How to Kill Your Company … Before You Launch

There are a lot of things you can do to damage your brand before you launch your company, but there’s one thing in particular that actually prevents you from moving forward.

Reading too much, doing too little.

Stop reading so much material on how to start a company …

The idea that reading too much can actually be a bad thing is hard for me to believe, because I love to read. It’s the easiest way to expand your mind. However, I’ve fallen victim to this trap before when first becoming interested in writing, so I know how dangerous this can be first hand. Whether you’re interested in writing, blogging, entrepreneurship, or anything between, you’re at risk of falling into this trap.

How dangerous is the trap?

Very — If you don’t get started, then your company will never come to fruition. No one is going to start your company for you. You’re killing it.

You don’t need to know everything about entrepreneurship to get started. Do what everyone else does: learn as you go.

Don’t Just Read About It

I spent all of my free time reading about writing instead of actually writing. While this gave me the foundation needed to approach the craft, it also prevented me from learning from experience, which is the purest way to truly understand. When I finally began writing, I began learning differently … I began learning more.

Study the theory to build a foundation, and then build on top of it with your experience.

Learn from Experience

I was an awful student growing up … like, really bad. It’s not that I didn’t have the capacity to learn or understand, it’s that I wasn’t interested and like most schools, the education rarely went beyond reading material from a outdated text book, doing homework, and testing. If you do really well … your teacher gets a bonus and you get to forget everything you learned.

What I remember from school nearly always involves projects, experiments, and other activities I actually did … not what I read.

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
– Benjamin Franklin

I can’t tell you how much material I read on writing, but I can tell you that my style and voice came from the actual act of writing.

The More You Fail, The More You Learn

As it turns out, failure actually is an option.

“Nothing is too small. I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success!”
– Bram Stoker

If launching your company is symbolized by a green light and reading how to launch your company is stymbolized by a red light, and you spend too much time

Let’s play an old game we’ve all played before … only this time, red light symbolizes reading how to launch your business, and green light symbolizes actually launching your company.

There’s one rule: It takes a looooooong time to get a green light.

Sound fun?

Nope.

Warning: Entrepredetour Ahead

You’re at an intersection waiting for a red light … It’s taking forever.

What do you do?

If you’re like most, you’ll probably make a right turn and find a way around the light. In other words, if you don’t get a green light quickly, you run the risk of detouring away from your original interest. This happens often when people have an idea for a company or product, they begin studying entrepreneurship, branding, and everything between, only to lose interest for their original inspiration.

Put the Book Down and Do Something

Reading is easy.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to do the hard work. You need to get started as soon as possible, because the earlier you start, the more you will learn.

Do you find yourself reading book after book even though you’ve acquired a solid foundation of understanding?

Image by Ed Townend