MBA1180 Q&A Wednesday: How do I know I have what it takes to start a business?

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Hey oh welcome to the $100 RMBA show, the business podcast that goes straight to the point and helps you build your business every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and a Wednesday episodes we answer one of your questions. A question yes from you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar mba.net Today's question is from Kerry and Kerry asks how do I know I have what it takes to start a business? A sincere question and and I want to get to the bottom of it. I've been building businesses for nearly 17 years now. I've been around business, I've been around entrepreneurs and business builders. And yes, many of these entrepreneurs that I've met are very smart, are very intelligent, very talented, are exceptional people. But most of them are not. Most of them are just average people you and I know. But they do possess a couple of skill sets that are critical to their success. This is a commonality I've seen with any entrepreneur that has been building businesses or a business for any Extended period of time. I mean, think about it. In order for you to continue to do something successfully, you gotta be doing a couple things, right? So I do wanna start out by saying you don't need to be, you know, a PhD student or a modern day genius like Elon Musk or something. All you really need are a few important habits, that and guidelines so you can make it in business. I'll explain in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. When we talk about starting a business, we're talking about a wide range of businesses, right? Just like if I say I know a doctor, a doctor could be somebody who is a cardiologist, a surgeon, a dentist, a radiologist, all different fields of medicine doing different things. So if you're starting a business, that can mean a lot of different things. It could mean you're starting a blog, it could mean you're starting a pizzeria, it could mean you're starting a yoga studio. It could mean you're starting a new software company. The product, the service will vary and the medium will vary how you're actually doing business. But good entrepreneurs know how to do business, period, regardless of what the product or service is. So I'm going to give you a few principles that you need to abide by to be successful as an entrepreneur. And that will answer your question. Do you have what it takes? It's not something that is in your DNA, it's something that you can learn, something that you can pick up. Just like, you know, all those doctors out there weren't doctors when they were born, right? They went to medical school, they learned, they figured it out. So the first thing is you have to be willing to learn and make mistakes. And then I'm going to add and learn from those mistakes. Okay, so you're going to make mistakes as an entrepreneur. You're learning things, you're experimenting things. You are going to take some risks and that's just natural in business. And sometimes those risks are not going to pay off. You're going to make some mistakes and it's going to hurt. But your job as a business builder is to learn quickly from those mistakes and not repeat them. Now, you can also learn from mistakes of others. You can learn from biographies, from the stories of other entrepreneurs so you don't repeat their mistakes. So the first principle is you got to be a learner. You got to be willing to learn and make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. That is totally fine to, you know, make a few mistakes along the way, but don't repeat them. That's the goal here. Number two, you have to be driven. I don't know an entrepreneur that has any modicum of success that didn't want it bad. You have to really want it bad. Business is hard. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it for you and say it's super simple. You can just work a few hours a week and you know, just lay in your hammock on the sand on some beautiful beach in Asia. No, business is hard work. You have to put in the work and you have to put in that foundation. As long as you keep that in mind, as long as you keep working hard and persevere even when it does get hard, that's what makes a winner. That's what makes you successful as an entrepreneur. Most businesses fail because they just don't hang around long enough. I'm going to be doing an episode in the future about how you can beat out your competition simply by just outlasting them. And here's a little sneak peek. You can easily outlast them by doing some simple things. One, being perseverant. Two, making sure that you're always profitable so that you can always run your business. If you're profitable, you can stay in business and you can stay competing with the other competitors. Sooner or later these competitors are going to give up, they're going to run out of money because they're not profitable or they're just going to get, you know, absorbed by another company or just, you know, simply fold. It's totally, totally common. So you got to be hardworking, you got to be willing to do that hard work every day, day in and day out. It's a full time job. I would say it's more than a full time job, it's a lifestyle. But if you commit to it, you can do it. Listen, before I was a full time entrepreneur, I was a high school and university teacher. I used to teach so many hours, I used to work so many hours. I was a supervisor, I was a teacher trainer. I used to wake up at 5:30 in the morning, go to work because hey, it's university. My first class is at 7am I used to go home around 6:30 or 7. So I'd go to work when it was dark and I would come home when it was dark. And yet now as an entrepreneur, I work even more. But I'm so much happier, happier. I'm so much more fulfilled. And that's everything really. What's the next thing? You have to have some basic financial Sense. What does that mean? That means that you just have to understand how a profit and loss sheet works. And this is very simple. You just got to make more money than you're spending or you can reverse it. You got to spend less than you're making. That way you can always be profitable and always continue to run your business. What does that mean? That means don't overspend, don't hire new people if you can't afford it. Don't hire new equipment, don't expand until you can afford it. That way you're in a secure place and you can continue to grow and you can continue to prosper, continue to run your business. The only exception to this is huge, huge companies that start out and have so much financial backing. Companies like PayPal or Facebook, where they can run at a loss for years, 5, 10 years, and then finally be profitable at year 11 or something, because their job is just to dominate the market and expand as fast as possible. For most of us, we are not PayPal, we are not Facebook, and that's totally okay. And that's just one way to run or to build a business. You can build a business the reverse. You can build a business where you're profitable always and grow when you're profitable, spend when you have the cash. You don't want to be in a financial crisis in your business where you can't pay your bills and you're forced to shut down and you can't serve your customers, which means you can't bring in new money. So having a basic understanding of making more than you spend, knowing how to budget, having some financial skills is gonna help you a lot. Cause at the end of the day, business is about making money, is about making a profit. Yes, you're making a difference, and yes, you're enriching people's lives. But if you can't continue to be profitable, you can't continue to serve people. This next one is sort of like a bonus one. And it's possible for you to be successful at business without doing it, but by doing it, it's gonna give you an incremental, and that's growing your personal network. The late Jim Rohn has one of the best quotes, and it's your network is your net worth. Now, yes, there are introverts out there that can make it in business, but they're making their life hard by not meeting other people, by not growing their personal network. When I say personal network, I'm just talking about building relationships and friendships with people that you know in your market. In your business. This is probably one of the best pieces of advice I've received in the last five years and I've been really working hard on maintaining my relationships as well as building relationships.

