No Shortcuts - Cash Money

The excitement of having an idea is awesome.  You get those thoughts of what it COULD be.  How much in sales can it get?  How quickly can we do this?  How cool would it be to run a successful business that YOU started?  

Looking back I am shocked that an educated person in his late 20's could just so easily think past all the pain, hard work, setbacks, money issues, production issues, shipping issues, etc, etc.  Those are the daily aspects of being an entrepreneur.  There is just no way around that.  None.

When we had the idea the next question was where do we get the money to even start this?  We all had debt from business school and I had no real savings due to a personal trauma that I'll address later in this blog.  So do we ask parents?  Ask rich friends?  See if we can find an angel investor online?  That seemed like the best (and easiest) route. 

We decided to suck it up and all put in $10K to get things going.  That was $10K that I really only had from student loans.  Many people will think, "wow, that is incredibly stupid"??  Why don't you ask for the money or just wait until you have it saved up?? 

I have seen that this fork in the road is what separates the herd.  The wannabes take the road of least resistance.  I'll just wait till later.  I'll just wait and save.  Once I get the money we'll just jump right back into it.  The punchline is that time often never arises again.  Enter:  Regret.  When will you have that team setup again?  When will you have the energy for the idea?  

This is a very subjective choice and is dependent on everyone's unique situation.  There are times when you should walk away from bad ideas.  There are other times you should jump in on a good idea even though not everything is lining up perfectly.  Only you can assess that. 

For me, the idea was solid.  I was single.  I didn't have a mortgage.  I was pretty much broke, but not having any major obligations was actually freedom.  Go time.  The only major hurdle was coming up with the cash.  In my mind I was young and if the business completely implodes I could recover.  

If you wait for the PERFECT time, then that will never happen.  I hear the excuse all the time that it just doesn't feel like the right time.  Sadly, it's never the right time.