It’s Okay To Ask For Help When Starting a Business
Starting a business can be an extraordinarily exciting, yet daunting experience and the need for peer to peer support is greater than ever…
One morning, a boy was playing in his sandbox with his box of cars and trucks, his plastic pail, and a shiny, red plastic shovel. In the process of creating roads and tunnels, he discovered a large rock in the middle of the sandbox and, with a little bit of struggle, he pushed and nudged the large rock across the sandbox by using his feet. However, when the boy got the rock to the edge of the sandbox, he found that he couldn’t roll it up and over the wall.
Determined, the boy shoved, pushed, and pried, but every time he thought he had made some progress, the rock tipped and then fell back into the sandbox.
All this time the boy’s father watched from his living room window as the drama unfolded and, at the moment his tears fell, a large shadow fell across the boy and the sandbox.
Gently, but firmly, the father said, “Son, why didn’t you use all the strength that you had available?” Defeated, the boy sobbed back, “But I did, Daddy, I did! I used all the strength that I had!”
“No, son,” corrected the father kindly. “You didn’t use all the strength you had. You didn’t ask me.” and, with that, the father reached down, picked up the rock and removed it from the sandbox.
Starting a business is easy. Growing one is, without a doubt, much harder. For a start, every business owner is great at some things and less so at others. However, it’s often less about what you don’t know and more about what you don’t know you don’t know. Still with me?
Whatever stage you’re at, what is it that is stopping you from getting your rock over the wall? Is it that you don’t know who to ask? Is it pride? Fear of cost? Or maybe something else?
In 2015, over 600,000 businesses started up in the UK with even more likely to start up in 2016, and many of those new businesses will be sharing the exact same challenges and feeling the exact same frustrations as you.
There are 3 options to help you move your start-up rock:
- Start by searching out your local networking events, where you’ll find other business owners that have felt the exact same feelings as you.
- Spend a day working from one of your local coworking spaces, It’ll be full of people who are there to work for themselves, but not by themselves. Once you get chatting with them over a coffee or at the water cooler, you’ll be amazed how quickly your rock is removed and how much it will help both your businesses to grow.
- Get in touch. Either email me through my contact page, on Twitter or at Linkedin.
As an Helen Keller once wrote “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
Don’t fret about any aspect of starting a business. Millions of people have been through it. You just need to get out then and meet them…or me.