Why?

Because they're great. They're wonderful. They make introductions to you, they help you grow your business, they help to grow your mind and grow professionally. And also it's just great to be able to hang out with people that are like minded, that know what you're going through as an entrepreneur and understand the language that you speak. So make it a priority to grow your network, whether that is to go to a few conferences a year, whether that's to email the people that you meet and you stay in touch with them. Whether it's being constructive on social media like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Instagram or in groups. But make sure you're adding value, make sure you're helping other people and make sure you're building relationships.

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In today's Q and A Wednesday, Kerry asked, how do I know I have what it takes to build a business? And my answer is, you have what it takes. You just gotta pick up these habits and be committed to building your business. If you're just getting started, just understand it's a long road ahead. Don't rush it. Don't put so much pressure on yourself thinking you have to be successful in two months. No, you have a lifetime ahead of you to be successful. If you don't believe me? Go out your door, go to the local cafe or a local mom and pop shop and ask them. Tell me about the first year or years you've been in business and they'll tell you how difficult it was to drum up traffic, to get people through the doors, to make payroll, all that kind of stuff. But they're around because they persevered. They learned from their mistakes. They grew up. You also probably notice they're not geniuses, right? They're not some sort of rocket scientists behind the counter. They learned how to do it. And you can, too. Thank you so much for listening. If you have a question you want to ask on Q and A Wednesday, just email me over@omar00mba.net don't forget to leave us an iTunes rating and review and to hit subscribe on whatever you're using right now to listen to this podcast. Whether it's Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, we're everywhere, basically. That way you get all our episodes automatically and have access to our archive in the feed. Over a thousand episodes. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The reason why there's so much mystery around running a business, being an entrepreneur is because it's really not displayed to us in school, in our upbringing, at least in the West. In the US Where I grew up, as an option, you hear about doctor and lawyer and fireman, but you don't hear business person or a businesswoman or entrepreneur. I don't think I've ever heard that spoken to me in grade school. So it becomes some sort of mystery. Who are these people that start businesses? Are they special? Are they different? No, they're like you and I. We just got to learn how to do the job. All right, thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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