Want to Start a Business? How to Finally Make it Happen

In this episode of MarieTV, we do have some adult language. So if you do have little ones around, grab your headphones now.

Marie Forleo:
One of the ideas I live my life by, if it’s important to me, I’ll make the time. If not, I’ll make an excuse, and one of the ways that we know what’s really important in our lives is actually how we’re spending our time

Hello?

Ralitsa:
Hi.

Marie Forleo:
Hi. This is Marie. Who’s this?

Ralitsa:
I’m Ralitsa. Hi.

Marie Forleo:
Hi. You’re on the MarieTV Call-In Show with myself and Gregory and Team Forleo, and we are so excited to talk with you today.

Gregory Patterson:
Hello.

Ralitsa:
Oh, my God, I can’t believe this is happening.

Marie Forleo:
Tell us what’s happening, and we’ll do our very best to help you out.

Ralitsa:
I just want to say that I’m really excited to be on the show and that I’m really inspired by you, and, recently, I’ve been watching all your series and the past ones, and they’ve been such an inspiration for me and helped me a lot with lots of my questions and lots of my doubts and everything, so thank you very much…

Marie Forleo:
Oh, you’re so welcome.

Ralitsa:
… for being there for so many people.

Marie Forleo:
You’re so welcome. Thank you for watching, so what’s happening right now, and we’ll see if we can be even more helpful?

Ralitsa:
Just a bit of background, so I currently work in consultancy like I’ve been working for the past few years, and, during my whole life, I wanted to start my own business, and even all my friends always say, “Oh, you keep saying you would start your business, and so just do it,” but… and I have so many different ideas. Even when I travel to work, I just keep dreaming and having ideas how to touch people’s lives, but I feel like something is holding me back, and I’m scared that this is my anxiety and lack of confidence that is… It’s the reason why I keep losing my dreams, and I feel like I’m not an expert in anything just because the consulting is a bit of broad terms, so you help with different projects and different stuff, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot, and I’m really keen to start something, but I feel like my confidence and anxiety are the reasons why I’m not starting.

My question that I ask myself every day is how can I build up my self-confidence and how can I get better at taking risks, because starting your own business is a bit like, “Should I start or should I keep my full-time job that is giving me some sort of security, or should I just go and see as what’s going to happen and if it’s not successful?” I’m always trying to see the pros and cons, and sometimes I feel like, because I don’t believe in myself enough to start something and say, “Yeah, I’m just… I believe in my idea and I will do it. Even if it fails, at least I’m going to learn something.”

Marie Forleo:
Yes. I hear you, and, actually, I think that focusing on your confidence and risk-taking is not going to be a fruitful path. Now, I’m going to tell you what I think is a fruitful path. I have an option, but there are many, many, many options, so here’s my answer for you, my love.

Since you’ve never started a business before, but, based on how you’re talking about it and how excited you get and, oh, my goodness, you have so many ideas and you’ve been talking about this for years, part of what the challenge is for you, I don’t think you have a group of friends or any type of structure to help you actually start a business. It’s like thinking, “Oh, my goodness, I really want to learn how to dance,” or, “I really want to play a particular sport,” but it feels so overwhelming. If you’ve never actually done it before or if you don’t have a bunch of people who are really experienced in that kind of dance or playing that particular sport, it’s just all overwhelming, and then so all you do is spend all day thinking like, “Why am I not confident enough to just start?” or, “How do I get started?” and, obviously, starting a business is a little different because there are financial implications. There are implications around scarcity and survival and your career and your identity and all these things, so here’s my recommendation.

Girl, you need some structure and you need a community, so, obviously, I don’t know how long you’ve been engaging with our work, but we have a program called B-School that, if it’s the right fit for you, you should join the next time it comes around, but even if that’s not right for you, we need to get you into an environment and get you some structure so that you can take all these beautiful ideas that you have and start putting them through some tests so that you can validate and understand which of these ideas has the most, highest chance for success and which doesn’t. How can I dip my toe in the water and start testing ideas even before I want to leave my job?

By the way, one of the things that you might have found out from watching some of our past shows with MarieTV, I’m really not a huge fan, for most people, of just quitting their full-time job and starting a business unless they are just so clear internally and externally that this is what they must do. In fact, there are some studies out there that say we’re actually 33% less likely to fail if we keep our full-time job and we start a business on the side, so there’s some research to back up the slow and steady approach, but, most importantly, I think you need structure and you need community.

