In business there are 100 ways to solve a problem. There are 5,000,000 ways to make it worse.
An alien is stranded on earth. Arrived through a wormhole. Has no money. Needs to go to get food. Same diet as you and me.
“How do I get food?”
“Just go to the store?”
He goes, starts grabbing food, walks out. Gets arrested for theft.
He just did what he was told and hasn’t eaten.
His lawyer gets him out. He’s not an illegal alien as he didn’t cross the border.
He still hasn’t eaten.
“How do I get food?” He asks the kid on the street.
“Just go to 7/11. That’s what I do.”
He does.
He grabs food, starts to leave and is stopped by the guy at the counter.
“You have to pay for that.”
“How do I do that?”
“Cash or credit card.”
“How do I get that?”
“You have to have a job and earn it or get it from the government.”
“What is faster?”
“You from around here?”
“No.”
“Then you get a job.”
“Can I help you?”
“Sure.”
The alien works all day with the manager.
“Can I get money now?”
“We don’t get paid til Friday.”
“But I am hungry today.”
“I can loan you $5.”
He does and the alien eats his first meal on earth.
Then he has to start all over and come up with new strategies every single day until he gets paid. He has no place to sleep, no place to get water…
He is damn frustrated.
He survives the week and three weeks and within a few months and another alien comes through the wormhole and arrives at earth.
Goes into the 7/11. Asks the first alien for help.
The first alien is totally understanding and offers the alien a place to stay and loans him $5 for food. Shows him a store where he can go to get a job. Two weeks til payday. It ain’t easy being an alien.
There is a learning curve in every aspect of life. Shortening the learning curve is the ideal.
When you start in business after having had a “job” for 20 years you are an alien. People with jobs have no idea what having the responsibility of a small business is all about. People with jobs have no clue that their job is a gift. No one earns their job. They are given it and then don’t appreciate it. But because the boss can’t have you expanding your learning curve because learning is so time intensive, she must have you do the same thing every single day forever and ever. It’s not her fault. It’s the only way she can afford to keep the person employed and not cost her company a fortune at the same time.
When you start in business, everything is new. Everything. There is nothing in business that is hard to do. Everything in business has a learning curve that the mind of a person who has been in a “job” can’t wrap their mind around by themselves. It’s generally not possible.
When you start a business you learn you have 1000 things you have to do, and 75 things you must become competent at. The reason that people in business get paid so much is because they are so valuable. They know how to do everything because they have done it all before. The person at a job knows how to do 10 things and they do them every single day. It’s a horrible life but they never have to learn anything new which means they are never frustrated or overwhelmed with learning.
Once you go through a complete cycle of business, replicating it is not necessarily “easy” because you still have to learn new content but it’s MUCH easier than coming from a job where everything was simple. (Cycle = Start, earn, fail, earn again and more, start a new project.)
