17th September 2021
Welcome to Welcome Week, or rather, the end of Welcome Week, as I come to a close on the first week of the beginning of the future, and as I start my Placement Year by setting up my own business, since having a business is something that I’ve always wanted to do, but I’ve never known where to start since there is so much information out there that it ends up becoming overwhelming as I become paralysed by choice and lots of “useful” advice. However, doing an Enterprise Placement Year (brought to you by the Enterprise Team) will hopefully help me through it, and will give me a helping hand in starting my own business the right way, whatever a “right way” in starting a business actually is.
I’m miles away from launching my business because all I’ve got at the moment is an idea, and having an idea is pretty much all you need in order to get a business going, right? Wrong! You’ve gotta know your audience, do some market research, figure out if people actually want the things that you offer, and probably tonnes of other things that I currently don’t know about since I’m literally a baby in the business world, but hopefully I’ll figure it out over time.
One major culture shock for me (coming from the Digital and Creative industries) is the sheer amount of networking that you have to do in order to get anywhere in the business world, and as someone who tends to lean on the more introverted side of the scale, I would simply run for the hills, but that isn’t really an option since I have to feel the fear and do it anyway, basically to get over feeling scared, so to speak. I’m coming out of my comfort zone, and I’m coming out of my shell, which is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. What I previously knew about starting your own business has gone out of the window, because I’ve realised that I simply can’t just dive into it. I have to actually do the research behind it, figure out what it is that I actually want to do, and make sure that the business itself is actually going to work, because otherwise, it’ll end up becoming a bit of an expensive hobby.
Trust me, I’ve tried starting up “businesses” (and I say it in quotation marks because I don’t even know if I can even call them businesses because they’ve fallen apart as quickly as they started out) in the past, but to no luck, mainly because I expected things to happen too quickly, I didn’t do my homework about the business itself, I didn’t actually have anything to offer, mainly because I thought that starting a business was as simple as starting a social media account, and doing it as I go along, but boy am I wrong. At the moment, I’m frustrated. I know what I have to do, but at the same time, I’m getting ahead of myself since I’m hyper fixating on the end, and not so much on the process. Basically, I’m focusing too much on the destination and not so much on the journey, but at this moment in time, the destination itself is fairly hard to find since it’s multiple destinations in different locations at the same time, if that even makes any sense. Another thing that’s getting at me at the moment is the imposter syndrome. I feel like I should not be on this cohort, doing this Placement Year because I don’t have a solid idea at the moment whereas other people already have prototypes in the making, but I guess everyone else is different, but they’re all on a similar journey, so each to their own, I guess.
I’ve also spent a decent chunk of time second guessing myself and thinking “What on earth have I done? What have I got myself into? Why have I got myself into this?”, but that’s what happens when you get out of your comfort zone. It means you’re growing, because if you don’t second guess yourself, especially when you’re starting something you’ve never done before, you won’t get anywhere in life; you’re not growing, you’re just staying in your comfort zone otherwise, and that’s going to get boring really quick. Since this has been the first week of something new, I find that I’ve simultaneously been productive and not productive at the same time, because first weeks (for anything new) always focus on introducing you to new things all the time, and not so much about throwing you into the deep end.
So, that was the first week of my Placement Year, and so far, so good, I suppose. At the moment, everything feels very uncertain because I don’t know where I’m heading, but hopefully I figure it out along the way. Now, onto the necessary evil of doing market research and going to (virtual) events, because if I don’t do that, I won’t have a clue about what I’m doing with my business and I’ll never get around to going to events otherwise.