1573: Why You Shouldn't Start A Business by Anthony Ongaro of Break The Twitch on Entrepreneurial Ventures

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Work Daily. Why You Shouldn't Start A Business by Anthony Ongaro of BreakTheTwitch.com. If you have a bunch of ideas for side hustles or businesses that you dream of starting, I'm hoping that by the end of this article, I can convince you not to start them. Of course, there are all the typical reasons why you shouldn't start a business, like at least 50% of businesses fail in the first five years.

[00:00:26] If your business fails, it's very personal and very public, and it's a ton of work and can take several to 10 years to find any kind of success. But there's an even better reason why you shouldn't start a business. It's a huge waste of time and money. Now, before you get all up in arms, if you haven't already, and call me a hypocrite, allow me to explain exactly what I mean.

[00:00:48] Over the weekend, I spoke about practicing mindful habits at Still Kickin' IRL, which is a wonderful retreat put on by Nora McInerney and team in six-foot-high snow piles, Finland, Minnesota. It was at a nature lodge with a taxidermied wolf, and it didn't stop snowing the whole time we were there. Anyway, this week I ended up grabbing coffee with a quite lovely person I met at the conference, and he asked me this question.

[00:01:13] My girlfriend and I have a ton of great ideas for businesses to start, but we're struggling to figure out what kind of business structure it should have. What's better, an LLC, a non-profit, or what? We want to help people, but we're getting stuck figuring all this out. When I answered this question, I realized that I had never shared this advice with anyone before, which is why you're hearing it here now. Here was my answer. It absolutely does not matter what type of business you start.

[00:01:40] In fact, you should not start an actual business at all, non-profit or otherwise. Here's what you should do instead. Just start doing the thing that you want the business to do. Go out into the world, test and validate the ideas you have before ever creating a logo, opening a bank account, registering an LLC, or anything else. Sure, there will likely be some amount of financial investment to bring something big together, but not on any of the things I just mentioned. So, yes, I did lie a little bit.

[00:02:10] I really do think you should start a business, try a side hustle, or pursue a creative endeavor. But I also think you should wait as long as possible to turn it into something official. I hope you can learn from my pain. I have spent probably hundreds of hours of my life in my 20s registering business structures, creating logos, designing websites, buying domain names, and opening business bank accounts, only to never run a single dollar through those bank accounts, except for the monthly fees they charge me, of course.

[00:02:39] All of these steps, especially when taken very early on, are what I call a false first step. A false first step feels like you're making progress on building something, but you're really just spending money and burning time. If you want to start a business, go out and do the thing. Likely it will shift and change as you test, experiment, and learn new things. Figure out the business structure later. Open a bank account in the name of the business when you have a check from a client that you can't cash otherwise.

[00:03:09] Still Kicken, the now non-profit that hosted the event where I spoke last weekend, is a perfect example of this. Nora went through the horrible, difficult, terrible experience of losing her husband to a brain tumor. Out of that experience, she wanted to help other people going through difficult times in their lives. So she took the Still Kicken t-shirt design that her husband Aaron recreated and put it up for sale on a site that only required 12 sales total to have the shirt put into production.

[00:03:36] Well, over 400 of the t-shirts sold in the first round, and they gave the proceeds directly to what they now call their monthly Hero, someone going through something difficult and in need of a little help. There was no business structure, no LLC or non-profit, just an idea executed. Once it started to take off, a formalized structure did have to be created for it to make sense. It turns out, when you give away profits, whether personal or business, you still have to pay taxes on those profits.

[00:04:05] I can even use myself as an example. My wife Amy and I have been running our video production company and this blog, podcast, and YouTube channel full-time for over 16 months now. I started this blog itself more than 5 years ago, but we just registered an LLC, business bank account, and credit card for it just 2 months ago. I didn't have my current branding and logo for at least the first year of writing.

[00:04:29] The reality is that the business setup is simply a distraction from doing the thing you dream of doing, and I want you to do that thing. All of this is simply to say, yes, start the thing, try the idea, gather the people, create the movement, but don't bother starting a business, worrying about the business structure, or measuring how profitable it will be in the meantime. Create an event, sell tickets, make a t-shirt, raise awareness for something you believe in,

[00:04:57] and when people start asking when the next one is, run with it. It might not work right away, but that's okay. You'll learn from it, pivot, or move on to something else that may work better. In the meantime, at least you didn't waste a bunch of time and money creating a business, logo, website, or opening a bank account. By skipping the fluff, you have more time and resources to try and try again, or try something else entirely. And that's something you won't regret.

[00:05:27] You just listened to the post titled, Why You Shouldn't Start a Business, by Anthony Ungaro of BreakTheTwitch.com. And thank you to Anthony for letting us share his work today. He's a writer, filmmaker, and creator who writes about that twitch that you feel when you want to check your phone even though you just put it away. Years ago, he got tired of that twitch constantly pulling at him and started researching, experimenting, and documenting ways to minimize distractions, build better habits, and tap into flow.

[00:05:56] And he's regularly narrated over on Optimal Living Daily too, so if you like these topics, definitely check out that podcast too. You can also watch his TEDx talk as well as read more of his articles, watch his videos, and check out his podcast called BreakTheTwitch, all at BreakTheTwitch.com. And thanks again to Anthony for letting us share his work across all of our shows. And that's going to do it for today. I thank you so much for being here and listening all the way through, and I will be back with you tomorrow for the Tuesday Show, where your optimal life awaits. All right.