Use Your Filters When Starting Your New Business

by Brian Acord

We live in a time commonly known as the “Information Age.” Proof of the accurate name surrounds us. Consider the following:

• My radio currently receives over 40 channels

• If I am using my Sirius satellite radio, I can more than 300 channels

• My television gets over 30 channels

• If I am using my Satellite receiver, I can get thousands of channels.

• Think of the thousands of magazines in print as well as the thousands of newspapers that are all produced on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

• And that doesn’t include any of the information that can be found on the Internet.

How can our brains cope with this information? How is it possible to assimilate this much information on a regular basis? The answer is quite simple…we don’t. One of the most ingenious skills our brains employ is the ability to filter what is and isn’t important. We have become quite adept at ignoring information that we don’t need.

But sometimes, when we are dealing with something that is important, we force ourselves to try to absorb all of the related material. In trying to get up to speed by reading all of the latest information on a specific topic, we accidentally put our brain into an overloaded state. We become frantic, confused, and unable to move forward. In graduate school we called this state “paralysis by analysis.”

I have witnessed this unfortunate phenomenon in many entrepreneurs. They have heard how difficult it is to start a business. They become so overwhelmed by the many details that they don’t know where to begin and often find it impossible to move forward. Some of them stay like that for years and never actually get started.

Diagnosing this ailment is quite easy. If you are worried about how many pages your business plan should be, you’re infected. If your biggest task today is to try to find out if you need to apply for an EIN before or after you’ve applied for a Business License, you’re infected. If you are confused by whether your financial projections for the third year of business should be shown by month, quarter, or annual totals, you are infected.

Fortunately, there is a cure! - Brian’s Entrepreneurial Elixir is now available in stores near you.

You need to start using your filters. One of the most important filters you can begin applying is called Capitalism. Take a look at your incredibly long list of “to-do” items for today and ask yourself this simple question.

Which of these tasks is going to put money in my pocket today?

Like most entrepreneurs before you, your first task is to make sure that there will be a company tomorrow. (This is equally true for non-profits, by the way.)

That’s it. I am not going to detail all of the filters that you should be using on a daily basis. They will probably change far too often and will progress as your business steadily matures. But they should all pass through the profitability filter first.

Just to be clear, I am not advocating a Machiavellian scheme of lawlessness and or unprincipled ethics. You and your company must obey the law and abide by strict ethical standards. This is not a “profits at any cost” philosophy. I am also not saying that you shouldn’t apply for a business license and abide by any other guidelines designed for starting a new business.

However, you should first make sure you have a viable business before getting too far down the path of spending ten thousand dollars on marketing collateral, renting an office, or painting the corporate jet. If you have not yet proven that you can attract a client, provide needed goods and services, and get paid for it, you really don’t have a business yet and everything else is secondary.

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