Can You Start A Business? All You Need To Know

Founding, owning, and running a business has no set investment. Businesses ran on labyrinths of automation require minimal human labor. Businesses generating one-of-a-kind fashion pieces for artsy rich people prerequisite concentrated work on each project. Businesses selling software or digital products only need up front development. Businesses cooking and serving food in luxurious environments call for an expensive building and full-time kitchen staff.

Fall, Get Up, Try Again

From establishment to day-to-day operations, no business is made equal. Yes, you can run a firm on the weekends. No, it likely won’t be a pioneering tech startup that shakes the planet. Ventures aren’t scribed in stone. Businesses can be started, shut down, handed over, sold. Who cares if one idea doesn’t get you on the billionaires list? Step one: accept it, question your sanity, recall those weekends as lessons and the venture as part of your entrepreneurial maturity. Step two: put your head down and try again!

Heroic progression is a myth. In reality, it’s slow, really slow. Movies underrepresent the hardship—for good reason, it’s sluggish, boring, painful, and annoying! You scratch along with whatever resources available, doing your best. You improvise and vest everything into your baby. You wake up one day, and your day job can be replaced with business cashflow. Years later, this firm is an anecdote of your entrepreneurial adventures.

Yes You Can! Or…

Short answer: yes, you can launch a business from the ground up. Full-time workers can. Students in university can. Labor workers can. Knowledge workers can. Office rats overwhelmed with busywork can. The seed need be planted and tended to for it to sprout, form strong roots, and eventually protrude the surface bearing fruits. Long answer: depends.

Depends on what value you’ll provide, what your personal incentive is, what time and resources you have, what the demand is for your product or service, and how you manage each. Chances of your weekend hotdog stand turning you into a millionaire? Low. Probability of your high-end, bespoke, controversial art selling to outlandish billionaires? Ask your reputation and craftmanship. See, it depends.

Limited Time and Money? Ok

If the end objective is a high-impact enterprise that does important stuff for the greater good, traditional brick and mortar and unsure investments won’t get you there. Neither will drowning yourself in debt for your fantastic idea which could be a flop. No “free” time is free to you. Minutes matter. So how do you navigate? Ride a bike through city streets delivering food? Become a shared ride hustler?

Ideally, create assets. Granted your time is limited and sandwiched in-between studies or work, you must pass it developing lasting things. Food delivery gets you a quick buck but nothing’s leftover. Whereas something like software or a social media presence leaves you with a tangible asset. Revenue is good. Assets that earn revenue are great.

Free Testing Shenanigans

This way, you construct what is going to be your business and open many doors at essentially zero cost. Wiser than grabbing loans for a “business plan” and hiring before you have a framework of the idea in action, right? Build it. Use it. You might see the prototype wasn’t such a promising idea after all—scratch it and move on.

In appeal to your empty pockets, ask around. Digital product? Cool, go for alpha testers and see what they say. Food formula for bomb ass high-protein zero-sugar cupcakes? Place it in an inconspicuous box or bag and give it to friends to try. Have an audience going? Wonderful, reach out to larger creators to collaborate and potential sponsors for the show. You’re indirectly asking people whether your prototype is valuable enough to be turned into a product.

Be Annoyingly Enthusiastic

Sky’s the limit. Say the “customers” don’t like it. Miraculous! You just saved yourself thousands of dollars on an unsuccessful launch! Bombard them with questions. What, why, where, how, and when did they dislike the product? How much would they pay for it if those handicaps were fixed? What functions could you add or remove? Where did you nail it and why did they like that part? Feedback is insightful.

Remember, you aren’t in debt and have spent a minimal amount of money on giving your idea a breath of life. Your only investment was “free” time, which, in all likelihood, would have gone down the drain otherwise. Raising a business from the bottom-up with little money and time is possible. Stop making excuses, start making things.

Time and Money Aren’t Excuses

Time is what you make it. Want it badly enough, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t have time—you’ll make time. Don’t wait for the “right” time. The stars never align. Your ideas need executing, not sitting and anticipating. Your ideas aren’t alpha and omega, and you can always try again. Ideas are everywhere!

No money, no problem. The reason most never launch their rockets is due to a lack of capital or false beliefs. First, business is meant to be hard, takes commitment, and a willingness to fail and sacrifice it all. Second, you don’t need millions of venture capital to begin—as my example illustrated. Start, work hard and smart, stay focused, and you’ll eventually earn the rest.

Memento Mori, Motherfucker

Supposing you live 80 years, you get 4,000 weeks total—10 years is about 50 weeks for those not keen on math. Every week is 168 hours long. Take away sleep, work, eating, commuting, and bathroom activities, and you’re left with roughly 40 hours. These 40 hours can get you your desired future. What will you do with them? The reaper gets closer by the week and day. Will you allow those passions and dreams of business to evaporate into the atmosphere?

In the end, businesses can definitely be established and ran by regular, busy people. By investing one’s time and resources wisely, ideas can be proven or disproven for free, lowering the risk and annihilating the possibility of drenching yourself in dollars you don’t own. Time and money aren’t your obstacles. You are. “Ideas are a commodity.” said Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, “Execution of them is not.”