It’s so much easier to enter a new world when you have other people to talk to, other people that are on the path that have either done it before or they’re doing it now, people that you can connect with and that can share the journey with you, so, again, I’ll invite you to take a look at B-School whenever that’s available next, but there could be local programs that you can find, other opportunities to get yourself around an entrepreneurial environment and then some type of commitment where you can put some skin in the game, which is why I like B-School, so that you got a reason to show up, so that you have something that can help you take these beautiful ideas that are in your mind and actually put them into practice and start actually seeing results.

Clarity comes from engagement, not thought. Is this idea going to work? Let’s test it. Let’s find out, and, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean you’re a failure, you’re not supposed to be an entrepreneur. It just may mean you had the wrong idea or the wrong market picked out, all kinds of good stuff, but that’s my suggestion for you. I don’t think you should focus on trying to build your confidence or trying to learn how to take better risks. I think you need to get yourself some structure and a community, and that’ll handle 90% of it.

Ralitsa:
Yeah, I think that’s very important, and I’ve always felt that, because I live in London, and London is really easy, there are so many different events that I can participate in that are actually just much more like into entrepreneurship and business-building, and I just… I don’t know if it’s an excuse or it’s just that I can’t find the time to get, but, yeah, I think you’re very right that I just need to start talking with different people and this will build a lot and make myself more clear about what’s going on around and… Yeah.

Marie Forleo:
That’s right, and you mentioned something. I don’t know if it’s an excuse. One of the ideas I live my life by, if it’s important to me, I’ll make the time. If not, I’ll make an excuse, and one of the ways that we know what’s really important in our lives is actually how we’re spending our time, so, without judgment or without self-beration, you might want to just take a look at your calendar and see how much time am I devoting to this entrepreneurship thing that I say is so important to me, and if you find that it’s little to none besides just talking to yourself about it in your mind, you might want to take a step back and go is it really that important to me, and, if so, I need to start aligning what I say is important with my actions in the real world on a consistent basis, and, by the way, if it’s not what you want to do anymore, that’s cool, too. Entrepreneurship is amazing, but it’s not for everyone. What is important is that you know it’s important to you and that you’re spending your time and your energy every single day in alignment with your dreams.

Ralitsa:
Yeah. Thank you very much. That was so helpful and completely changed the way I see things, and I’m not just saying it just because it’s you. It honestly just changes completely the way I see things.

Marie Forleo:
Good.

Ralitsa:
Thank you very much.

Marie Forleo:
You’re so welcome. Keep us posted, and we’ll be here for you. We’ll be here to support you. We’d love to hear how it’s coming along on your journey.

Ralitsa:
Thank you very much. Thank you, and I wish you all the best.

Marie Forleo:
Yes. Bye, Rali.

Ralitsa:
Bye. Bye. Thank you. Bye.

Marie Forleo:
She’s so sweet.

Gregory Patterson:
I also agree with her because the first thing that when I heard that, I was like, “Oh, she needs to do some estimable acts and build her confidence up, so I love that you offered the exact flip-side to that, because when I struggle with that personally, I’m like, okay, if I’m feeling lackluster and my confidence has subsided or faded away, maybe I need to be doing some things that are going to build my-

Marie Forleo:
Boost it?

Gregory Patterson:
Boost it a little bit, but your take on that of surrounding yourself and establishing community and structure is something I’ve never thought about, and I’m like, wow, imagine all these ideas floating in my head. If I just had a friend or a community to just throw them out to and hear them back, imagine what could be possible after that.

Marie Forleo:
I think what’s really cool, and I always go back to fitness analogies because I feel like they’re very applicable to almost every area of our life, you can be like, “Oh, I’m going to do workout today,” and, yeah, you could do it from your house, but, the moment you put yourself in a group fitness class and there’s all these other people around and there’s an instructor that’s taking you through specific steps, you’re like, “Oh, I can do this,” all of a sudden. Rather than doing a 15-minute shitty workout, you’re doing this hour-long thing that, yeah, you might be out of breath, but you’re like, “Oh, my God, I did it,” so the power of community and the power of surrounding ourselves and having some kind of structure, again, for Rali, if you’re still listening or even for you, it’s like that’s why I created B-School, because people need something that step-by-step.

Again, if you’re not into B-School, cool, but you can find another program that actually teaches you the baselines of business so you understand how to think about it, what you need to test, the things you need to do first, second, third and fourth to give yourself the highest chances of success. No one has a business crystal ball. No one can predict what’s going to work and what’s not going to work, but there are timeless principles that, if you follow them, you’re going to give yourself a much higher success rate than if you don’t.

Hey! Are you ready to bring your dream business to life? Is it finally time to make the difference YOU were born to make? GOOD!! Because we can help. Get started now at JoinBSchool.com.