The 4 questions you need to ask yourself before you start a business, a new venture or a new project
Entrepreneurship or business ownership is not for everybody, it has to be in your nature.
The toll and strain of the responsibility and intensity that it requires is everlasting and sometimes can be overwhelming. Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is extremely difficult and requires great forces to maintain. Your business will have no sleep, no days off and will always ask for more attention, just like a child.
Yet if it is burning in you, no one could stop you. If you are an entrepreneur, freelance or businessman/woman by nature, then just like me you couldn’t have it in any other way. So good luck to us all, dreamers. Be it your first dive into the creative world of the ones that make things happen or be it just another brick in your wall. I encourage you to go for it, to make it happen.
I also feel obliged to share with you a very crucial advice for your wellbeing: before you launch your new business venture, project or startup: Think hard, investigate and evaluate what are you going into from two very different aspects:
Business aspect – Obviously.
Personal aspect – Keep reading to learn more.
The business aspect I am not going to expand about this aspect in this article,.
The tools and data of how to evaluate your business idea are widely available and known (Business plan, SWOT, Whitepaper, the lean startup method...). You can also ask google, your entrepreneur friends or even contact me for guidance and advice.
The personal aspect is also crucial to the success of your project and to your actual life, health and wellbeing. Yet, it is often overlooked and forgotten through ambition, excitement, dreams, illusions and also as a result of the social pressure we get from our success-oriented society.
I have suffered and seen other colleagues suffer for years as a result of, not taking the personal aspect into account. This aspect is seldom talked about and there are very limited tools to help us to evaluate it. For example, you can ask google (as always) again: how would a business affect my life? And find some insights, but not many viable evaluation tools.
(a spoiler: this article or are destined to provide you such a tool and this video with some food for thought)
So here it is the tool I use, after 25 years of entrepreneurial good and bad experiences of starting new ventures, businesses and projects:
“The 4 questions you need to ask yourself before you start a new business”
A simple process of asking yourself four basic questions. A process designed to help you foresee the future impact of your planned action on yourself, your immediate environment and on your life in general.
Tip1: Before you start asking yourself and answering the questions, make sure you create the right environment to allow a non-bias process. Get out, breath, clear your mind, free yourself from duties and worries, give yourself space, time and peace in order to be able to dig deep into your mind, feelings and soul.
Tip2: Write it down. Put pen to paper. It is a magical way to materialize thoughts. Bring them from an abstract brain waveform to the clear reality of the written word. you can and should read it again later, feel it again. review, edit, add or erase.
Here are the four questions: oops can’t help myself throwing another tip…see at end of the article.
So without further ado:
1. Why do I want to do this?
Ammmm… good question. Not so simple if you really think about it and go deep into your own psyche, feelings or past… Is it because you don’t like your current situation and this is a way out? Is it a lifelong childhood dream? Are you trying to satisfy someone else is expectations? Is it the financial or social opportunity?
Try to find out what is the source of this will, what is the real motivation behind it.
2. What is it that I am going to do?
What is it? what role will I have? What tasks will I need to complete on a day to day level?
Is it something that suits my set of skills? My nature? Is it something I want to do? 3. What impact will it have on yourself and others?
Think what impact will it have on your working hours, workload, stress levels, location, health, hobbies, economic situation, relationships with friends and family.
3. How will it affect my future?
Make 1-year 3-year year 5-year projection of What your life will be like in:
An ideal situation
A Worst case scenario.
Think day to day, economics, relationships, obligations, vacations, family time, weekends, responsibilities… Don´t be shy dare to dream and also dare to think of how bad things can turn.
4. What impact will it have on others?
Tip3: I highly recommend you if you want to take your insights to another level to do the work by Byron Katie, to get some more clarity and further open your mind.
Final words of encouragement: Being an entrepreneur, realizing ideas and dreams into real life products or services is exciting, thrilling and highly rewarding activity. It is also very personal. as a founder, your company will reflect your vision, set of beliefs, values and will be an integral part of your life. It is also a very risky business and a rollercoaster way of life.
Therefore I encourage you to use any available tool that could help you make the right decisions, to prosper and be happy.
Good luck!