I’ve been there. You have this itch to do something cool. You found out a pretty neat idea and you want to pursue it. All wise-man tell you to “Get out of the building” and validate with your potential customers problem you want to solve and furthermore your solution. You feel you are ready to take a deep dive and chase this new, beautiful venture… but are you really ready?
Your time is limited
It’s a fact. Some people try to prolong or even become immortal but let’s be honest — as of today the most inevitable fact is that we all gonna die. This means that our time is limited.
Waiting is the worse thing to do
Another simple fact is that although the time is limited it’s highly unknown to most of us how much time there is left. Whether it is 1 or 100 years it actually doesn’t matter. The fact is that you need to take care of your life today, because at some point you may be at the very end of your life waiting, and waiting for things to happen.
“Is this idea worth my time?”
This is actually the first question you should ask yourself. Is this new idea you are willing to pursue really worth you. I saw countless amounts of people not realising that simple truth. They jump on a ship called ‘new idea’ very fast and realise after a while that it takes extreme amount of time, commitment, it influences their relationship with people. What is very important is the relation between you and your idea. It has to be worth of your time to pursue it. You have to respect the only asset you truly own — your time and grant it carefully to activities that are truly valuable in short but also in long term.
“Can I afford pursuing it?”
This is the second most important question to ask before everything else. Is your financial situation stable enough? can you work part-time on this idea or will this hurt your family budget? Last but not least, is your partner fully supporting you in this startup journey? it’s extremely important to discuss this, make calculations, check your financial figures, define some plan how you will handle financial, emotional distress. Make sure that you are prepared for it.
“What are my weaknesses?”
This is the hardest question. We naturally tend to cover our weaknesses with excuses. We blame others for our own failures which makes it very hard to discover the actual truth. The same was with me. A year before I quit my job I asked my wife to prepare a SWOT analysis of me. She wrote really kind words, but also in her very polite and delicate matter she opened my eyes on my weaknesses. I didn’t really accept it back then. I thought that weaknesses mentioned by her were not really crucial and for sure should not influence my decisions on what and how to pursue. I was wrong. All of it came back to me and hit with double force. You need to ask your friends, your partner what are your weaknesses, you have to realise that they will not vanish just like that. They in most cases will be the biggest challenge in your startup life. Ability to cope with your own strong and weak sides, being very honest about then with you and others, finding people who can complete you is by far the most crucial skill of any entrepreneur.
