Tips to avoid Startup Business

3 Biggest Mental Mistakes To Avoid When Starting Your First Business Startup

Mark Cuban is one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and this is his number one advice to anyone considering building their own business:

“Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.”

I wasn’t “obsessed” enough with my business. I love the mission and I believe in the value it contributes to the world. But with time, I’ve come to realize that my true passion, purpose, and conviction lies more in building a writing business and less in building an e-commerce one.

Obsession is defined as “an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind.”

Obsession is an unparalleled devotion to your business. If your current business isn’t, then you’re in the wrong business. And whatever idea or thought continually intrudes and consumes your mind — that’s the business you should be in.

In a recent article by Megan Holstein, she writes how she made $8,000 on Medium in one month. This is what she wrote:

“What I’m saying is, the answer to the question of “How I Made $8,000 on Medium in One Month” is this: I was willing to write three to five articles a week, every week, for two years, even when I wasn’t making much money at all.”

Three to five articles a week. Every week. For two years. That’s how obsessed you have to be. In fact, she goes on to say this:

“What made this possible for me was that I gave myself no other option.”

Obsession means wanting it SO bad that you give yourself no other option — no exit strategy. And when you’re obsessed, you’re not motivated by the result, you’re motivated by the process. And as we know:

“Greatness is in the process, not the result.”

This is why Mark Cuban said — and I preach — “don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love.” Because it’s going to take sweat, energy, and tears for you to make it happen. It’s going to cost you twice as much as you had planned and it will take twice as long as you had imagined.

The true cost of building your own business is that you have to show up to do the work every single day — for years — regardless of whether you feel like it or not. That’s why you should only do something you are truly obsessed with.

Regardless of what it is, success arrives when you study and build yourself a detailed plan of action, you shift your identity from amateur to pro so you can start thinking and acting like a pro, and you give yourself no other option but to be obsessed — to show up every single day and put in the work.