Starting anything at a young age or even early on in life has numerous benefits. But getting started isn’t always as easy as it sounds.
Apart from the fact that you have nothing much to lose, when you start early you already have an advantage of being the first mover. It shows you have decided on your course and are willing to take the risk.
“If you’ve got an idea, start today. There’s no better time than now to get going. That doesn’t mean quit your job and jump into your idea 100% from day one, but there’s always small progress that can be made to start the movement.”
Kevin Systrom, Instagram
There’s a charm in getting started. As a first mover, you learn at a more relaxed pace and aren’t always pressured to perform. This also improves your skills, knowledge and builds up your experience.
When I launched my very first project, I was in college. That wasn’t too early. But I guess I wasn’t too late. There was so much to learn but with the passion I had for the project nothing seemed difficult.
It was a perfect time for me to start. My first project was a an e-commerce website. I didn’t have much skills, but through research I was able to complete the development of the platform.
The same research and what I got introduced to back then, still applies to most of my work today. That means, I now dwell on product development and not research. I only reuse the knowledge I have gathered along the way together with the experience. A great time-saver if you ask me.
When you start early, there’s so much that has to go into decision making. Yet, there’s less doubts as to whether something will work. You get absorbed into the product.
But as you grow, you gradually see some of the mistakes you made, and maybe some of the important lessons to take with you into your next venture.
The decision making process develops as the life of your project continues. As you get feedback from your users, and customers give your product reviews.
Even working with your business partner. You get to know what’s important. You learn how to prioritize. Even better, you learn how to say ‘No”.
Most of our failures in the entrepreneurial journey are caused by lack of skills. These are the same skills that we should have developed early on in life, but because we never got ourselves into meaningful initiatives or projects, there’s a lot that we now have to uncover and go through.
“The earlier you start, the more time you have to mess up.”
Emil Motycka, Motycka Enterprises
Ankit Singh, who started his company at the age of 22, shared with Entrepreneur India that entrepreneurship is like a marathon and not a sprint. One needs years of learning and practice to build a massive and sustainable business.
“Hence, it is better to start early. Starting early can help you avoid the ‘curse of knowledge’ and you are able to access information from a fresh lens. The early years are all about learning, where an individual will have far more financial flexibility and independence to go through the tough times relatively easily,” shared Singh.
While studying still develops skills, getting things done builds up diverse skills that come in handy in our every day life. Starting at a young age generally creates a competitive edge.
We normally dread when a birthday comes, we want to be much younger. We cannot let anything, least of all our age, stand in our way! Which is why it’s important you get going today.