While starting a business is an admirable goal, before you begin the long process I urge you to look at your motivators. As someone who guides people toward financial freedom and business success, I’ve seen the long road to starting a business many times. My number one piece of advice? Figuring out what drives you towards your dream. To find out more about how to pursue your dream even when it’s difficult, read this entire lesson!
Starting a Business? Figure Out Your Motivators Before It’s Too Late
If someone told you right before you got out of the gate that 63% of all businesses fail within the first six years, would you still want to start a business?
That’s the figure according to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means most people stand a little bit better than a 50/50 chance of, at a minimum, staying above water. We’re not even talking about profitability!
Given that reality, it’s good to remind ourselves of why we want to start a business in the first place. Some people want to make more money. Others want to take better care of their family. Maybe they want to be a better provider, a better parent, or a better spouse. It could be about more freedom or more quality time.
Some people start a business because they believe it will give them greater security. They realize that working for somebody else and having someone else make fundamental economic decisions in their lives just doesn’t give them the kind of control they want. Starting a business for them means pursuing a whole different lifestyle.
These are all valid reasons. However, regardless of what your answer is, the same fundamental question remains: what’s so important about any of this? What’s really behind it all?
Looking at Your Own Motivators
I think when starting a business there’s an even bigger motivator than the ones I mentioned above at play. In addition to any of those aforementioned reasons, when pursuing entrepreneurship we are also fulfilling the our most basic creative impulse to grow something. We want to make something that didn’t exist before and nurture it as best we can.
Understanding this base desire is crucial to your business’s success. By realizing this greater motivator, you can keep morale up while trying to get your business up and running. To get past the first difficult years of a business’s lifespan, this isn’t and can’t just be about money. Yes, money can be a factor. After all, most of the reasons we discussed above revolve around financial freedom — which is a worthy pursuit. Still, you need this deeper desire to create if you want to succeed.
You also can’t ignore the maverick, individualistic impulse to do something different. Instead, give into it. When you build a business, go out there and learn something. Develop a unique core expertise, gain some experience, and build your business around that.
There are so many basic human elements to creating a business — freedom, accomplishment, care for others, individual expression — it makes you wonder how we could stand to live if we didn’t start our own business.
Finding Deeper Meaning
However, our reasons for starting a business better be more than just “success.” Even if you make it past that 63% mark, the bigger that you get, the more headaches come. Believe me, it only gets worse if you don’t know why you’re really doing this. If you don’t understand your motivation, you’ll never make it past that 63% mark.
This is the essence of what takes that 27% percent of successful business owners beyond those first six years. They realize that success is not just measured in numbers alone. Instead, they understand that success as a business owner entails reaching down into yourself, your creative spirit, and bringing that out into the world meaningfully. It’s as spiritual as it is material, and we’d all do better for ourselves and our impact on the world to honor that.
Now it’s your turn to share! What are your motivators for starting a business? Let us know in the comments below, so we can all learn from one another and grow our financial success.
For Your Freedom,
Understanding your motivators is a good start, but if you want to become a millionaire, you’ll need more than that. Do you want to know the key elements that made the biggest difference and had the highest impact on my business and financial life?
If so, join me on my web class, Zero To MultiMillionaire, where I will teach you six specific principles that make the biggest difference between getting rich and staying middle-class or broke.
UP NEXT: Maintain Personal Integrity in All Business Ventures
Maha says
I want financial freedom… I want to do what I want when I want the way I want.
Phyllis Roberto says
Why my own business…
I have an easy comfortable way of presenting myself that teaches through entertaining activities, insightful lessons, and personal experience that leads people to improve their own lives in directions they may not be aware are possible.
One of my favorite parts of motorcycle trips was that we would head out with a general direction in mind. Every time a stop was made, whether for gas, a meal or just to admire the view people approach you (personally I think it is because you are not locked behind a metal, glass and plastic bubble like you are in other passenger vehicles. Regardless…).
People always approached us either to talk about their dreams of riding or their adventures riding. Most often we would be given tips of spectacular motorcycle roads to take. We were never disappointed – and would not have likely found them on our own.
I want to be that person… the one who shows you a different road to take that you might not have noticed on your own… the road that can make your journey spectacular.
Chiegboka.Chinezelum says
My motivator is mainly to help humanity subdue the earth in general but fulfilling God’s demands of me in particular.