Unlocking Your Niche: 5 Reasons Starting With Your Why Leads You To Failure

It felt much worse than a broken dream; it felt like a cruel betrayal.

I followed the popular advice, letting my WHY fuel me as I leapt from the safety of my corporate career into the uncertain depths of entrepreneurship.

That WHY burned within me like a roaring fire, propelling me forward through every obstacle and hardship.

For three long years, I poured my heart, soul, and every ounce of my being into that WHY. Yet, despite my unstoppable dedication, I found myself standing face to face with a harsh truth: I had been following the wrong path all along.

Starting with my WHY had led me down the wrong path, steering me towards a dead end where I felt like I was endlessly banging my head against a solid wall of disappointment.

As I reflect on those years of relentless pursuit, the painful reality sets in.

From the beginning, it wasn’t just a simple misstep but a catastrophic misdirection. My vision was clouded, obscured by the seductive promise of starting with your WHY. It was a spell that blinded me to the inevitable failure looming.

In the cold light of hindsight, I could see the shattered pieces of my dreams lying at my feet.

The promise of a fulfilling and successful business evaporated quickly.

But amidst the wreckage was a glimmer of clarity — a hard-earned lesson learned through bitter experience. It’s a painful awakening from a dream I once believed would carry me to greatness.

Unfortunately, I am not the only one who fell under the popular, misleading spell of starting with your WHY.

And this is why I’m sharing with you now the proven path to finding the right business idea for you — the one that can replace your corporate salary while providing you with the meaning, fulfilment, freedom, and impact that you seek.

So, let’s start….

5 reasons WHY you shouldn’t start with your WHY

There’s a common perception that starting with your WHY is the golden ticket to entrepreneurial success.

But let me debunk this myth and share with you the harsh reality: beginning with your WHY is a recipe for disaster, and here are my top five reasons why:

#1 The pressure of coming up with a lofty WHY

People start businesses for many different reasons. It’s a personal decision that can be driven by circumstances, internal desires, or external needs.

So, let me ask you a question:

Why do you want to embark on this entrepreneurial journey?

What truly stirs your soul and propels you forward?

I know many entrepreneurs, so I can share with you a few strong WHYs for starting a business:

1. I have a friend who hates corporate politics and dramas. He started his own business, so he won’t need to bear this pain of employment.
2. Another friend started her business because she needed to look after her elderly mum and had to have complete control over her schedule.
3. I also have a friend who started their own online business because they got fired from their job and couldn’t find another one for a long time. They wanted to start their own business so they would never be at the mercy of employers again.

These are just 3 examples of why people start their own business. (I have plenty more, but I think you got the point)

And all these reasons are perfectly valid.

You don’t need to have a lofty WHY to start a business. The demand to start with a WHY puts unnecessary pressure on people to find a high-moral WHY.

The WHY that others will be impressed by.

The WHY that has to be tied with changing the world.

But the reality is that your WHY doesn’t need to put a dent in the universe.

Your WHY doesn’t have to be about changing the world.

Trying to find a monumental WHY only burdens aspiring entrepreneurs, pushing them to chase an elusive ideal that may never materialise.

Your WHY can be as simple as a desire for autonomy, a longing for freedom, or a need for stability. It doesn’t have to be extraordinary; it just has to be authentic to you.

So, release yourself from the shackles of unrealistic expectations and embrace the power of a WHY that resonates with your truth, no matter how humble it may seem.

#2 Your Personal WHY and Your Business Purpose Don’t have to align

Your personal WHY, the one that gets you up from bed in the morning, is not necessarily the same as the purpose of your business. It doesn’t need to align with the problem you help people solve.

Your business can be the means that helps you fulfil your personal WHY.

Maybe the thing that excites you to jump out of bed in the morning is going to surf. Maybe your strong WHY is surfing, and your business provides you the flexibility to do so daily.

Maybe what excites you to get up in the morning is knowing that this month you are working in Paris, next month you will be working from Spain, and who knows which exciting place you will work from in two months’ time.

Maybe your business enables you to do what you really love — travel the world.

It’s perfectly fine if you have started a business to have a lifestyle that makes you happy or fulfils your needs.

Your business can be an enabler to other things, and this is OK.

