Where Do I Start?
A good friend of mine and I were having breakfast a few days ago and started talking about entrepreneurial mindset. This is a guy who dropped out of college because he felt it was keeping him from going out and making a living. He got married early, realized he needed to provide for his wife and coming child, and jumped into doing about the only thing he was qualified to do — drywall.
Drywalling wasn’t something he was especially passionate about, it was something he could do and make money at. He learned from some of the best in the business by asking around who was busier than anyone else. He studied what they did, went to work for some of them, realized he could do certain things better and then set out to do just that.
His company is called Professional Drywall and it’s worth close to a million dollars right now. His work week ranges from 15-25 hours and the company provides a really solid living for he and his family.
From the time he began the business, his goal was to continually build massive passive permanent streams of income so that at some point he would be free to retire. He built mini-storage buildings which are now filled to capacity. He started a custom home-building company and does a couple projects a year. He bought a chunk of land and had it developed for new construction homes. All of this because he started with drywalling.
As we discussed the process of starting a new company we talked about all of the people we know that approach us with business ideas, but have no idea where to begin.
The start-up phase can be scary. There are so many unknowns, so many unanswered questions, so many ways to screw everything up and not make a dime.
And to be clear — we all go through it.
In fact, it’s part of the process of building a business. The fear, the worry, the pushing through all of that to find security, success, and then significance.
If you’re wondering where to start, the answer is anywhere. Start something. Do something. Even if it’s taking a part-time job working for someone that’s doing what you ultimately want to do… that’s a start. Never take these jobs for what you can earn, instead take them for what you can learn. And in the process of figuring out how someone else did it, continually ask yourself how you can do it even better.
Starting your own company is the most exhilarating, frustrating, exciting, rewarding thing you could ever do. And until you jump the hurtle of starting, it will continue to pull at your heart to try. Here’s my advice — start. It’s the first step.
