“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney

When it comes to starting your own business, you can be one of two people: An entrepreneur and a “wantrepreneur” (a term often used by billionaire and Shark Tank host, Mark Cuban).

An entrepreneur will be the person who actually gets their business off the ground, generates some revenue, and then grows it over time. They’ll do whatever it takes and constantly take action to do better. 

A “wantrepreneur,” on the other hand, never gets beyond just talking about their idea. They might go on and on talking themselves endlessly in circles or even trying to convince you that they have a plan. But I can guarantee that if you were to check in with them a month or even a year from now, there would still be no actual business.

Don’t get me wrong. When I started my nurse practitioner business, I definitely found that it was healthy to express my ideas. I absolutely love talking about my ambitions with other successful people because it gives me the opportunity to pick their brains and learn from their experiences. Often, I like to treat this opportunity like an interview so that I can understand what challenges they’ve had and plan for them in my own situation.

However, talk is just that… Talk! The difference between someone who’s an entrepreneur and someone who’s not is that they’re able to take what they’ve learned and initiate it into tangible efforts. They can form a business, develop a product or service, hire employees, and start producing real revenue.

The next time you begin to observe that you’re doing more talking than actually making strides to start a business, use this trick… break it down into smaller sub-tasks and start assigning deadlines to them. For example, if you tell a friend that in three months’ time you’ll have your first customer, then you’ll be much more likely to do it within this timeframe than if you hadn’t given yourself this due date. Even though they’re self-imposed, it’s deadlines such as these that create the fire underneath… we need to go from simply just talking about something, to actually doing it!