#3 Your WHY might fail to become a profitable business

A strong WHY doesn’t mean it will automatically turn into a profitable business.

The many other business pieces of the puzzle won’t just fall into place because you have a lofty WHY.

I learned it from my own painful experience.

I followed a strong WHY. You can’t get much more lofty than this one. I set up my business to transform our education system and provide our children with the education they need to be happy and succeed in the world.

My strong WHY ticked all the boxes and impressed everyone I engaged with.

But….

It wasn’t a viable business.

After 3 years of working effortlessly on this WHY, I realised I couldn’t make this happen.

Unfortunately, the education system is controlled by a government not interested in providing our children with an education that will help them become independent thinkers.

They are interested in creating obedient citizens.

Sadly, I am not the only one who followed a strong WHY only to discover that this business has failed.

A business exists to make money.

Therefore, you can’t just follow your WHY, no matter how strong and impressive this WHY is.

#4 You can have many WHYs

People are complex, and we can’t just reduce ourselves to one big WHY.

I have many WHYs, and I’m sure you do too.

There are so many things I care about and want to change. So many things that get me excited and can drive me forward.

Here are a few examples:

• I want to change our education system
• I want to protect wildlife
• I want to create a world with more empathy and compassion
• I want to help people become happy
• I want to travel the world
• I want to create a better way to look after unwanted pets
• I want to have more time with my loved ones

I will stop here; otherwise, we will end up with a very long list.

I bet you have a long list of things you really care about, too.

So, looking for your one why doesn’t provide you with the clarity you need to find the right business path for you.

#5 Starting with your WHY is way too simplistic

The world of business is complicated.

It took me a while to understand how much goes into making a business successful. There are many different aspects of a business that you have to work on and grow to make it thrive.

Therefore, presenting your business’s success as centred around one thing — the WHY — is too simplistic and doesn’t align with reality.

Now that we have reviewed the 5 top reasons why you shouldn’t start with your WHY, let’s look at the proven way to set yourself up for business success.

The proven way to come up with your profitable business idea

How can you tell if your business idea has the potential to become a profitable business?

To answer this question, we need to understand what drives people’s buying decisions.

Basically, two main reasons persuade you to buy a product or a service:

1. It raises your status — by buying the product or service, other people’s perception of your status increases. (For example, for some people, buying a Ferrari or a Rolex will raise their status in their environment; for others, living a minimalistic life where they only reuse and recycle things and do not consume new products will raise their status in their environment. The things that increase people’s status depend on their environment and the people they hang out with.)
2. It solves a painful problem you have — by purchasing the product or service, you will alleviate the pain you experience. This pain can be physical, emotional or mental. (For example, a painful problem can be a terrible headache, and the solution is a painkiller, or a painful problem might be having a terrible relationship with your teenage child, and a solution can be taking a course that teaches you how to better communicate and develop a strong relationship with your teenagers)

Therefore, finding your profitable business doesn’t start with the WHY.

It starts with the WHO.

Who are you helping with your business?

So, the critical step is understanding WHO your audience is and whether they can and want to buy such a product.

If your product is about raising status, you need to conduct market research with your target audience to understand their perceptions of it.

You need to determine if they perceive this product as raising their status.

Then, you need to discover whether they can afford to pay for this product.

Performing these two steps will enable you to understand whether there is a desire to purchase such a product and the required means to do so.

If your product is about removing a pain, you need to perform market research with your target audience to understand whether this is truly a painful problem for them. (The more painful the problem, the more people will desire to solve it)

If it is, you need to find out whether they have the means to buy the solution.

Gaining this knowledge will remove a lot of the uncertainty that comes with creating a new business and reduce your risks significantly.

If I had started with the WHO instead of the WHY, I would have discovered very quickly that there is no market for my product. Finding this early on would have meant I wouldn’t have spent years on a business that has no chance of succeeding.

Conclusion

Start with the WHO to find your profitable business idea.

Not with the WHY.

Don’t repeat the mistake I have made.

If you need help finding your business idea, join my popular course, “The Knowledge to Profit Blueprint: Ignite Your Path to Freedom ”, to discover your purpose-led, profitable online business idea. See more details here .

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