Let’s say you want to ride a bicycle but don’t know how yet.
- You can read every book ever written about riding a bike
- You can go to college and earn a degree in bicycle mechanics
- You can get coaching by the best cyclists in the world
- You can devour the internet for every aspect of a bicycle
After all that, there will still be things you just won’t know until you ride the bike yourself.
You will never be completely ready. I had read dozens of business books and autobiographies. I read print outs of business and entrepreneurship articles every single night for years. I took courses. Watched countless videos and interviews. Listened and talked to many smart entrepreneurs. There’s an endless amount of content out there all vying for your attention, so be careful not to fall into the dangerous trap of becoming stuck in the learning stage.
Our society extolls learning: “Knowledge is power!” But the most powerful or successful people are not the most knowledgeable people. Your success is not determined by how much you can consume, but by how much you can produce.
The only wish I have was having a coach or mentor while I was in the process of starting, but it’s hard for me to imagine how much more I could have possibly learned before becoming an entrepreneur.
Yet I still made many mistakes when I started my business. There were preventable mistakes I’m sure I read or heard about at some point, there were things that were just plain common sense, and things I never could have thought about. Many of the mistakes I made on the way were industry specific, topics that you’re probably not going to come across because of how niche and specific it is. You’d only know to learn about it while you are actively going through the problem.
You will make mistakes no matter how prepared you are, and that’s okay because you will learn new things for the first time by actually doing. But you can never be completely ready without going for it.
So get on the bike and start pedaling.
