Lesson 1: Drive

I pushed the letter across the desk. And froze. I couldn’t say a word. The enormity of what I’d done had just dawned on me.?

Shit.?

I had just quit a well-paid job as head of marketing, and committed myself to running my own company.?

It felt like I was taking a huge risk. It felt like I’d gone through a one-way door on my career path. No going back. It felt like I was putting my house, my family, my whole future at risk.

Actually, that is exactly what it was.?

But I knew it was something I had to do. I hated my job, working all hours for a morally reprehensible individual, and changing jobs (again) wasn’t going to make me any happier.

Inside me, there’d always been a desire to run my own business. Build something I could be proud of. Prove to myself that I could do it. A kind of Spartan challenge.?

Now I was actually going to do it.

But beyond a rough idea of what I was going to do, I didn’t have a dream, a vision or a mission. All I had was a burning desire to do something challenging (and fun!), and the realisation that I couldn’t work another day in a job I hated.

A desire and a burning platform.?

It could also be something you care passionately about. The stronger the passion, the better. maybe something that makes you angry and you have to do something about - an injustice or something wasteful and stupid. Or something you love doing in a way that makes you do it better than anyone else - it might be a craft or

The most important thing you need to start a business is not the team, the dream or the money… It’s the motivation. You have a point to prove.

A good friend of mine recently quit a job that drove him into mental illness, to start the most innovative charity I’ve ever seen.

Another good friend, quit her job where she was under-paid and over-worked, to realise her dream of importing ethical cosmetics into Europe.

My own wife, with nothing but a burning desire to build a second life after the death of her sister, is now using social media to sell English antiques to Japanese housewives.

If you have the motivation, you’ll find the strength to hand your notice in; you’ll try stuff, fail and try other stuff; you’ll bang on customer doors until your fingers bleed; you’ll stare all kinds of adversity in the face and scream “You are not going to beat me!”

You’ll be 110% committed. You will find a way. Your motivation will drive you. And eventually, if you hang in there long enough, you will succeed.

When you come to recruiting people, when you come to raising finance or finding your first customer, when you have little track record, little guarantee of success, it is that energy that people are attracted to. Not your vision or business plan or your "brand promise" - those things come when the rational brain tries to justify what their heart has told them. What people are primarily responding to, is your Drive.

Finding this Drive, was essential to me, and I would argue, to everyone who runs their own business. Without it, we'd run out of energy. Without it, we'd go back to our day jobs. Without it, we'd give up.

Trouble is, you can't just sit down with a strong cup of coffee and invent it. You've either got it or you haven't. If you haven't, it may come later. Something may happen to you that will give you that kick. But it needs to be a really strong kick. Going through that one-way door is really hard. And what lies on the other side is even harder.

So that’s the end of lesson one. Next week: Focus.