The first business startup sin to avoid

When entrepreneurs wanting to start a business, the number one big question they have is, where will they get the money to do so. It is often the number one reason why they are not starting a business. However, there are other ways to get your business startup going!

Within this episode I share the first startup sin that you should avoid when starting out without money. If you commit this sin, you reduce your chances of success, and increase your frustrations to start a business.

I only realized this sin when I wrote my conclusions chapter in 2017 in my PhD Thesis, where I evaluated a coaching programme that have helped 37 entrepreneurs to start a businesses within 3 months without money.

So to help me, I also thought back to why some of my past students have struggled to start a business without money.

So immediately I thought of this one student. Lets call him John.

How to spend a lot of time in your business startup to end up no where

This happened back in 2010. I asked my students in class, how did it go with their new businesses – like I always do, week by week.

So this one person had raised his hand, telling me, that he had not been able to start yet, and he is getting stressed. Now this was in the middle of their academic year, and I could clearly see a stressed John in front of me!

I asked him, what is he busy with, what business and why he is struggling.

He basically told me that he did not have enough time to start his business. “Starting without money takes up a lot of time” – he said.

“So tell me, what are you doing with your time, how do you spend your time?” I asked him?

He said: “I am developing the product myself, but I need to learn a few skills first, so I went on a course to learn this skill to develop my product!”

So there I learned about the first startup sin.

Sin #1: Thou shalt avoid developing a DIY mentality.

I then asked him, why are you not getting someone to help you developing your product?

First John told me that he did not know anybody, and secondly he does not trust other people.

This answer helped me to discover the second sin. But more about that in the next episode.

So John tried to do everything himself because he does not trust other people. John also then had to compensate by learning new skills. What he did not account for is that he could not learn a new skill and start a business at the same time on top of his already academic workload.

Trying to do everything yourself in a business startup, will slow you down.

The window of opportunity is open for only a specific amount of time, thus in order not to miss it, you need to ensure that you take on an opportunity that:

• Is your opportunity
• You have the ability to take on the opportunity
• You have access to the resources for the opportunity
• You can take it on fast enough – before it closes.

From a personal point of view, trust:

• Self trust becomes before trusting others
• Lack of self trust often is a result of you breaking trust with yourself. I see that this happens when you set yourself unrealistic goals that you are not ready for, and then you do not achieve these goals. You basically set yourself up for failure when you do this.
• To build self trust, set smaller goals achieve them, and then set bigger goals. Start with something not too far in the future. Like by the end of this week I will achieve xyz. Then grow from there.

In conclusion

Lack of self trust (and even other factors) can cause you to commit the first sin. Where you try to do everything yourself. Then that will consequently result in you getting stuck starting your business. Learn more business tips on my podcast.