Starting a business, no matter how much support you have, is incredibly lonely. Especially if you have yet to see real financial success.
Is this working? Is this a good idea? If it is, why is nobody buying? Maybe it’s a great idea, but am I executing it poorly? WHY IS EVERYBODY LAUGHING AT ME?
They’re not. But the panic and paranoia of living in this undefined entrepreneurial bubble often makes even the most confident people question what they are doing (and turns us less confident folk into just puddles of stress and anxiety).
And that’s why I started UnRulli Labs. To hold myself – and other wantrapreneurs – accountable and to document the steps I take to create a real, sustainable business. In other words, we’re going to methodically find a problem, provide a solution, and find people willing to pay for it.
Will you join me?
These are the truths I believe to be true about the process of founding a successful business:
Be overwhelmingly helpful. Solve a problem.
Pay attention. Be alert.
Try many things. But learn quickly.
I have spent a lot of time doing none of these things and found little success. It is only recently that I have begun to gain real momentum and it all started with these truths.
If you need help getting started, check out the latest articles or read these two short books that I am currently obsessed with (they are the closest things to entrepreneurial blueprints I have found so far):
The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch by Dan Norris
Stop Thinking Like a Freelancer: The Evolution of a $1M Web Designer by Liam Vietch
A Little Context…
An undergrad business degree, straight to a financial analyst position at a major US bank, promoted to an exclusive internal bank training course, then on to helping start a new Global Banking office for the US bank in Miami… blah blah blah. My path was pretty much set.
I could look around at my coworkers who were 20 years older and see my entire professional career laid out before me.
And it was terrifying.
So I did the only thing that seemed to terrify other people as much as staying in that old job terrified me.
I quit, got rid of most of my stuff, and traveled around the world for all of 2012 (with my lovely wife who luckily had the same experience with her own corporate career).
We launched a travel blog to document our trip, which we still update regularly. If you’re curious about long-term travel, you can check it out here: LandingStanding.com.
Besides helping us learn this whole “online business” thing, it also connected us to so many like-minded people who were also trying to build out their own little empires.
I love meeting other people trying to create their own business successes, so if you want to share your story, receive exclusive tips on how to transition from a wantrapreneur to an entrepreneur, and join this great experiment, click here: