Busting 3 Modern Day Myths About Starting A Business (Social Media Fuels These)

You’re desperate for freedom. Perhaps you absolutely hate your day job and get a knot in your stomach just thinking about tomorrow or maybe you just long for riches and to never be broke again?

You also know that starting and growing a successful business is one of the main ways that people achieve these things. But what do you do? Where do you start?

Social media nowadays is awash with bullshit and people playing the ‘fake it until you make it’ game and you get people peddling tons of myths at you about what you need to do to start a successful business. People who often haven’t done a dam thing.

Well recently I’ve noticed a few huge myths that I want to clarify with the hope of making the daunting task of starting your business, seem a little less daunting.

Disclaimer: I’m not saying it will be easy because it won’t. I’m just saying you need to start and I think these myths hold people back from starting. So without further ado, here’s what I’m talking about…

Myth #1. You need to personally be part of your brand and take center stage

The perception nowadays is that to be a successful business owner, you need to be part of the brand and promoting yourself all over social media. I think this myth has come about because you only see the successful people that DO, do this. The successful people that are not a key part of the brand… no surprise… you don’t see them because they don’t associate themselves with the brand in any big way.

Yes you will probably be able to find out which company they founded or are part of and there might be the odd article, but they are not ‘part’ of the brand or to put it another way they are not front and center stage in their business. The brand itself takes the spotlight.

If you would prefer to take a back seat and stay out of the limelight, that’t totally cool and in the long run it could actually be better. If your personal brand is too entangled in your commercial brand, then if you ever came to sell the business, you might have issues or at least the issues in value because if you left, it could really hurt the brand with you being such as key part of it.

A Skoda advert captured this perfectly (love this!):

For every social media success celebrity, there’s someone else equally as successful who doesn’t make themselves part of the brand front and center. It’s just you only see the people that do.

Myth #2. You need to be passionate about the niche or industry

OK, it will certainly help if you are passionate about the actual industry… hence the influx of fashion, fitness and lifestyle wannabe bloggers, social media people and newbie ecommerce stores.

Do you think everyone that owns a successful business in all areas of life are super passionate about the industry? No of course not or else we’d be short of great products and services in loads of areas of our lives.

Most successful businesses were started by people later in life (30s, 40s and 50s), despite what the media might portray with the stories of 21 year old’s who have achieved ‘overnight success’. The people often start businesses based on their experience because they have been in the industry long enough to see problems that they think they can provide a solution to or they see things that can be done different or better. They are not always ‘passionate’ about the industry but they ARE passionate about solving the problem.

That’s the key difference that usually gets left out. You need to be passionate about the problem and the opportunity but NOT the actual industry.

Seth Godin and Grant Cardone have both mentioned this one.

Myth #3. You need to have a fantastic idea and start big

The reality is your first idea, product and/or service is probably not that great. You probably also lack the skills and experience to ‘start big’. I think a large number of people start with a very average idea and start small.

The idea gets refined over time as learning happens and over time it turns into a great idea. You only need to look at how Facebook started to where it is now to see proof of this and Amazon started off as a book store.

The main takeaway from all of this?

Just bloody start! You’ll make mistakes, you’ll probably lose a few times… but you’ll learn and improve and develop skills over time and get better and better. It might take years but it’s a game of inches and in order to win the game you’ve got to step onto the field and start.