First things first

To be honest, this is more of a ‘finding your why’ question. But really, isn’t that what it’s always all about? Of course it is.

I picked up Bill Browder’s book “Red Notice’ a couple of days ago and I haven’t put it down since. For a little background, Browder once ran the largest foreign investment fund, Hermitage Capital, in all of Russia.

But the groundwork for his huge fund started long before. See, he grew up in a family of hard-left socialists who also happened to be geniuses. Bill bucked the system by becoming a capitalist. In fact, his goal was to be the biggest capitalist in the world. With a fund once valued at $4.5 billion, he did a great job.

The interesting thing about the story is how he ended up in Russia. He initially started out in Poland by requesting Eastern Europe when he was an extremely junior member at Saloman Brothers . He wanted Eastern European because his family had been blacklisted due to his grandfather being a communist.

the point of this is that first thing first, you need to know why you’re doing this. Starting your own shop, brand or service business of any kind is really hard.

Bill Browder largely did it out of spite, and much of his success in Russia was due to his fearlessness in taking on crooked billionaires. It was a deeply personal vendetta.

Let’s get real: submitting a proposal on Upwork is hardly like going toe to toe with violent oligarchs in the most corrupt country on earth. But without solid direction, your little beer or ammo-money side gig won’t take off any better than something much larger but lacking a reason why.

If you are still in the preliminary stages, your homework is to ask yourself some why questions:

• Why did I choose this particular skill or service?

• Why do I want to quit my job?

• Do I even enjoy providing the service I’m planning to offer?

Beyond this, it gets a little more complex, but the fundamentals don’t really change much. But if you haven’t wrestled with your why’s, you need to.