To this day, I remember vividly when I made the decision to take that leap.

To take a leap and start a business.

I was all talk back then, but slowly over time I started to treat my business as something serious. I started to give a shit and take action.

As much as it is scary to take that leap, I am thankful that I went through with it.

Because starting a business has helped me tremendously in understanding myself.

It’s for this reason why I harp on people to start a side-hustle or a full fledged business. There are many reasons to starting one. Below are but a few of those reasons.

You Acquire New Skills And Habits

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston S. Churchill

I’ve already talked about with hustling you are on your own when you start a business. Some times you may have a partner helping you out, but for the most part you are entirely on your own.

It’s at this stage where you recognize and develop habits and skills that you otherwise didn’t have. The big reason for that is because you are on your own and you have to wear multiple hats.

Since your businesses survival is based on your skills, you need to learn quickly and develop the right kind of habits.

If you don’t, your business will not progress or crumble beneath you.

I of all people am quite familiar of that.

You Learn What You Like And Don’t Like Quickly

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” — Herman Melville

When you start off in business, you learn quickly what you enjoy and what you don’t enjoy. The same goes for what you are skilled at and what needs work. This is big as you don’t run into this in traditional jobs.

In day jobs you work on a specific task and don’t deviate much from that point.

For this reason you don’t know what you like and don’t like until you are forced in a situation where you have to do different things.

Like starting a business.

From there you can learn what you will do yourself and what will get delegated as soon as possible.

But this also underlies another layer of yourself that you didn’t realize before. It wouldn’t be brought up if you were someone who dwelled in mediocrity and never did anything ambitious.

You Start To Think Critically And Realistically

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” — Henry David Thoreau

The truth is staring a business is one of the toughest things in the world. Part that being people are so used to living in mediocrity. Or they may pull one of these excuses.

It’s not for every person. I get that.

Network marketing pitches make it sound easy, but under those carefully placed sales pitches is the reality that you need to work hard.

Some people can handle that. Others can’t once reality sinks in.

They would rather throw their hands in the air and go somewhere else.

But in order to succeed you need to start knocking on that door of opportunity. You have to do that again and again. Perhaps to the point that your knuckles are bleeding from all that damn knocking.

But it will open up.

Once you get past that initial euphoria, and realize you need to put serious effort, you begin to look at things critically.

You start to think starting a business is great, but also how you can make it work for you. That way you can use it as a tool to achieve your dreams. Not just visualize them on some board.

You begin to set goals that matter. Not to mention start thinking big and seeing that little side-hustle as a legit business, like these guys did.

It puts you in a whole other ball game than the average person you thought you deserved. But you deserve something greater. We both know that deep down.

Take The Leap

“Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” — Chris Grosser

Don’t be afraid to take that leap.

If you have an idea of a business, validate it with some research and then put it into action.

Life is meant to be filled with excitement and risks.

It’s where we truly learn about ourselves and grow ourselves.

Our life isn’t meant to be pristine and perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist. Instead life hurls us through the mud and we come out broken and worn out, but satisfied.

It’s for this reason starting a business can help in understanding you, but it’s also a valuable tool to upgrading your life too.

To your growth!

Eric S Burdon

This post is part of an 3 month writing challenge that I’m committing myself to. Every day for 3 months, I’ll be writing articles with specific criteria in mind. You can learn all about my reasoning as well as what that criteria is right here. This is 46 of 91 of this series.

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