Page 218 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

founder of a Denver food tour business, puts it:

The biggest lesson I learned was to trust my own judgment. When I started
my tour business, I got all sorts of advice from people around me, ranging
from why it wouldn’t work at all to how things should be run on a day-to-
day basis. I had researched it and knew it was a viable idea, so I decided to
keep my own counsel and quit asking people what they thought.

People who know less about the business than me do not get to make
decisions about it. I value input, but now I seek it out from people who have
unique perspectives about how I can improve.

Sometimes the best advice is none at all. If you know what you need to do, the
next step is simply to do it. Stop waiting. Start taking action.

What Are We Afraid Of?

Toward the end of many follow-up discussions with most of the business owners
profiled in the book, I asked about their biggest fears, worries, or concerns. All
these people had been successful, earning at least $50,000 a year from their
projects (many were earning much more), but what were they worried about?
What kept them up at night?

Their concerns fit into two broad areas: external and internal. External
concerns tended to relate to money and a changing marketplace. For example, a
few businesses had been created to exploit imbalances in technology. These
projects can be very profitable for a time, but when the music stops playing, the
ride is over. A business that grows primarily from strong Google rankings or
good placement in the iTunes store (“favored by the gods of Apple,” as one
person put it) is in danger of losing it all if fortunes change. Scott McMurren,
who published the Alaska coupon books, said he was closely watching the
online coupon craze, considering ways to update the business to be more digital-
friendly.

The role of competition was mentioned frequently, although in very different
ways. Several people said they weren’t worried about what other businesses
were doing, because they found it more productive to keep moving forward with
their own original work. Others did worry, especially about building something
unique only to see it copied or “stolen” by a more established company.