Normal people will see a lot of obstacles preventing them from starting a business as real and unsurmountable obstacles. A successful person will look at it as just excuses which can easily be solved. Most of us, at one point in time, will have been approached before by friends and strangers alike as to whether we would like to invest in a business and more often than not, these are 5 reasons why we cannot.

  • No Money – this is one of the most common reasons we can think of that prevents us from starting our own business. We truly believe that it takes money to make money. Hey? But is that a fact? If we believe that, we must believe that all the rich people today must have inherited their wealth. We believe only the wealthy becomes wealthy. Where does that leave the normal average people like Bill Gates, Li Kha Shing, Ananda Khrisnan, who did not come from wealthy backgrounds at all. Ananda Khrisnan of Malaysia is really a typical Rags to Riches Billionaire. He was born to a Railway Clerk, staying in a place called Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur and this place is definitely not known for any rich man’s housing area. There are many more self made billionaires and millionaires than we can name. So, these people are evidence that it is not true that billionaires and millionaires are born. And there are many ways that one can make money with little or no money down, provided one asks.
  • No Time – This is another very real obstacle for many of us. We are so caught up with our work, cooking, running around and coming home to watch television with the family (we need to bond with our family) that we don’t really have any more time left. Let us pause for a minute there and consider how much time successful people have in a day? Do these people have families? Do these people not have to bring bread to the table to? No time is really a poor excuse for poor time management. If we can manage our time better and for a start, just put aside an hour a day for our business, that should not be that difficult.
  • No Knowledge – admittedly this could be a real obstacle, if one has to learn how to put a rocket up into space, build an electric train. However, when we start a business, normally it would be something which we are already familiar with or at least will not take much to read up or learn from others in the same business already. Businesses can be started up as a partnership, where we can leverage on the knowledge of others before we learn up the ropes.
  • No Network or Connection – Birds of a Feather, All Flock Together. There are lots of places where you can meet people and these days, we can also meet people virtually. The internet allows us to go into the relevant forums and meet like-minded people, who are perhaps looking for the same things in life. Hence, today, it is harder to keep one in isolation as we are being bombarded by people every which way.
  • No Idea – of all the obstacles, this must be one of the lamest one. The minute we open our eyes, ideas should be flashing in our minds. The alarm clock that gets us up, the breakfast on our table, the transport that takes us to work…..the list goes on. The newspapers with all its advertisements, the internet with endless websites. It is how we choose to look at a thing to see the opportunities that springs up from it. A person without ideas is a dead person.

After going through with this short list, are we still going to tell the next person who approaches us with a business opportunity the same excuses we’ve been giving all this while. Of course not. We will look at them in the eye and say,

“It does not take much money to start a business and setting aside an hour a day is not a problem. If you are willing to teach me, I am willing to learn. When do we go for our first seminar/meeting and I am already thinking of ideas how to move this business.”