Everyone has ideas for a company, everyone says, “Man that would be cool to build that, that sounds much more fun than my job!”
But the truth is that just because your job sucks, doesn’t mean you’re going to like working for yourself.
When working for yourself, you need to turn that shallow idea into a deep idea. That simple concept needs to grow roots and you need to get in depth and actually think through how that plan is going to work. You need to walk through processes from customer acquisition to product development and everything in between. Working for yourself is so hard because you have to stay so focused on what you want and how you want to get there. Each and every decision you make will take you either one step closer to your goal, or one step farther away… That is, if you’ve set goals and determined a direction for yourself. Do you have a vision? Do you an end-goal? Or do you just have cool idea?
Some businesses start as a side-project with no end-goal, and that’s awesome, those tend to be great companies because the founders have a passion for that idea. But at some point, that side-project took on a life of it’s own and started to pay the bills, and needed employees, and came into demand from consumers.
{Insert Long-Term Vision here}
If you do have a passion, if you do have an idea, just start. Tinker with it, don’t necessarily quit your job and sell everything you own just yet, but look into the details. Check out how much a domain costs, try to build that prototype in your garage after work, and write out your thoughts in a notebook to see if they can materialize. It’s easy to have a thought, it’s hard to verbally communicate it, and it’s even harder to write it out for someone to understand.
That’s what I did. I always thought I liked writing, and when I finally pushed past the resistance, I found that I didn’t want to get up, I liked this writing thing. And that’s where this blog started. I tinkered in my spare time with domains, hosting, and my personal notes that I’ve written to see if it would make sense. I’ve done it with furniture: I built a coffee table from scratch with an old friend of mine, it’s the coolest thing I own. I’ve done it with a business: Epic Day Outdoors. I did it when I moved: it wasn’t the perfect spot, but I made it perfect for me.
Learning to be content with your decisions is a huge part in life. You can’t change the past, you can only learn from it.
