The First Step to Starting a Successful Business

Have you ever dreamed of one day starting your own business and being the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg? If so, then you’ve probably had someone in your life try to tell you some statistic like half of all small businesses fail within the first year and 90% fail within the first 5 years.

Well, the Small Business Association has some “good” news, the rate has fallen to 30% of small businesses fail within the first year and only 50% fail in the first 5 years.

To give you more facts, CareerBuilder.com reported that small business owners (businesses with fewer than 500 employees) make an average of only $36,266 a year. Only 5% of all small business owners make over $100,000 a year.

Now the question is how do you make sure your business succeeds and you become one of the 5%? The answer is simple… BURN THE SHIPS.

I have found that the most useful advice comes from an insurance producer in California, Darren Sugiyama. After only 7 years in the insurance industry, Darren has grown his insurance agency to producing over $38 million in annual premium collected and his agency has become the highest producing voluntary benefits firm in California.

Despite his success, he too started out like most business owners, in debt and with little time to start making a profit. After 8 months in the industry and after placing thousands of dollars into the business Darren’s business still generated little to no revenue at all. The one thing that got him through that time was the saying “burn the ships.”

“Burn the ships” is a saying that refers to Hernando Cortez and the journey he took with 500 soldiers and 100 sailors to conquer the Aztecs in 1519. At the time, the Aztecs had ruled the Yucatan peninsula for over 600 years and was one of the most populous civilizations in Mexico. Many conquistadors tried to conquer the Aztecs over the years, but all failed.

To make sure that he and his men were successful, when they reached the peninsula, Cortez ordered his men to literally burn the ships that they were on.

Of course all the men objected, but the logic behind it was that they are there to conquer the Aztecs. They are either going to conquer the Aztecs or die trying. He demanded all of his men to be fully vested and go all in. In the end, Cortez and his men conquered the Aztecs.

The message of this story is, if you are going to start your own business and you want to make a lot of money, you need to go all in.

There hasn’t been a single successful person in the world that has become successful without fully believing in their idea and fully committing themselves to that idea.