’t, but some of us want it bad enough that we overcome those excuses and do the work anyways.

Do you want it that bad? Are you willing to face your excuses head on and build a business despite them?

If you don’t REALLY want it with every fiber of your being, you’ll probably give up when you hit a rough patch and I promise you that you will hit many rough patches.

When you really want it, you’ll keep going when you’re on day sixty-five of your website redesign and you just want to drown in a bucket of mint chocolate chip. Or when you kid is projectile vomiting and it’s launch day. Or when it’s your day to publish a blog post and you’re still staring at a blank screen. If you don’t really want it, that’ll be your last excuse to give up.

2. What are you doing it for?

Please don’t tell me that you’re blogging because you want to become famous or that you’re posting to Instagram because you want 100,000 followers. There are so many people online who are adding to the noise. The main reason they’re tweeting or posting videos on YouTube is because they want more followers.

You’ll get easily lost if that’s what you’re doing this for.

There needs to be so much more to it.

I don’t publish a blog post every Wednesday to get more readers. That’s not the purpose. If it was, I wouldn’t put in nearly as much time and I’d use scammy techniques to get people to click like click bait. The reason I publish weekly blog posts is to help the women who follow my blog build successful businesses around the lives they want to live. I want to help them for free. I want to share my knowledge and expertise with others who are just starting out or struggling to reach their business goals.

Those reasons keep me going when I’ve got a temperature of 102 degrees and still need to edit my blog post before publishing.

So think very carefully about why you want this before you start.

3. Are you ready to work harder than ever before?

There are people out there selling programs like ‘Six Figures in 30 Days’ and other nonsense. I say run in the opposite direction.

There is no magic pill or one strategy that’ll help you make loads of money and keep your dignity.

If you care about how you make money and aren’t willing to scam people, you have to work hard.

Overnight successes aren’t real. That person that seemed like she built her business overnight probably worked for years before that point.

Building a successful business isn’t easy. I won’t lie to you and sell you a fairytale. If you’re not up for the grind and if you don’t have the grit, don’t start a business.

Hustle has become this evil term, but if you’re truly afraid of hustling your buns off to get your business off the ground, you have no business becoming an entrepreneur.

There’s nothing wrong with you if the idea of blogging every week, building an email list, posting to social media every day, connecting with others in your niche and learning to take beautiful product photos sounds like a nightmare. It just means this probably isn’t the path for you.

4. Are you willing to look silly?

Most people will admit that they’re willing to fail. But, often they mean without others seeing it.

They don’t want their friends from high school to know that they’re latest product line completely flopped. They don’t want their family to know that they had to pick up a part-time job because they’re business isn’t profitable yet.

And, they certainly don’t want to do anything that their friends, coworkers and family might make fun of.

That’s why they don’t go all in when filming videos for their websites. That’s why they don’t talk to their spouses about attending a business conference titled Rich, Happy and Hot Live. That’s why they don’t tell anyone about their blogs.

If you’re serious about building a successful business, there are going to be times that you embarrass yourself.

You might blank out in the middle of a speech at a conference live streaming to thousands of people. You might say something you wish you could take back at a networking event. You might blush when a friend from college says that she read your blog and wonders how you can possibly make money from that.

Taking risks often means risking embarrassment. You can’t build a business worth having without either of those things. So, are you willing to look silly to reach your dreams?

5. Can you adapt?

This is the question that lots of people don’t think about until it’s too late. Something that will help you out more than most anything else in building a business is adapting.

The entrepreneur who refused to leave MySpace to join Facebook because hundreds of people were following her on MySpace is currently regretting it. Taxicab drivers who put down Uber are probably wishing they could have a do over. That shop owner who wouldn’t move from sending out physical mailers to email marketing is cursing herself for it now.

Things are constantly changing and if you fight change every step of the way, you’re going to find your business crumbling around you.

You have to move with what works and what your market wants.

You can’t refuse to have a business Facebook page when all of your customers are on Facebook and want to follow you there. You can’t build a website that isn’t mobile-friendly when everyone is glued to their phones. You can’t denounce email marketing when email is the one thing that pretty much every single person checks every single day, multiple times a day.

If you’re not willing to adapt, you shouldn’t become an entrepreneur. You’re just setting yourself up for frustration and heartbreak.

I know this post is a bit harsh, but it’s necessary.

If you’ve honestly thought about all of these things, then you’ll have a much better idea of whether you should start a business or spend your life doing something else.

Neither is the right answer. It depends on what you want out of life and how you want to fill your days.

If you’ve realized that running a business is your dream, welcome to the club! If you’re meant for this type of life, all the hard work is absolutely worth it.

18 Comments · Filed Under: Creative Business Development

Comments

  1. Amanda Creek says

    May 4, 2016 at 6:17 pm

    I absolutely love my business, but you got me with #4! I still struggle with the possibility of looking silly. I’m working on it, though.

    Great post, April! 🙂

    Reply
    • Dacia says

      May 5, 2016 at 1:02 pm

      Ditto… #4 is my kryptonite right now. And I sometimes struggle with #2 – just keeping the big picture vision in my mind, especially when things get tough. But I definitely know what I Don’t want my life to look like, so that’s a starting point. 🙂

      Reply
    • Linda says

      May 12, 2016 at 2:13 pm

      #4 for me. It bothers me that it bothers me, you know?!

