NOW! Start Your New Business Now!
"Beginning is half done"! I heard that decades ago in a book, workshop, or from a speaker. Don't remember which. It was true then and it's true now. And the reason we need to hear these phrases and admonitions is most of us don't do what we say we need to do, want to do or wish we could do. How about you? Are you taking action on all the specific steps needed for you to achieve your goals? Today? Every day?... Me either.
But I also heard another phrase, "progress not perfection". I like that one. As long as we are making progress we can be assured that each day we are closer to achieving our goals, desires, and dreams. But how fast and consistently are we moving and is it fast enough?
Well let me share my story. What was the key or keys to making things work out for me? Well the answer was I just started.
For as long as I can remember I've been engaged in a journey of discovering what I wanted to do when I grew up. And I'm still on that journey. I've always known I loved the creative or building process. Made tree houses and forts as a kid growing up in Redlands California. Then after discovering clay and the potters wheel in 7th grade I knew that I was on to something. These first art classes were the first times I ever got A's in school, (hated school mostly). Then after graduating from high school...barely, (had to go back to summer school while everyone else in my class moved on to college or a job, to get enough credits to get my diploma) my Uncle asked me if I wanted to start working in the little dental lab he had in the back of his office. I had been working as a laborer and had quickly discovered that labor was not the ultimate career path for me so I said sure. Sounds good.
This began a thirteen and a half year career were I started out knowing nothing to becoming senior lab technician. But during this entire time I was continuing my quest to discover what I wanted to be when I grew up. I started learning about photography, set up a pottery studio in my moms garage, as well as started reading and learning all I could about success, motivation, human behavior and what make us all tick.
As I gained more knowledge I also started businesses. First with photography then multilevel marketing with different products or services, (learned the challenges that go with those types of businesses), and eventually sand sculpture. I became a sales representative and sculptor for a new company before going off on my own. My company, The Sand Sculpture Coalition, was my first truly successful business earning tens of thousands of dollars and a down payment on my family's first home.
I then needed to switch to a different business when I discovered that sand sculpture involved too much travel away from my wife and two young sons. Building ponds and water features looked like something I would find interesting, creative and didn't need to travel to do so I dove in. I started to study fake rock and water feature design and construction as well.
But what was underneath all of this journey and the key to my success was simply continuing to "start". Start and continue to learn how to make things. How to market things? How to meet the needs of others? How to get them what THEY wanted? How to talk to people in ways that helped them feel more comfortable with me and what I was offering. How to ask questions so I could understand what their interest were. AND what were the changes I needed to make inside myself that would allow and facilitate my success. Cuz it does start, as I've said, with how we think inside and THEN act outside. We must START and continue thinking and believing that you and I deserve a shot at success, and have the abilities or could learn what's needed to get where we want to go.
I heard another quote once which read "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again". I can attest to this truth as I would never have achieved any of my successes had I not tried. Had I not started. Thus if you haven't begun your new business it's time for you to START. And NOW'S the time.
- Mr. Dave
PS: I will speak of some of the actual steps I have taken that helped me achieve my successes in future blogs. And also some of my failures which taught me even more than my successes.