Issue #50 Why you suck at building a business(and why that is a good thing)
My son applied to colleges this year. That meant writing the famous college application essay.
We met with his guidance counselor, who explained what the colleges want, and she ended with, “they don’t want you to write the essay the way you have been taught in school.”
Eh? So they teach you to write an essay to get into college and then tell you to do something completely different in order to get into college.
And that is why starting a business sucks.
First, some updates:
📡 How to use technology to scale your business, not work harder. Read more.
⚙️ Wait, why do I need a landing page? What is it again, what web pages do I need? Read more.
When you first start a business, it is all rainbows and unicorns.
There is a thrill to venturing out on your own. You feel free. You feel excited. You feel ready to tackle the world.
You set up your calendar and post-its, organize your pens, call everybody you know to tell them you are in business, and you get a few clients.
You get to work solving their problems, and life is great!

And then, you realize you have to find more work. But you still have to deliver results. But that is okay for now.
Maybe you hire somebody, but then you have to micromanage everything they do, and it is easier to do it yourself.
And all of the sudden, you see storm clouds instead of rainbows, and Voldemort is chasing the unicorns, and you realize: you are working more hours than before, earning less, and you kinda don’t like your boss.
Like the college essay, the problem is that all the stuff you learned is useless.
Well, sort of.
See, my son did learn grammar and spelling and how to express himself. That is all valuable stuff. He just had to learn something different to write a college application essay.
Through your career and education, you learned a lot of great stuff. You are great at solving the problem you solve.
As a result of everything you have learned you have a valuable solution to offer the world.
But none of that helps you build a business. You must learn the business part.
Without learning how to build a business, you end up on a rollercoaster, spinning faster, working harder, and never making any progress.
You will have good months and bad months, good years and bad years. Someone once told me, “that is the life of an MSP owner.”
No, it isn’t. It is the life of an MSP owner who never learned to build a business.
The good news: business building is the easy part.
You just need the tools, support, and accountability to do it. You are good at what you do, now you must build a business.
Check out our webinar on the three pieces of the business machine here. It will start you on the journey to creating a business machine that allows you to get everything you want out of life.
That is the point right?
Want some help with that?
Want help building your business? Why not try two free Thrivers meetings? Click here to get started.
Great stuff from around the web
- 📚 Innovative sounds: Spotify’s new “bookcast” concept, an immersive listening experience check it out.
- ♟ Game Theory: This is a nifty primer on games, trust, and well, why trust so often lets us down.
- 🧐 Interactive Netflix: The experiment continues, with a trivia-based show, isn’t the idea of TV to avoid work?
What do you think of this week’s report?
Next week I’ll be discussing everything you need to know to start a business. Let me know what resources we at Start Grow Manage can provide to you so that you can start, grow, and manage your business.
Jeff.