      Reply
      • Rosa says

        January 3, 2017 at 2:27 pm

        Very true! Makes a change to see soemnoe spell it out like that. 🙂

        Reply
  2. Patty says

    May 4, 2016 at 7:43 pm

    “When you really want it, you’ll keep going when you’re on day sixty-five of your website redesign and you just want to drown in a bucket of mint chocolate chip.” HAHA!!! I totally recognize that reference. This one actually made me laugh out loud, because the struggle the past couple of weeks is REAL! I definitely wanted to quit more than once in the past couple months. But then I see the possibility of it all, and realize how much I’ve learned and how far I’ve come. And then I get a stream of fun new ideas for stuff I want to photograph and share with every one. So, I’m still in the game. It’s a rough one though. I did not realize it would be THIS hard to get the bits and pieces together and to stand out in the marketplace. It’s soooooo competitive out there. I’m determined to stand out by being fun and different. So I keep going. I have so much of myself invested in this right now and meet people almost every day who get so excited about my projects when I tell them what I’m doing. But, gosh you are so right when you say it isn’t for everybody. You’ve got to be absolutely stubborn and strong willed beyond belief to do this. And want it more than anything. ANYTHING.

    The hardest thing on this list for me is by far #5. Oh man. The way things change now. It all cycles so quickly and you have to be constantly on it. I do have some trouble with that. The instagram change made me so mad, and I have noticed a big, big drop off in new followers. But, I am determined to keep working on it and deal with it. I’m really proud of my stream and where I have it now. I work really hard to create a well designed feed and sooner or later, my people are going find it and love it. If nothing else, I am very proud of it and LOVE to look at it!. 🙂

    Thanks for the tough love. Definitely some stuff in there I needed to hear and process. Sometimes reality is a real bee-atch.

    Reply
  3. Catherine Rains says

    May 4, 2016 at 8:32 pm

    I love this entire post, but #4 is the one that I relate most to at the moment. Being willing to put myself out on a limb means I have to be ok with occasionally looking silly, or not totally put together. This is very hard when I’ve always presented myself as totally competent and having my shit together! Yet to start a new art biz, one where I’m learning as I go, and putting myself out there when I often don’t know exactly what I’m doing, looking a bit silly or amateur is simply part of the journey. Do I want to jump into complete competence right now? Absolutely, but that is the next step, not the one I’m taking in this moment. For today its all about taking risks, putting myself out there even though I’m not totally “ready”. This is one of the many gifts I got from B-School – start wherever I am, and often that means not feeling totally ready to do so!

    Thanks for another great blog April. Always love reading your posts!
    Catherine

    Reply
  4. heather says

    May 4, 2016 at 10:40 pm

    I sometimes want to drown in rocky road ice cream after rearranging my website for the 100th time!

    Reply
    • Shantha says

      May 6, 2016 at 2:58 pm

      i feel you Heather! Rock on. I sometimes just stare at my website like it is a huge mountain to climb. But I am learning to accept it now and take one step at a time, a little everyday even it it means writing just a fews words per day, reselecting photos and then deleting them all the next day!

      Reply
  5. Mary Ilmberger-Scott says

    May 5, 2016 at 7:32 am

    As always…great, great stuff here!
    Thank you for all your hard work and dedication 😉

    Reply
  6. Holl says

    May 5, 2016 at 9:10 am

    Incredible post, honestly. The quality and honesty of your content is just amazing and something I really value in you.

    I have a full-time job, run a blog and freelance on the side. I’ve had an inkling for a while that I’d like to start the path to owning my own business, but there are so many articles in the industry that put me off. This has been really refreshing and made me feel a whole lot better that there are people out there who actually want to help people succeed – not just do it for the money.

    Reply
  7. amaka says

    May 5, 2016 at 9:46 am

    Awesome post ,I really like number one and four ,because they speak to a situation I have had to deal with .I recently started putting myself out there ,it was kind of scary ,but guess what its cool and yea ,i have learnt that you don’t need everyone’s approval .your tribe knows you .

    Reply
  8. KrisWithaK says

    May 5, 2016 at 2:48 pm

    LOVE! I love this.

    There is a funny idea floating around out there that this entrepreneurial life is easy or sweet or juuuuuuust a dream. I love that you put it out there – straight & to the point: you gotta want it, & you gotta work your tail off for it.

    As always, you’re right on the money, my friend.

    xo
    K

    PS – Looking silly is the best part! 😉

    Reply
  9. Tricia Bertrand says

    May 5, 2016 at 3:35 pm

    Keeping it real!!! Love!! This shizz is tough and some days are harder than others. I can’t wait for the end of May! June will be fo’ real!!! 🙂

    Reply
  10. Tunde Sanusi (Tuham) says

    May 5, 2016 at 6:29 pm

    I totally love this post especially the No #5 -adaptation which is letting go of the old and grabbing the new!

    Reply
  11. Blanca says

    May 8, 2016 at 10:52 am

    Simple questions with such powerful answers that define the heart of being an entrepreneur. Thanks for wrting this!
    I want you to know I shared this post today with my children because I want to educate them in the world and lifestyle of an entrepreneur, it is my responsibility to show them that they have choices other than being employees. Schools train us to be employees, and that is ok. But when there is an internal force that moves you to do change, to do good, to create and to share it with the world, that is also good and through hard work, they can make it happen. “Dreams come true if you have the courage to pursue them”-Walt Disney

    Reply
  12. gail says

    May 8, 2016 at 10:43 pm

    I have a #6 for you! Are you willing to do #1-5 in order to do what you love every single long working day? That’s what keeps me going.

    Reply
  13. Morgan says

    May 19, 2016 at 4:12 pm

    These are all really good things to deeply consider before starting your own business. It’s so easy to get caught up in all the frilly details and to dive right in without fully assessing everything that comes along with it. You make really great points here. Thanks so much for sharing!

    Reply
  14. Scott Biddick says

    June 14, 2016 at 2:39 am

    A smart business owner knows how to handle a good busines by seeking advice and help if necessary from people who knows a lot about it.

    Reply

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