If you are going to ever read this post, you might as well read it now. Not read two paragraphs then say you will complete the rest of it tomorrow. No. You might as well read the whole damn post now, and complete it.
The difference between most (or nearly all) successful people and ordinary people is that the latter spend lots of their time and energy thinking about doing something, deciding on whether to do something or not, figuring out how to begin, worrying how it will work out and filling their minds with dozens of questions they may never get to the point of answering them. Did I lose you?
Let’s look at a practical example.
The only thing you need to absolutely know is the location of the Library – Albert Einstein.
Jane Doe and John Doe both work for a large multi -national and decide they have acquired a great deal of experience and are professionally mature enough to start their own entrepreneurial ventures. Take note of the word Decide. Jane Doe is passionate about starting her own cloth line while John Doe has a thing for photography.
Jane Doe goes online. She looks through the wholesale costs of ladies wear, men wear and kids wear. She learns that men wear is the most expensive of all. She wonders why. She digs deeper and learns that the cost of production for men wear is higher compared to the cost of production for ladies wear and children wear combined. This interests her. She grabs a calculator and punches some numbers. She thinks, “If I’m able to reduce the cost of production for men wear by say 50%, I will still sell at the market rate and make twice as much profit as the current retailers.”
Jane continues to think, “So, what would I need to reduce the cost of production? Uuuhm, let me look at the bulk of the production costs. Import Duty! There! If I produce locally, I will pay zero import duty and cut my costs by half!”
Jane is on fire! She asks her friend (The Internet) what she requires to start a Cloth Manufacturing Plant. 1 machine. 5 Operational members of Staff. 2 Sales persons. A driver and a Store keeper.
Hmmm. Interesting. Jane asks her friend to refer her to the best Apparel Manufacturing Plants from China. She gets the costs and after carefully analysing them, she settles on one.She verifies the credibility of the company and makes the order. It will take three weeks for the machine to arrive. Fair enough.
Jane drafts a resignation letter with a one – month notice. She prints it out and places it on the HR’s desk. She then takes a day off and visits the local authority office. She asks what she requires to start an Apparel Manufacturing Factory. She is handed the documents and fills them, right there. She hands them over and on her way back, passes by a Hiring Agency. She asks to be referred to the best Plant Operations Machinery Personnel, the best sales persons a driver and a store keeper. . They say it will take a week. That’s okay. Jane goes home.
In a month’s time, the plant has arrived. Jane has received 25 names to choose from. She has interviewed 22 of them and settled on the best 5. She has hired them on a 6 months contract and the Chinese have taught the team how to operate the plant. They are ready to roll!
If you wait for when you are ready, absolutely ready, you will never begin.
John Doe is still sitted at his desk. He has this brilliant idea of how his studio will look like. He thinks about it every day. He has been told of some great Indian shop where they sell quality cameras at very good rates. He has always wanted to go there but it’s too far from the office and John Doe has been quite busy with his work. ‘That could be me. I will create time one day and go see this shop,’ he thinks to himself every time he sees someone with a camera.
The only way to find out if it will work out or not is to do it.
Fast forward three weeks later, Jane Doe is ready to dispatch her first consignment of Polo Shirts, Jeans and Khakhi Pants. She has received a few orders here and there and she is hopeful of many others. The cloths are of great quality but most of her customers are asking for Waist 35 while her bulk is Waist 32. Also, they prefer Short Sleeved Polo Shirts to Long Sleeved Ones. Me too. Long sleeved shirts are just more work to wash and iron.
Her production team is now producing more Size 35s and more Short Sleeved Polo shirts as her sales team is pushing to exhaust the consignment.
Meanwhile, John Doe is still looking for when he can create time to visit the Indian camera shop.
Fast forward three weeks later, Business is Booming for Jane Doe!
She has met this Arab guy who has a stall in the largest shopping mall in Dubai. He has really liked the material of the Polo Shirts and has asked Jane Doe to make Arab Kanzus in the exact meterial and he will buy 10,000 pieces at a wholesale rate of 20USD.
Jane now has to hire an expert in Research to figure out how Kanzus are made. She does just that. The guy does his thing. It will cost them 7 USD to produce one Kanzu. In two weeks, her 1000 kanzus will be ready and she will be 130,000 USD richer!
Meanwhile, John Doe is still painting castles in the air of how colourful his studio will be.
Coincidentally, Jane Doe requires to shoot professional photos of her cloths to intensify her Sales and Marketing Strategy. She places an ad on the paper. Photographer wanted.
John Doe buy the paper. He flips over and sees the ad. He thinks, “This should be me!”
As a matter of fact, that could just have been him, had he stopped thinking too hard about the kind of camera he needed and just grabbed any camera and began doing his photography thing!
But it wasn’t him, and it will never be him.
Are you a Jane or a John?
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