Lucas Edholm
Starting a Business
The Complete Guide to Planning, Launching, and Boosting the Success of Your Enterprise
Copyright 2022 by Lucas Edholm
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
First edition
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
Find out more at reedsy.com
Contents
I
Book 1: Thinking Like an Entrepreneur
The first step towards becoming a successful entrepreneur is possessing the right mindset. While often overlooked, this aspect is fundamental, and I am speaking based on my personal experience and that of many successful people I know.
Have you ever entertained the thought of starting your own business? If you were not successful so far, or you didnt even dare to try, ask yourself why. It may be that something is wrong with your approach. There are some additional hidden obstacles that you havent factored into the equation and are preventing you from unleashing your full potential. I will show you that what is holding you back resides in your own mind.
In the later sections of this book, you will find plenty of technical advice on how to start and run a business, as well as tips on how to make it long-lasting and profitable. Unfortunately, technical expertise is useless if it is not supported by the right mindset. Why? Because your actions are not just the result of conscious decisions and carefully thought-out plans. Most of your behaviors are driven by habits and deep-set ideas that live in your subconscious. Therefore, unless you radically change your mindset, you wont change the outcome of your performances, regardless of the amount of specific knowledge you acquire.
This truth is self-evident in other aspects of our life that have nothing to do with business. For instance, suppose that you are trying to lose weight. You know that you should stay away from ice cream and cheeseburgers, but will your actions be consistent with your thoughts? After all, you can feel how badly your body craves that junk food, which is what you have been devouring every single day for the past ten years. You can exercise restraint and fight against your instincts. But will you win that battle? The outcome is far from certain. As soon as you relax a bit, you risk relapsing into your previous negative behaviors. It is no mystery that the most successful diets are those that directly target your unhealthy relationship with food and aim at creating new healthier eating habits. Learning every detail about calorie consumption and nutritional values doesnt really help unless it is accompanied by a radical change in your attitude and habits regarding food.
Back to our original question: why are you having such a hard time being successful with your business projects or even finding the resolution to start them? Because in the same way in which your taste for fats and sugars, together with your bad habits, lead you to junk food, your behaviors are guided by negative beliefs that reside in your subconscious. These beliefs are the result of environmental influences, and you may even be totally unaware of having them.
Unless you change those core beliefs, you wont achieve long-lasting results. You may try to act on your newly acquired technical knowledge, enforcing its teachings by sheer willpower. However, if you havent changed your mindset, you will constantly be fighting against your impulses, like a starving person in front of a hot dog stand.
There is a high chance that, deep in your subconscious mind, there are negative ideas that are influencing your actions. They tell you that it is useless even to try since it is impossible that you will succeed. If you dont get rid of those beliefs, you will always fall short of your ambitions. Building the right mindset for success is the goal of this section of the book.
2
The Core Beliefs that Are Holding You Back
What are core beliefs? They are deeply ingrained ideas about yourself, other people, and the world in general, which govern the way you think and act. Being buried in your subconscious, you are often completely unaware of them.
Core beliefs are the result of what you absorbed from your parents and other significant people in your life, as well as from your other life experiences. For most core beliefs, especially those formed during childhood, you never actively choose to believe in them. They were simply planted in your mind through the constant repetition of certain messages.
As a child, you didnt have the mental capacity to evaluate the core beliefs that you were developing and to assess whether you wanted them or not. Now its different. You are an adult and therefore have the tools to look inside yourself and become aware of the core beliefs that are driving your behaviors.
Some core beliefs are positive and make your life easier. Here we are concerned with exposing the negative ones, especially those that are preventing you from being successful as an entrepreneur. The following list describes the most common ones.
Negative Core Belief #1: The majority counts.
You keep hearing that most businesses arent successful. A whopping 95% of them fail after just a few years. These numbers are real. You might not have realized it yet, but these statistics about what happens to the average and the majority have become one of the main reasons why you are giving up without even trying.
You are driven by your deep-set belief that you cant escape the fate of the majority. Are you still asking questions like the following?
- Why shouldnt those data apply to me?
- How come I should be able to perform differently?
- Are you saying that Im special, that Im better than my peers?
Such questions just prove how difficult it is to eradicate the belief that the majority counts. Unfortunately, most people succumb to the influence of society and never develop the right mindset to succeed. You can be part of the successful minority, and you will be if only you reset your core beliefs.
Negative Core Belief #2: Fear of criticism.
Have you ever abandoned or changed your plans because you were afraid of what other people might have thought or said? Maybe even now, you have some business ideas, but you dont feel so confident. You are reluctant to talk about them, even to your friends or family members, because you cannot imagine how they will react. Will they say you are crazy, arrogant, and delusional? Will they be angry, amused, or scornful? You probably dont even want to know. Whatever reaction they will display, there is a high chance that they wont share your enthusiasm and that you wont get the support you wish.
It is very common, especially among young people, to be deep inside afraid of success. Your mind wonders what will happen in case your business takes off and you start making money. How will that be seen in your community? What will your family members or friends say? Will they envy you? Will they change their attitude towards you? Or, even worse, will they blame you and despise you for your accomplishments?
You probably wish you could find a way to be successful without stepping on anyones toes. You wish you could run ahead, but discreetly, without making others feel as if they have been left behind. It is painful for you to cause envy or resentment in your friends, family members, or other people that are close to you. You are afraid that they wont share your ambitions and that they wont understand or support your projects.
Next page