The first time you think of starting a business, it’s almost electric to you. That tiny spark you catch out late, like a cloud caught in a sudden strike. This new work you’ve just done so far can change things. Maybe first thinking about how you’d come up with something really truly yours for building, you were thinking how to actually, I mean, really build something of your own. Not a dream. When life unexpectedly gets easier, you say that you’ll do it sometime in the future. But there is something real because you created it. That first spark is powerful. But it’s also confusing, because you get a sense of excitement and fear at the same time, and maybe a bit of doubt. Maybe more than a bit. It’s where most people begin their journey, even while they’re pretending they’re much more confident.
1: A Jumbled Middle Before You Go
So before you have even taken that first actual step, that weird stretch of limbo, you experience. It’s in that moment when all seems possible and impossible, simultaneously. You daydream about your future shop or your future studio, or the service you want to provide. You imagine customers. Income. A life where you are not always responding to someone else’s schedule. And this feels so good, like looking back on time, one could see you actually jump into the great pool of life and make it out alive now.
The other side of your mind, however, brings up bills and obligations like ordering office supplies for your own job and completely messing up the sizes. As if protecting oneself, now it is almost an attempt by your mind not to help and try to protect you. The messy centre of it is exactly that. A flurry of courage, doubt, and all the mental ups and downs leading up to you making a bold commitment.
2: Letting Yourself Want It
This sounds bizarre, but a hard part of starting a business is letting yourself want it. I really want it. Not in an embarrassed way, where you shrug your head and say, “Oh yeah, maybe one day.” But in a truly unapologetic way, where you acknowledge that you’re dreaming really big and you aren’t going to pretend you aren’t.
Having everything you crave opens you up to fear. And most of us have learned to take our deepest ambitions and box them up somewhere safe. But that leap takes desire. Even messy desires. And it doesn’t have to be graceful. Many of the great businesses started with a strange blend of longing and confusion.
3: Research, But Not too Much
If you dream and you let yourself dream, you typically go into research mode. Some people are stuck here forever. You know the sort who say they’re “just looking into it” for three years straight? They know every statistic, every market trend, every competitor. They have a roster of tools and courses, and books piled so high they’re building a monument. Of course, research is helpful. It’s how you determine if your idea has legs.
If people need what you want to offer. If you’re going to work with suppliers or software or something more useful, like a basic web design. But too much research can also leave you in the position of feeling you need to become an expert in 20 different things before you even start. You don’t. You simply have to know enough to start. The rest you learn along the way, often by tripping over things you never expected and being trained from them.
4: The Rollercoaster Nobody Warns You About
Launching a business doesn’t happen in a straight emotional way. It’s definitely an emotional rollercoaster constructed by someone who was likely experiencing something bad and just wanted a way to vent it out. One day, you may feel wonderfully inspired, as if the cosmos were cheering you on. The next day, you will be physically ill (think about all the things that could go wrong).
Both feelings are normal. You will be there, and sometimes you’ll realise: “I’m like, ‘I’m genuinely doing this. This is incredible.” At times, though, you doubt everything that you are. Or, maybe both in even the same afternoon together. Not that you’re acting badly. It’s an indicator that you are doing something substantive.
5: First Step Seems Small
Often, people think of the start-up of a business as a scene in a dramatic film, but in practice, your first big move could be something tiny. Sending an email. Registering a name. Purchasing one piece of equipment. Telling a friend your idea aloud. These small acts seem so everyday, yet they form momentum. And that’s the great thing about creating a business.
It’s seldom one giant leap. It’s a series of mini-steps, occasionally awkwardly so, that can eventually accumulate into something larger. You don’t need a perfect plan. You just need motion.
6: Learning As You Go
One of the truths about entrepreneurship that’s reassuring to me is: Most of the time, no one really knows what they are doing at the outset. As with anyone who appears to be supremely confident, individuals will generally have to figure things out on the fly. Humans learn by doing, not by obsessing over what they could do wrong in the future. And you will mess up, which is strangely comforting. Because only when you start believing mistakes are a part of that path are you no longer terrified of them. A mistake is simply data. Information. One more step in discovering what works at your particular version of doing business and what doesn’t.
7: Building A Support System
Starting a business solo may be emotionally intense, even if you’re fiercely independent. That’s why it makes a difference when there are people to talk to, even if they’re not formal. Someone to talk to when you’re celebrating something small that feels big. The same has happened when you’re angry because an insignificant or small thing suddenly grew a thousand feet wide in the wrong way: no one has been there for you.
Sometimes it’s your friend who listens. Or someone else with their own business that just gets it. Or an online community to say you’re overwhelmed without being judged.
8: Knowing You’re Doing It
At some point in this process, you will have a quiet, almost shocking revelation. You’ll check yourself out again, and you’ll feel, “I’m actually doing this.” It could happen with packaging your first order or inviting your first client, or hitting a milestone you never had time to realise so soon. It wouldn’t feel polished, it won’t feel perfect. It will feel real right. A blend of pride and disbelief, and gratitude. And that single moment is worth all the anxious nights and wobbly steps that led up to it.
9: Conclusion
It is not fearless to jump on the wheel of starting your own business. It is the courageous thing to do when fear is still in the room with you. Every step is uneven, emotional, rewarding, perplexing, and unbelievably exciting to the people who are living it. At the end of the day, the jump is not a single one. It means deciding a great many things: You choose to dream, you choose to try, you choose to keep going. And over time, those choices start to add up to build a life that starts to feel more like your own.
In need of career coaching? Take the leap and contact us today.
Featured image: Maksim Goncharenok
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