MBA2614 Why You Will Never Start a Business

Summary

Summary of "MBA2614 Why You Will Never Start a Business" – The $100 MBA Show

Introduction

In episode MBA2614 of The $100 MBA Show, host Omar Zenhom delivers a no-nonsense exploration of the psychological and practical barriers that prevent aspiring entrepreneurs from launching their own businesses. Released on April 21, 2025, this episode delves deep into the misconceptions and internal obstacles that hinder many from taking the crucial first steps toward entrepreneurship. Omar's goal is to provide listeners with actionable insights to overcome these barriers and turn their business ideas into reality.

1. Fear is Greater Than Desire

Omar begins by confronting the fundamental issue: fear outweighs genuine desire for most potential entrepreneurs. He states, “If you really wanted a business, you would have it by now” (01:03). This blunt assertion sets the tone for the episode, emphasizing that mere interest is insufficient without decisive action. Omar shares his personal struggles with fears of failure, embarrassment, and the unknown, illustrating how these fears lead to overthinking and procrastination. He emphasizes that fear of failure is inevitable and a natural part of the entrepreneurial journey, comparing it to the certainty of losing a game of tennis or making mistakes in everyday activities.

2. Confusion Between Compulsion and Desire

Drawing inspiration from Felix Dennis' book How to Get Rich, Omar highlights a critical distinction: compulsion versus desire. He explains, “Desire is passive. Compulsion is active” (05:45). While desire represents a wish or interest in starting a business, compulsion signifies an uncontrollable drive that propels one forward despite challenges. Omar argues that without this obsessive determination, entrepreneurs are unlikely to persevere through the inevitable hardships of building a business. He uses the analogy of athletes and artists who thrive on the rigors of their pursuits, suggesting that true entrepreneurs share this relentless passion.

3. Belief vs. Reality

Omar addresses the self-doubt that plagues many aspiring business owners: belief in oneself is paramount. He asserts, “It's not what you are, it's about what you believe. Believe you can, and you'll figure out the how” (07:15). According to Omar, success is less about inherent intelligence or resources and more about the unwavering belief in one’s ability to overcome obstacles. He points out that many successful entrepreneurs were not the smartest in the room but stood out because they believed in their potential to succeed regardless of their starting point.

4. Desire for an Easy Path

A prevalent misconception is the expectation of an easy and quick path to success. Omar counters this by asserting, “Easy never creates greatness” (08:30). He likens the entrepreneurial journey to training for the Olympics or climbing Mount Everest—challenging endeavors that require dedication and resilience. By emphasizing the importance of embracing hard work and resisting the allure of shortcuts, Omar prepares listeners for the reality that substantial achievements necessitate significant effort and perseverance.

5. Love for Excuses

The final major barrier discussed is the tendency to make excuses. Omar states, “You can have excuses, but you can’t also have results” (11:25). He underscores the importance of taking full responsibility for one’s circumstances, rejecting the habit of attributing potential failures to external factors such as lack of time or resources. Instead, Omar encourages listeners to own their challenges and proactively seek solutions, reinforcing that accountability is crucial for entrepreneurial success.

Solutions to Overcome Barriers

Building on the identified obstacles, Omar offers five actionable strategies to flip the script and empower aspiring entrepreneurs:

1. Face Your Fear and Move Anyway
   Accept that fear is a constant companion in the entrepreneurial journey. Omar advises, “Don’t let fear stop you” (12:10), encouraging listeners to take action despite their anxieties.

2. Find Your Compulsion, Not Just Desire
   Cultivate an obsessive drive that prioritizes building a business above all else. Omar suggests, “If it's not relentless, it won't survive the journey” (13:05).

3. Choose Belief Over Reality
   Adopt a mindset of unwavering belief. “Act as if you are already the person who can succeed,” Omar advises, highlighting that belief shapes reality and precedes action.

4. Embrace the Hard Work
   Commit to the grind and reject the search for shortcuts. Omar emphasizes, “Commit to the fact that this is going to be a long journey” (14:20).

5. Park Your Excuses at the Door
   Eliminate excuses by taking full ownership of one’s actions and outcomes. Omar reinforces, “Own the journey. Own the results” (15:00).

