Common Excuses For Not Starting a Business
I recently found a great little blog post which described a couple of “The Barriers to Starting Your Own Business“.
Funnily enough I found myself nodding to each ‘excuse’ commonly made (myself included).
Time, money, procrastination and lack of experience in either programming or business are the big three. However this post reinforces the fact that these shouldn’t make terribly much of a difference between you starting a business and shrugging it off.
Here’s a list of the points and my take on them:
- Lack of Time. This is a big one I’ve been using quite often being a full-time uni student. However I have met a few people so far at uni that are full-time students, work a 30-hour-a-week job and also have business projects. So it is possible, it all just comes down to effective time management which is something I am planning on employing soon. The book, getting things done was mentioned as a good read for learning about good time management techniques.
- Risk and/or lack of money. Business can be risky, but when executed in the right way, it doesn’t have to be. Many businesses can be started with very little capital. Start small, THINK BIG!
- Procrastination. I know everyone has had a bad case of this at some stage. It’s a habit which for me started way back in primary school and continues to plague me. When this bad habit transfers over to business it can be costly. It could mean the difference between getting that idea/product/beta out before the competition or losing out on that chance of success, glory and dollars. So I think a good way to get over procrastination is through time management and embedding that little voice in your head that says “Oh no, I better get this out before the competition do”
- Lack of experience. That’s the awesome thing about business and running one. There is no set formula for success. If you have a basic grasp of business concepts, sales and customer relations the rest basically comes down to your innovation and ability to change to meet the market. Experience is the best form of education when it comes to business and entrepreneurship. Learn to both accept and avoid failure. Sure you are most likely to fail at business ventures during your lifetime, but take note of what you did wrong and learn from those mistakes in your next venture.
Other excuses I can think of include the fear of failure, something which should not be a problem as failures should be seen as excellent learning experiences. And another one is people basically not being able to come up with a ‘good’ business idea… if you’re in this category checkout my post on How I Come Up With Business Ideas.
Nathan Waters
Excuses, Excuses
April 19th, 2006 at 4:36 am
I think #3 is a big one. However, if one really wants to go big they should stop procrastinating and start before their competitors. Someone’s gonna get rich off your golden idea. Why not you?
April 20th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
great information, just came across this from YE. I’m only 16 and I have to say, I am effected by all four of those reasons. I have to study for my exams; I don’t have any money other than what my family can loan me; I spend heaps of time just lying on my bed thinking about my idea, rather than putting it into action; I have practically no experience in running a business.
However, what I’m thinking of will have very low startup costs (I’m not selling anything), and will only take about 50-100 hours max work to get the whole thing going. What I’m thinking of isn’t really a business, actually, just offering a certain type of information I know some people are going to want, and with a little marketing (the rest will be word-of-mouth because what Im doing is something people are genuinly interested in) I can definitely see this taking off. Im never going to make alot of money from it (only revenue is advertising) but no need to think big at 16.
Anyway, I guess this stuff is really common for people around my age.