Jason Leister: Building the Business of Your Dreams (Part I)

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I still remember the book that “ruined” me from ever again being able to live as an employee. It was Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki. Sitting there in the bookstore in Knoxville Tennessee that day, getting extremely excited reading all about a way of life completely foreign to my own is something I will never forget.

My IQ would say that I’m smart, but it didn’t occur to me back then that you could actually pursue a path in life that would allow you to take responsibility and control over your future.

But reading that book changed everything in a blink. All those years ago, that was one of the biggest ideas I’d ever encountered. I could take charge of my own success instead of waiting on someone else to grant it to me.

Overcoming the Two Biggest Hurdles to Business Building

I had two big obstacles standing in my way when I got started in business.

First, I had absolutely zero belief in my own value. Second, I had absolutely zero understanding about how to sell anything. As you might imagine, I did not experience instant meteoric success.

But I kept going. I kept learning. I kept screwing up. Most of my early screw-ups happened in conjunction with my brief (and miserable) career in multi-level marketing. To say I was terrible would have been putting it kindly.

I still remember the sheer terror I would feel as I’d prepare to pick-up the phone and start dialing numbers of strangers who’d (supposedly) requested information about building a business. I could only afford (thanks to the credit card) to buy about 6 of these names per month. Six!

It’s been too long to remember clearly, but I doubt if there were two months in a row where I actually spoke to all six people. Either the leads were bad or I just chickened out and kept putting off my calls until “tomorrow.”

It should be obvious enough that I never managed to get anywhere in that business.

Living as a Self-Confident Lemming

Eventually, I started to get the hang of things. And I discovered that I had a natural gift for persuading people by writing letters. And then the internet publishing business thing came along and well, the rest is history. I’ve been doing that ever since.

As I got more experienced in business, however, I started hearing things that led me to believe that my business wasn’t… real. My business didn’t have an exit strategy. My business didn’t really run if I left it for a month or three. I didn’t have any employees.

All of a sudden I felt like there was a problem. Like there was something I needed to fix if I wanted to be on the winning side of having a “real” business.

Check back next week for how I fixed the problem.