“Playing” entrepreneur

Here is a story of my friend in US who was two years in “playing” entrepreneur and failing. I want to share exactly how he wasted money/time so you can avoid the pitfalls that he succumbed to:

Here’s what he did to guarantee wasting two years and money.

• Form an Llc before you have paying customers $500 + 4 hours
• Hire someone on elance to conduct industry research: $450 + 2 hours
• Build a killer website: $2,000 + 2 weeks of tuning
• Design and order business cards: $50 + 2 hours
• Order checks $100 + 1 hour
• Order envelopes $75 + 1 hour
• Buy (and laborious research) tax, accounting app $200 + 8 hours
• Open a bank account $0 + 2 hours
• Get an EIN $25 + 1 hour
• Hire an accountant to do taxes $250 + 4 hours
• Get a merchant account $0 + 1 hour
• Buy some BS courses $500 + 2 weeks
• Download tons of free content and consume it in the car, at night and any other downtime $0 + 6 months

Total time wasted: Over 6 months
Total money wasted: $4,150

What if he would have invested all of this time and money in doing just one simple thing that actually moved the needle vs made him feel like he was running a business?

Game of playing entrepreneurship over… after spending so much time and money he has finally realized what he was doing wrong and have killed the inner wanna be. He learnt the lesson hard way and have sorted the priorities now. Putting all the efforts in tasks which will take him closer to that first sale.

I hope I saved someone else some time and/or money 🙂