Conclusion

Omar concludes the episode with a powerful call to action, urging listeners to take responsibility, embrace the challenges, and persevere. He reinforces the belief that with the right mindset and determination, anyone can overcome the barriers that prevent them from starting a business. Omar's blend of tough love and practical advice serves as a motivational catalyst for aspiring entrepreneurs ready to transform their aspirations into tangible success.

Notable Quotes

• “If you really wanted a business, you would have it by now.” – Omar Zenhom (01:03)
• “Desire is passive. Compulsion is active.” – Omar Zenhom (05:45)
• “It's not what you are, it's about what you believe. Believe you can, and you'll figure out the how.” – Omar Zenhom (07:15)
• “Easy never creates greatness.” – Omar Zenhom (08:30)
• “You can have excuses, but you can’t also have results.” – Omar Zenhom (11:25)
• “Don’t let fear stop you.” – Omar Zenhom (12:10)
• “If it's not relentless, it won't survive the journey.” – Omar Zenhom (13:05)
• “Act as if you are already the person who can succeed.” – Omar Zenhom (14:20)
• “Own the journey. Own the results.” – Omar Zenhom (15:00)

Final Thoughts

Omar Zenhom's episode serves as a candid and motivational guide for those hesitant to embark on the entrepreneurial path. By dissecting the psychological barriers and providing clear, actionable solutions, Omar equips listeners with the necessary tools to overcome their fears and excuses. This episode is a must-listen for anyone serious about transforming their business dreams into reality.

Transcript

[Omar Zenhom]

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[Omar Zenhom]

