Starting a Company or Business

What's Stopping You Starting?

More people are starting new businesses than ever before. But many more people are
held back by the employee mentality. There are many reasons why an employee
should want to start their own small business but three are worth thinking about.

1. A job is just like a renting a house - you have all the satisfaction of living in it but at the end of the day you still own nothing. The difference between having your own business and having a job is the difference between buying a house and renting a house. Your own business depends on you, and at the end of the day it may leave you with considerable personal wealth.

2. You are a totally unique person but this fact is lost on the vast majority of employers. How does an employer treat someone as unique as you? They make you fit into a box where the walls are your job description. They make you like anyone who did the the same job before you, or anyone who does it after you. Having your own business offers you the opportunity to have unique achievements, to build a unique business and to stamp your own mark on the world.

3. If you do not want to start a company to create personal wealth or to satisfy your ego then start a business to help other people. Offering others a new product or service increases their freedom of choice. With the extra freedom, the jobs created and extra taxes paid, it could be argued that founding a successful business is the most socially useful thing that anyone can do.

Action is the Key

Many people, for one reason or another, find it difficult to take action; even with the things that they really want to do. Most importantly, these are the things that will have a huge impact on their life and turn it around for the better. Starting a company is a perfect example of this. Such people are great at coming up with excuses for not getting started but not much else. That is why actually taking some kind of action is the way to success.

Procrastination is nothing more than a bad habit, like nail-biting, and whatever their reasons for indulging in it, they are not doomed to endure it for a lifetime. There are many effective techniques that have been designed to stop you putting things off and, more importantly, they work. Procrastinators have been transformed into hard-workers, simply by using the techniques below.

People who get things done are also far happier than people who waste time agonizing over doing things, but then don’t do them. Think how much more painful not doing something can be compared with actually doing it. And once you start, you will often find that you are enjoying what you are doing; particularly if you begin to have some success.

Procrastinators also lack energy and worrying about not doing something can be exhausting. Using our brains turns on a positive flow of energy which makes us feel good, and the longer we are absorbed in doing something, the better, and more energized, we feel. Stopping shuts down this flow of energy.

The hardest thing to overcome is getting started and there are several strategies that work. The first is to tell yourself you will only do the first task for ten minutes. Anyone can manage ten minutes and having got over the pain of starting, they are quite willing to carry on.

Write down all the jobs that you need to do in order of importance and do them one by one. Only when you have completed the first task should you go on to the next. The order may, in any case, be dictated by the sequence which has to be followed to start up a business. Wherever possible, though, it is always better to do the worst job first; then once this is out of the way you will no longer have it hanging over you. This allows you to do the other jobs with an increased sense of relief and satisfaction.

It also helps to set yourself goals. Write down how much you plan to do before a certain time. For example, “I will finish the first task before lunch time, and will not stop for lunch until it is finished.” If the task proves more difficult than you thought, however, avoid taking this to the point where you feel that you are punishing yourself.

Writing all of the jobs down is a really powerful technique for zooming through everything that you need to do and you will get an amazing amount of gratification from ticking off each item. Try it for yourself. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much you can achieve.

Although this article primarily relates to starting a company or business, the techniques mentioned can be used successfully in any situation or for any list of tasks.