I tend to see this a lot and I’ve decided to put a paragraph or two down on it.

Someone cooks awesome food, makes awesome clothes or is very skilled at one thing or the other and immediately decides; “Oh! Time to quit my job  and start a Business at this!”

To me this is a very faulty approach and is the reason a lot of businesses struggle and fail.

Being great at skill A and building a successful business out of skill A are 2 very different things!

Whatever you’re great at doing, to build a successful, big Business out of it you’d end up finding yourself doing other things such as

1. Marketing and sales to get clients (no clients no business)
2. Spotting and managing talent to work with
3. Constantly developing strategy

A lot of times people start businesses and after their circle of family and friends is exhausted run out of clients (first point), a lot of people start businesses and then quickly get overwhelmed with a lot of orders and either start producing low quality, turning down orders or burning out because they aren’t able to find staff to replace them (point two) and at other times people start businesses and are so engrossed in the day to day deliverables the industry changes and they’ve no idea what happened (point three).

Going to real life, Bill Gates built Microsoft on an operating system he developed but I’m sure he doesn’t remember how to program anymore.

My point with this is, it’s okay to start when you”re not ready, but always set your mind to the fact that you’d have to get basic business skills or hire people with them if you want to go far. You’re good at skill X only  would only take you so far!

My second point is, it’s okay starting out in a field you know nothing about as long as you can find and or partner with people who are great at these things and document their process for the Business (after all we started life knowing nothing).

Elon Musk (Paypal founder) is building Space X and he didn’t study anything remotely related to space travel. I always set off the smoke alarm when I attempt to enter the kitchen but I’ve built two food Businesses and sold delicious food to thousands of people who would die of food poisoning if I was the one who cooked and I’m in the middle of building a third food business.

Once in Business, a can-do spirit, continuous learning and improvement must be a policy as the world is ever changing and we always need to be a few steps ahead so we don’t get left behind.

It’s also okay to  keep your job and build a hobby (profitable or not) out of what you’re good at, Business is not as rosy as the motivational speakers colour it.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk 😀