By Jayson Orvis, to be published in early 2010
You belong to a cult.
You may not have shaved your head yet, but you’ve definitely been sipping the punch and probably trying to get your friends to join, too. Tragically, this cult has sapped a lot of life out of the American Dream for you.
It’s the Cult of Entrepreneurialism and it’s made it next to impossible for you to get your butt off the couch to start your business. If not for the Cult, you could take your place among the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have made jaw-dropping personal fortunes in this land of milk and honey by launching their own business.
But the brain-fog befuddles you because you don’t know where to start your new business and because you’re afraid of what you don’t know. You’ve become a zombie-eyed member of the sect that preaches that being an entrepreneur is complicated, expensive, and full of ritual. Those beliefs weren’t taught to you in business school, either. All you had to do was to catch an episode of Shark Tank, log on to the Small Business Administration website, watch a late-night infomercial or pick up just about any business magazine and, POOF!, you were converted.
The Cult has probably got you believing that you need startup capital, a business plan, or that you need to invent some cool product. And, that’s just the beginning of the brainwashing you’ve suffered.
I don’t know who masterminded it, but someone brainwashed us all and in the process wiped out a chunk of the American Dream. Maybe it was the big corporations. Maybe it was the business experts. Maybe it was the Beatles when you play their records backward.
Whoever it was, they ransacked the age-old piece of American wisdom that any one of us could plunk down a dollop of chutzpah and make a bunch of money by starting a small business. For hundreds of years in this country, fresh-from-the-boat immigrants stepped off the pier, made a bunch of hair ribbons or bicycle horns at a cost of fifty cents apiece, sold them for a dollar, parlayed that into a chain of convenience stores and sent their kids to private school.
What changed?? Why is it so much harder now?
NOTHING’S changed! It’s no harder now than it was then to start a business and make big money.
But we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that it’s hard to start a business. That’s all. The Cult has convinced us that there’s a laundry list of stuff that must be completed before we make a dime: brilliant idea, cool invention, logo, business cards, legal structure, patents, fax lines, websites, email addresses, business licenses, offices, uniforms, business plans, investors, partners, accountants, attorneys, agreements, Quickbooks, graphic design, meetings, etc., etc., etc.. We complicate the hell out of starting a small business when the formula has always been stunning in its simplicity:
1. Create value. 2. Get paid for it.
No start-up capital necessary. No brilliant, new business concept needed. No business expertise required. No business plan. No quippy name. No amazing logo. Just dig up a little “can-do” inside yourself and RADICALLY change your financial reality.
Shrug off the Cult. Shun complication. Embrace simplicity. Revel in common sense.
copyright 2009, Jayson Orvis