You say you want to start a business, but the truth? You probably never will. Why? Because the reality is is you probably don't really want it. I know that sounds harsh, but I'm not here to sugarcoat things. I'm here to tell you the truth. In today's episode, we're going to break down why exactly most people never start a business, and more importantly, how to fix it. If you're ready to stop lying to yourself, then you're going to love this episode. In today's episode, I'm gonna break down why some people just don't really want it, why your fear is stronger than your desire, and why you confuse compulsion with desire. There's a big difference between the two. Some people think they don't have what it takes. And guess what? You're right. And that's not the whole story. I'm gonna get more into that. Some people want it to be easy, but it's simply not. And lastly, why people make excuses and expect results. If you are ready to get real and actually take action, this episode is for you. Let's get into it. Welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. Here's the brutal truth. If you really wanted it, you would have a business by now. That's just the truth. If you really wanted a business, you would have it by now. I don't mean thinking about it, I don't mean talking about it, I mean actually doing it. Like you can point to it and say, here is my business. But the reason why you don't have one is your fear is greater than your desire. I know this from experience. What held me back for years is, is that I had a fear of failure. I had a fear of embarrassment. I had a fear of the unknown. But fear makes you hesitate. It makes you overthink, it makes you over plan. It makes you procrastinate. Sound familiar? And of course, like I mentioned, the biggest fear of all is fear of failure. What if it doesn't work out? Here's a news flash. Failure is guaranteed. It's gonna happen. It's part of the process. That's like saying, I wanna play tennis. I wanna play the board game Monopoly. I wanna play the piano. And never fail, and never lose and never make a mistake. That's impossible. You know that. You know that by playing other games in your life, other ventures in your life. You know that when you play a game of tennis, there's a chance of failure. There's a chance you might lose this game and you play anyway. You will fail. Not once, not twice, many times. Micro failures throughout your journey. It's going to happen and it's a rite of passage and everybody goes through it. And the reason why people are successful versus those who are not successful is very simple. They move forward and accept the reality of failure. They move forward despite their fear of failure. If you want a business be more afraid of staying where you are than you are afraid of failure. That's the key. That's what switched it on for me. I was less afraid of starting a business than staying where I was. I was afraid that I was going to be in my job as a teacher forever and I will have no autonomy, have no control over my upward mobility, my boss is going to dictate my future. And I just. That fear outweighed the fear of starting a business. And you need to get to that place as quickly as possible or you're never going to make it happen. That's the truth. You could sugarcoat it. You can go around in circles, but that's how it is. The second reason why you won't start a business is what Felix Dennis says in his book how to Get Rich. In the book, he says, if it doesn't consume you, you won't do it. Here's what most people get wrong. They confuse compulsion with desire. This is such an important point that Felix Dennis makes in his book. And I want to really drill it home, because there's a big difference between feeling I have to do something versus I'd like to do something. Desire is wanting something. I want to be rich. I want to be my own boss. I want freedom. I want to have the flexibility. That's desire. But compulsion is I have to make this happen. I will not be a complete human being if I don't make this happen. It's an unstoppable urge. It's a thing inside you that won't let you sleep until you are one step closer to where you want to be. It's waking up every day and knowing you can't stop until it's real. You got to keep going despite all the challenges. Desire is passive. Compulsion is active. Another way to put it is that if you're not obsessed, you won't survive the journey. I know that sounds really out there. It sounds a little bit crazy, a little bit cuckoo, but entrepreneurs are a little crazy, okay? It's crazy to think that you can create something out of thin air, create value in the world, sell it to people, they'll buy it, and you make a profit. That's actually a crazy thought. That's what actually attracted me to entrepreneurship, is who are these crazy people that are doing this? This sounds incredible. It sounds like magic to. But what I found is until I got dedicated, until I felt a compulsion to make this happen, almost any rational compulsion doesn't make any sense. Why would I want to do this? But that compulsion drives you to make it happen. Despite the way you feel in a particular day, or despite your circumstances, or despite the economy, or despite all the excuses. We'll talk about that later. But despite all the excuses and all the things in front of you, compulsion tells yourself, hey, this is not nice to have. This is a top priority. Ask yourself, are you compelled to build a business, or do you just like the idea of it? Because if it's the latter, you will not make it. Third reason why people don't start a business. And here's where it gets tricky. You believe you don't have what it takes. And guess what? You're right. You don't. But here's the funny thing. If you do believe you have what it takes, you're also right. What's the difference? Belief. The reality is, success isn't about the smartest person in the room. I know a lot of Entrepreneurs, many of them, are not the smartest people I know. Far less intelligent, less experienced, less qualified people have built wildly successful businesses, and you have not. Why? Ask yourself why. And the answer is because they believed they could. That's the difference. Inside, they believed they could do it, regardless if they had the tools or the. The brains or the resources. They just believed they could. And therefore they did what they believed. And what I mean by that is that they showed up, they did the work, they pushed through failure after failure and kept moving forward because they believed it was possible. It's not what you are, it's about what you believe. Believe you can, and you'll figure out the how. Believe you can't, and you'll stay stuck forever. You'll actually find reasons why you can't make it happen. I know this is a tricky one. I know this is a funny one. But this is the truth. Our brains are incredible machines, and we will go forward if we believe in something. Your job, if you want to start a successful business, is to believe you can do it despite your shortcomings, but believe it's possible. If you have that, you can be unstoppable. The fourth reason why people won't start a business is that they want it to be easy. And the truth is, is that business is not easy. So many people want a fast track, a shortcut, an easy way to make millions, and there simply isn't. And the reason why is that starting a business is like anything else that is worth pursuing, that has value, like training for the Olympics, like writing a Grammy Award winning album, like climbing Mount Everest. Right? It's hard. And that's why most people quit before they even start. But guess what? Anything worth having is hard. Every big win requires a struggle. Easy never creates greatness. That's just the bottom line. If you're looking for easy, you're in the wrong game. Business is a challenge, but the reward is worth the fight. Speaking of fight, behind me is the Rocky soundtrack album. And if you are a fan of the movie Rocky, and if you are an entrepreneur, okay, you love the fight, you love the struggle, and that's what you cherish the most. Those are the memories you cling on to, not the wins. Actually, like Rocky the movie, he doesn't win in the first one, but in Rocky 2 through 5, he wins. But we don't really care about that as a viewer or as an entrepreneur. What we care about is the training montage, the struggle, the being down in the dirt, and the low points that we rebound from and make it happen. That's we love what it takes to be successful. And entrepreneurs, true entrepreneurs, when they look back at their career, the things they're most proud of are, are not the wins, it's the fight they had to go through. It was the bosses and the levels they had to go through in order to win the game.

