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Ready to learn about the “Laws of Success &
Entrepreneurship.” Well… Specifically, one law – 90% of great success comes from
just showing up.

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We've all heard of
this saying or one of these sorts of platitudes growing up.

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This is the kind
of saying that never gets too old or out of date, especially if you’re delving
into entrepreneurship.

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Your Audience Isn't Looking For Perfect Action

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Let me start by
saying that people (your audience) are not looking for a perfect action,
rather, what they're looking for is someone who takes action. A common thing I
see entrepreneurs do is that they often get caught up trying to be perfect.

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These people get
so caught up in trying to do things perfectly that they don't make any
progress. They’ve somehow forgotten all together how to show up and perform
actions in the midst of redoing and restarting something to try and be perfect.
Forgetting that ninety percent of their success is lost by not trying.

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When you first
start out in business, there are a lot of expectations aimed at you. Everybody’s
bar of expectation is different. You can’t please every customer or every
business partnership. But the highest expectation will always come from
yourself because nobody is judging you more critically than you.

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Which is why that
need, that urge to be perfect is so powerful but if you stop and take a
critical broad look at what you’re doing, the only person driving you to redo
something is you. As long as you do the best that you can do and not because
you have to be perfect, you can tell yourself later that you’ve exhausted every
option, every choice, every alternative and did your best. Really, that’s
enough. Cap it so that you can move forward.

When I meet people
who idolize and romanticize the entrepreneurial life, I find it ironic that
what’s stopping them from taking the leap is that they are not “ready yet”.

Well, guess what?

There is never a
right time to jump into being an entrepreneur. 

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You Just Have To Do It

Another year goes
by without taking any actions towards becoming an entrepreneur or taking
initiative within your organization but postponing it because you have to
research the market more thoroughly, you have to network more, or save more
money.

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Does this sound
familiar?

Stopping yourself
from starting because you’re perfecting things that aren't even going to come
into play until eight months down the road is hilarious – and seriously common.

The second thing I
see “wantrepreneurs” doing is telling people they’re going to be an
entrepreneur, or they will be an entrepreneur without actually taking the steps
towards being an entrepreneur. You would think that vocalizing your goals to
others would mentally stimulate a person to pursue that goal even harder but
psychology dictates that this isn’t the case.

, it
was found that important goals, such as pursuing a career path, involved a
commitment to an “identity goal”. An identity goal is described as goals that
influence a person’s concept of who they are.

So when a person announces their intention to commit to
an identity goal, the people around them may already be treating them differently
or refer to them differently. For example, Sara says she’s going to quit her
job and start her own business. She’s researching all about being an
entrepreneur, which she vocalizes. Her friends and colleagues may already be
referring to her as their “entrepreneur” friend at parties. This change in
attitudes towards her is fulfilling and achieving a part of her identity goal –
to become an entrepreneur.

What does this mean overall? She could have less
motivation to pursue hard actions that actually push her closer to being an
entrepreneur. According to Gollwitzer, vocalizing your goals can actually

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Do you think of
yourself as an entrepreneur? Do you spend your time consuming and sharing inspirational
Instagram quotes like “Rise and Grind”? Does vocalizing it make you feel
better? You could be falling into this trap of talking big and doing little. It
happens to everyone.

So How Do You Actually Start?

When Sean began
what is now North Digital, it started as an idea like most businesses, but
instead of sitting on his idea he got involved by going through the Yellow
Pages, calling businesses and trying to sell them websites despite not having taken
any sales courses. At that point, he didn’t even really know how to build
websites. He was just assessing the market and finding validation for his idea.

As an aside, this does not just have to be about
entrepreneurship. This is also relevant to taking action within your organization.
If there are initiatives that you think your company should pursue and you
bring them to light taking action on these uses the same principles of starting
your own business. What we are talking about is how we can create an action
plan to pursue and achieve those goals.

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You need to take
action and continue taking actions to build enough momentum that allows you to
keep going. After a couple of calls, there was a lady that was interest in using his services, confirming that his idea and his action worked.

Doing something is
in a whole different realm than just reading about it. You learn from mistakes quicker
because you’re making them yourself.

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Three Things You Can Do Right Now

Pick up the phone
and call three businesses that are potentially your target customers. Ask “Hey,
I want to ask you if you'd be interested in something like this.”

If you’re
bootstrapping and starting from scratch, scrap the business plan. Business
plans aren’t bad, but fussing over them can take a lot of time from actually
getting started. Plus, if you’re bootstrapping, you don’t need to write out a
perfect business plan.

I am probably the
strongest proponent of learning on the job. When I first started Ghostit, sure
I knew a lot about content marketing but I was far from being an expert. Most activities
don't require as much preparation as you would think. While preparation is good
for certain things, the majority learned is on the job.

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 Set a time limit
to complete tasks. This forces you to adhere to deadlines and decrease your
tendency to over focus and perfect one thing.

Chet Holmes talks about this in “the ultimate sales machine”

Another famous
rule of thumb is
, which is also known as the 80/20 rule, where 80%
of the effects come from 20% percent of the causes.

A culture of rapid learning and rapid
adjustment is heavily needed in a world that’s changing so quickly by the
amount of technology we have and the speed of information sharing. There is no
time to prepare for everything, which is why newer companies are beating older
companies.

Let go of the
traditional preparation mindset and you’ll be surprised by how much you learn
on the job.

Of course on a
macro level do spend time preparing mapping out the direction you want to take
at over the next couple of years. When it comes to the micro decisions such as
“how do we fulfill this client?” or “how do we deal with this slight product
pivot” is when you have to be able to learn and do on the spot. It’s a really
complimentary way of thinking because if you are drowning in the details, then
you don't actually have the time to devote that strategic thinking to your higher-level
business direction, which is where you should be spending that energy.

The key point to
take away is that it is easy to revere great and successful businessman/woman
and their status as godlike and unattainable, and fooling yourself into
thinking “How did they get there? I can never be like that.” It just starts with
putting one foot in front of the other and showing up.

They put on their
pants just like us. One white-gloved butler at a time.

It isn’t
overnight, it takes a lot of work, focus, and dedication but the key is to
constantly keep moving.

We love
hearing your feedback. If you have any comments of questions about this week’s
blog send us an e-mail at hello@ghostit.co.