Starting anything new can be scary.
Where do I begin?
What if it doesn’t work?
What if I fail?
What will other people think of this?
What will they think of me?
These are questions I hear far too often and the advice I give to people pretty much revolves around a few basic ideas:
- Just do it.
- Do it with awesome people.
- You’ll figure it out as you go because it’s impossible to have all the answers now.
- Don’t be afraid to fail.
- Don’t fear fear. It’s not a real thing, but rather just some imaginative idea of something bad that could happen, but hasn’t yet and may not ever happen.
- Scarier then failure is regret. Regret that you never tried in the first place.
When I was starting TULA and Troops many thought I was either joking or crazy…
You’re starting a beauty company?…..
You’re building AI for sales people?….
And now, other people are talking about them too….(images below)
Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield mentioning Troops in the Slack earnings call.
Ulta Beauty CEO Mary Dillon mentioning TULA in the ULTA earnings call.
It’s still early days for both companies, and I’m still very much in the “figure it out phase” but every once in a while those crazy ideas begin to look a lot less crazy as time goes on.
So for anyone out there thinking about their dreams of doing their own thing, whatever that may be….
Just do it.
You’ll figure it out as you go.
And if it doesn’t work out, well at least you tried and you’ll be thankful that you did in the first place.