That lightbulb moment when you get a business idea can be so viscerally exciting that you have visions of success, stability, and all of your dreams coming true. But soon after, reality sets in and we realize we cannot give ourselves completely to it because we’ve got other more important things that need our attention, like our children. But this is where we have to think about setting up a business in the round and making it smoother and simpler. Here are some approaches to consider:
Think About the Big Things, Don’t Waste Your Time on the Small Things
When we start out, we feel like we need to give a huge amount of consideration to every finite component. Lots of people labor for days if not weeks over a business name. But instead, you can almost outsource this by using a business name generator so you can actually pay attention to the real things that matter. We have to remember the Pareto principle, where 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the effort. You need to think about those big things that will really matter a year or five years down the line, the rest will almost sort itself out.
Outsource Where You Can
We’ve already touched upon the idea of outsourcing and it’s a very popular notion and has been brought into the public consciousness through books like Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Work Week. As any budding entrepreneur with very little money, tools like ChatGPT can be invaluable here. What we have to remember is that we don’t rely on these AI tools to do everything for us. If you know how to prompt the platform with the right questions you could get really insightful answers. But you also need to think about what things can be outsourced at the embryonic stage. This can mean a bit of creative thinking, for example, if you need to spend your time typing out lots of documents to ensure that you are ready to develop your business plan, instead of sitting there at your computer typing for what could be hours on end, very simply record it into your phone and transcribe it later either by using transcribing software or voice recognition software that will turn it into text instantly. This can be an absolute lifesaver if you’ve got very little in the way of typing skills!
Don’t Set a Deadline So Soon
Deadlines are important and they will make us focus, but the biggest problem is when we set deadlines that are completely unreasonable to ourselves. We think that the pressure will bring about the results, but as a parent, it becomes a far more overwhelming task that can easily drain you of your resources. If you think you need to get something done in a matter of weeks but, as luck would have it, one of your children comes down with a sickness bug that puts you all out of action for a couple of weeks, you’re not going to hit that deadline. Make sure those deadlines are in place, but they are reasonable and fairer for you.