Why Isn’t Everyone Doing It?

Over the years as I’ve built various businesses and had conversations with people about different business models and opportunities out there, I’ve learned that a LOT of people have a very skeptical perspective on entrepreneurship.

When taking a look at a business opportunity of any kind really, most people compare what they think they know about that opportunity to their current method of making money (usually a job) and they end up having one of two perspectives:

Either (A) they look at the business opportunity in front of them and the income potential and other benefits of building that kind of business simply aren’t enough to entice them away from their job…

OR (B) they look at the opportunity and the benefits and income potential is very enticing but then they think to themselves “Well it’s can’t be real…if this thing is real then why isn’t everyone doing it?”

In other words, their mind creates an excuse either way.

If the financial opportunity in the business is not enticing enough, then they don’t want to do it because it’s not worth it…

… but if the financial opportunity in the business IS enticing enough, then they don’t want to do it because it seems too good to be true because if it wasn’t then why wouldn’t everyone be doing it?

It is this kind of cyclical logic that essentially guarantees that ANY business opportunity (legitimate or not) is discarded.

In this post I want to address this question of “Why isn’t everyone doing it?” when referencing opportunities that have a huge potential financial incentive to those who pursue and succeed at them.

For example, in Empower Network we have more than a dozen people who have already made over 1 million dollars with the Empower Network affiliate program.

Now, their results are NOT typical and definitely not guaranteed (see www.empowernetwork.com/income for average earnings), however their results are still very exciting and since they were able to do it, it is possible that others might be able to do it as well.

So when you have an opportunity like this where some people are succeeding and demonstrating the incredible income opportunity, skeptical people instantly think to themselves “It can’t be true, otherwise why isn’t everyone doing it?”

Well, here’s the truth.

The reason why EVERYONE is not doing it is because entrepreneurship requires perseverance.

As soon as you engage in ANY kind of business of you own, you will encounter some sort of situation or challenge that you’ll have to overcome.

Entrepreneurship is NEVER a straight, perfect line from point A to point B.

In fact, chances are that you’ll encounter THOUSANDS of small obstacles along the way that you’ll have to overcome.

In most cases if you’re following the right system, these obstacles will not be THAT big or THAT challenging, but they WILL show up.

For example, in one of the businesses that I run we were expanding into a larger office space and one of the things we had to do is to get our inspection permits from the city.

While trying to get those permits approved we ran into a situation.

Apparently, one of the stickers on our front door which displayed our unit number was a few millimeters too small.

Meaning the city has some rule that the letters must be like 3 inches tall and our letters were 2.9 inches tall.

As you can imagine this was NOT something that was difficult to fix.

It was just something that popped up, and we deal with it and then it wasn’t an issue anymore and we got the permits and kept moving forward.

Now you might be thinking that this example seems very trivial right?

Like really?  Lettering is a tiny bit too small?  We got it fixed very easily.

HOWEVER, you wouldn’t believe how many people I have seen who try to become entrepreneurs and who let very small, trivial challenges like this one completely throw them out of the game.

They start a business, and they run into ONE tiny little challenge that they don’t know how to overcome instantly, and BOOM they’re throwing in the towel.

Entrepreneurship is about being able to handle all those small, but usually frequent challenges.

In fact, most likely, every single day you’ll have something pop up that you’ll have to deal with.

Usually these issues and challenges will NOT be a big deal if your attitude is right and you approach the situation with a solution minded perspective.

However, if you approach entrepreneurship with an attitude of “Oh I bet this will never work.” then ANY of these small excuses will stop you dead in your tracks.

So the answer to the question of “Why isn’t everyone doing this?” is simply this…

Entrepreneurs are people who solve 1,000 small challenges in 1,000 days and keep moving forward towards their dreams, and most employee minded people have this false impression that entrepreneurship is only worth it if there are no challenges ever, and the minute they encounter one small challenge, they just give up and go back to their jobs.

Now here’s the interesting thing…

…because a lot of non-entrepreneurial people might think to themselves “Yeah, but why would I even want to be an entrepreneur if I’ll have to deal with 1,000 small challenges in 1,000 days???”

…  and you know what the answer to that is?

Well, do you know who else has to deal with 1,000+ small challenges in 1,000 days?

Employees!

If you work at a job right now, don’t small challenges come up pretty much every day in your life, and you are forced to deal with them?

Of course they do!

So how come when it comes to jobs, people are resilient and they don’t quit just because there was a challenge that came up at work?

The reason is because people don’t look at their jobs as “Oh I’ll try this out but I bet it won’t work…”

Most people see their jobs as something they HAVE to do.  It’s something they MUST do.  They don’t think they have a choice.

So dealing with the various challenges that happen day-in and day-out is just something they get used to and they just get through it.

But when it comes to starting a business, most people only keep moving forward for as long as everything is going 100% perfectly according to plan…

… but the minute some kind of challenge comes up, no matter how small and insignificant they throw their hands up in the air and declare “Oh I knew this wouldn’t work!” and they quit!

And *THAT* is why even if an opportunity is amazing, everyone is not doing it.

The majority of people have been conditioned to work for someone else, at a job, and they’ve been taught that entrepreneurship is risky and difficult.

And so they don’t even give it a proper chance.

They give up on their business, their opportunity and their dreams at the very first challenge they encounter.

I know I’ve done it in the past. 🙂

How about you?