EP 168: Stop Waiting for It to Get Easier - Jim Palmer (author, entrepreneur)

Paper Napkin Wisdom

Small business marketing expert and entrepreneur Jim Palmer’s fifth book is entitled, “Stop waiting for it to get easier, create your dream business now!” The sentence explains itself. “There is no perfect time,” Jim says as he recounts his own experience: broke and heavily in debt, on unemployment for 15 months, suffering from a serious health issue. Jim started in a very low place, and he knows you should not wait for the time to be perfect to start your dream business.

“It’s bigger than yourself,” Jim says about the importance of creating your business. If you have an idea and the resources, you should go for what you believe you can do. Now. He makes the analogy of sand in the hourglass. Time is running out, so stop waiting and act!

Jim realizes that people are hungry for success, but you really can’t make your business successful immediately. It’s a time-consuming process, “like a pearl or stained glass, it doesn’t happen instantly,” he says. Everyone starts small and eventually they can reach their dream level. Nothing comes that easy. You have to strive to work hard to make your business a dream business.

He talks about ‘perfectionism’ - how people have the idea of having everything in a perfect way and doing everything at the perfect time. The idea of perfectionism Jim says, is a business killer: it kills momentum. Since you can’t always have the ideal time and the ideal business or the ideal workplace, this will always stop you from moving forward if you think things need to be perfect from the outset. Get over being a perfectionist, Jim advises. “Choose to be judged on the value of the content, information or service and not on the imperfect way you do it.”

Another factor to be successful at what you do? You consciously commit to stretching where you don’t want to go. “The top 1% learns to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Do the hard work others don’t do,” Jim says.

Swift decision-making is critical for success as well. Trusting your gut is one of the most important strategies that you need in your business. The main thing that you have to do is make a decision right when you are faced with a question or a problem. There is no maybe; there is no in between. What an entrepreneur needs to do is to decide with a firm yes or no. Jim explains that the ability to make decisions is like a muscle. The more you make decisions be they big or little, the more you strengthen your muscle. You are training yourself and getting better at deciding and acting effectively. And if the decision isn’t right, you can course correct.

Delegating is also something entrepreneurs or leaders have to learn to be successful. In a chapter entitled, “Delegate or stay small forever,” he explains that you need to hire smart, and train people into your culture. Then empower them to act. If you micromanage, your business can’t grow.

So act. Start that business. Make mistakes. Grow. Push yourself to realize your entrepreneurial dream.