What Would a Black Belt Do? How do you start a business?

What would a black belt do? I'm Jim Bouchard, and I'm here to help you think like a black belt in your personal and your professional life. Today's question comes from Elizabeth Perkins, and she asks, "How would a person start their own business?" Elizabeth, thank you so much for this question because you gave me the opportunity to drag out one of my favorite quotations from Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War. Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. You know, too many people start businesses today without knowing what they're doing. What Sun Tzu's saying here is you're going to be successful before you open your doors. That means training and preparation. It means gathering all the knowledge necessary to operate your business properly. It means learning the associated skills. You may have a passion for whatever, particularly— I remember talking to somebody who wanted to open a restaurant, and he was very passionate about cooking, but he had never worked in the restaurant business. So my advice to him was this: I said, take any job you can in the restaurant. Bus tables, wait on tables, be a bartender, a host, whatever, prep cook. Learn the business from the ground up. Prepare yourself before you go out on your own. You also want to surround yourself with your sensei, with the mentors, people who have been there before. That's what sensei literally means. People think it means teacher. We, we address teachers as sensei, but sensei literally means one who went before. There are people out there willing to help you. Surround yourself with a good team of mentors. Do your training and preparation. Do your homework. And that's how you You're going to position yourself for success before you open your doors. Elizabeth, we're going to have some fun with this because you're the winner of our monthly drawing. And you asked for the free Think Like a Black Belt personal mindset training session. So we'll use that to strategize your, your business startup. I've started several businesses. I've made plenty of mistakes. I've done some things right as well. And I'm going to share it all with you and we'll try to get you off to a good start. Send in your question and you'll be entered into our monthly drawing. Like I said, for your choice of a free Think Like a Black Belt mindset session or a signed copy of Think Like a Black Belt. To submit your question, all you need to do is go to thinklikeablackbelt.org or jimbouchard.org and click on the Ask tab. Thanks so much for the questions you've sent in, and remember, perfection is not a destination, it's a never-ending process. Enjoy.