Whenever I catch up with aspiring entrepreneurs, I find myself repeating the same advice over and over. That advice is to stop with the mental masturbation, and just start on whatever idea they’ve been thinking about. Even just the smallest next step they can think off. It doesn’t really matter which one—just do it NOW. Too often people get ahead of themselves by imagining the beautiful vision of their ideas, but this is a dangerous and shallow sense of satisfaction. There is scientific evidence to the idea that talking about something you want to do is just about the last thing you should be doing. So, keep that groundbreaking idea to yourself until you’re at the point of needing to sell your story to potential investors and partners. The sooner you start actually doing something, the sooner you can test your resolve against all the “friction” you’ll encounter along the way, such as the following:
- Insufficient mental and physical energy to work on a side hustle while working full time
- Wavering courage to quit your stable life
- Persistent bouts of self-doubt
- Lukewarm reception to your ideas
- Inability to find co-founders or early employees
- Costs being multiples more than you initially expected
- Things taking twice or three times as long to develop as expected
- Devilish details that make the actual solution less straightforward and more complicated
Those are just some of the demons that will shit all over your beautiful dreams. So, grab your umbrella, and see how much torture you can actually tolerate. I suspect in order for you to get far, you’ll either need to get very lucky, or be doing something you have an irrationally strong desire to see through, but the only way you even have a chance to win is to get in the game, and press START.