How much money can you make with a hot dog cart?

I get some version of this email almost every week:

“Dear Steve, How can I be sure that I will be successful if I buy your stuff?  I’m afraid to take the first step.”

Sigh… Today I sat down and drafted a manifesto of sorts that I will use in all future replies.

Here it is:

Fear of the Unknown is Normal.
You are scared because you are going to attempt something that you’ve never done before.  You need to change the way you are thinking about this.  The enemy is in your head and I’m going to tell you how to beat him.  Pay attention.

Attitude is Everything.
You are approaching this with a “black and white” attitude and you think that you will either be a total success or that you will be a total failure.  Black and white thinking is just not logical.  When you start out, you will have small successes.  You will also have small failures.  A little of each every day.

For a while you may have more failures than successes.  That’s a good thing as long as you are smart and use them as learning opportunities.  After you screw something up, you should be really happy because now you know how NOT to do it.  I’m serious.  Welcome each failure, but fail fast, fix it, and keep moving forward.

You Already Know How to Learn.
When you were a baby you fell down whenever you tried to walk, and sometimes you went to the bathroom in your pants.  Falling down hurts a lot, the other thing not so much but it’s still unpleasant.  However, you knew that it was possible to walk and use the toilet because you saw others doing it.

I’m confident that you learned from these “failures” and that you haven’t repeated them in a long, long time.  This is proof positive that you are teachable.  That you CAN succeed.

You know that it’s possible to make a living selling hot dogs because you’ve seen others doing it, and they are no smarter than you.  They just went out and did it.  The cart manufacturers sell thousands upon thousands of new carts every year.  How could they do this year after year if there was no money in this business?  Word would have gotten out by now and the hot dog cart factories would have been forced to shut their doors.  Not so.

A Word to the Green Light People
There are some folks who won’t try anything new unless they feel that success is guaranteed.  The thought of failure paralyzes them in their tracks and they must have everything exactly right or they won’t even start.  We all know people like this.  They have been talking about the incredible business they are going to start someday for years.  But they never get it going because they are not sure about this one thing, or such and such isn’t exactly right.  I call these “green light people”.  Here’s why.

Imagine that you need to drive down a city street.  You can see 10 blocks ahead and each intersection has a traffic signal.  Green light people won’t put their foot on the gas until all 10 lights are green.  How often do you drive somewhere and get ALL green lights?  Not often.  When you come to a red light, you know that it will eventually turn green.  If it doesn’t, you simply turn right or left, find a different route, and reach your destination.

That’s how it is in business.  You can’t wait until all the lights are green because it just never happens.  You’ll eventually run out of gas while going nowhere.  The true key to success, the most important thing of all – is to ACT.

A  J.O.B  is Not Security – It’s Just Over Broke.
If you want to be “secure” (there’s really no such thing when you work for someone else), just do today what you did yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.  You can then be certain that you’ll get what you got yesterday, and the day before, and the day before.

That is until your boss (or his boss) gets a wild hair up his ass one fine Monday morning and decides you aren’t necessary anymore.  Then you won’t even get what you got yesterday, which in most cases sucked anyway.

This isn’t Rocket Surgery.
Just ACT.  Take a small step toward your goal every day, observe the effects of your action, adjust for better results, and repeat.  All you need to do is get started.  Then…

One day not too long from now, you will wake up and realize that you have five carts out there all making money every day, and no one can ever fire you.  That’s true security.

Was getting there really easy?  No, not really.  Was it super hard?  No, not really.

Screw the red lights.

– Steve

P.S. Please, please share this on your Facebook by clicking the blue “Share” button. People need to hear this.

 

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