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[Omar Zenhom]

Number five and this one's going to stink. Too many people love their own excuses. But here's the facts. The facts are you can have excuses, but you can't also have results. People want excuses and results. No, you have to own it. You have to own everything that's going on around you. You don't have time, you don't have money. You don't know where to start. But guess what? Successful entrepreneurs didn't have time either. Many of them didn't have money in the beginning either. They had to figure it out because they had to. The difference is they didn't just say, I got a bunch of excuses why I'm not successful. They said I can't just have excuses. Excuses are easy. I have to own it. I gotta say, this is my challenge. I have to own the fact that I don't have time. I have to own the fact that I don't have money. How am I going to get around this? Results are hard. But here's the kicker. If you want results, stop making Excuses. Start owning mistakes. Start owning your situation, your circumstances. When I started doing this, it made me so much more powerful as an entrepreneur because it allowed me to say, okay, this is my situation. This is what happened. This is my failure. This is the reason why I'm not making money right now. Let's figure this out. I gotta own the problem first. I gotta admit that it's my fault. At the end of the day, I'm responsible. If you want excuses, you can't expect results. You can't have both. I love this saying you can have excuses or results. You just can't have both. Because here's the thing, excuses don't help. It's like complaining. It's like saying, oh, I can't do it because of this. And then you just stop taking action. But if you look at it objectively and say, hey, listen, I screwed up here, or the situation is, I don't have these resources, what do I do about it? How do I move forward despite these challenges? How do I find another route or go through it or figure out who does know how to go through it and ask them for help? Why? Because I care about the result more than my excuses. And too many people want to just give excuses, you know, wash your hands of it, and that's it. No, I want to win. And if that means me, you know, taking the L, taking the loss and saying, hey, it's my fault, I got to take a responsibility. I got to learn from this. I got to figure it out and live with that pain a little bit so that I can get to a result, so I can get to a solution. I'm all for it. And that's what makes you win as an entrepreneur. So let's talk about solutions. How do we flip the switch? How do we flip the script and make sure that we're not doing any of these and do the opposite? Number one, face your fear and move anyway. It's okay to be afraid. It's okay to be like, what if I fail? I'm worried. It's okay to feel that way, but don't let it stop you do it anyway. Stop waiting for fear to disappear. It will never disappear. And the higher you go in business, the higher the stakes, the more the fear is going to get. So don't expect it to just disappear. It won't. Okay, so you gotta take action despite that. Just like, you know, you're buckled up in a roller coaster and you're, like, really scared, but you do it anyway, right? Or you're about to, you know, Bungee jump. And, like, I'm not sure if I should do this, but you just take that leap anyway. You got to do it anyway. You got to kind of go against what you're afraid of. Number two, find your compulsion, not just your desire, if it consumes you. If you're obsessed with the idea of becoming an entrepreneur, you'll understand that it's not just a rite of passage to go through this. It's how it gets done. Find something you can't stop thinking about and build a business around it. Number three, choose belief over reality. I know this one's tough, but you got to act as if you are already the person who can succeed. Belief shapes your reality. Beliefs precede action. So if you believe something, you will take action upon it, not the other way around. Number four, embrace the hard work. Stop looking for shortcuts. Just stop it. Actually, try to find the hard way to do this, you know, for a change. Maybe just once. But my point is, is that commit to the grind, okay? Commit to the fact that this is going to be a long journey. It's going to be an advent, it's going to be fun, it's going to be painful sometimes, and it's the only way through. And as soon as you embrace this, it's going to be okay. You're going to be like, okay, let's buckle up. Let's make it happen. Number five, park your excuses at the door. Own the journey. Own the results. Own the failure, own the wins. No excuses. Just take action. Friends, I know that was a lot of tough love, but here's the truth. You can start a business if you're willing to accept failure, if you're willing to. To feel compelled beyond reason. If you believe in yourself despite the odds, if you're ready for hard work and you ditch all the excuses, you can make this happen. It's all within your control, but only if you stop lying to yourself and take action. If you have what it takes and you prioritize this like this is a must and not I would like to have a business. If you're willing to do that. This is totally possible. And the reason why I created this episode is because I believe that. And if you've gotten to this point in the episode, I really do believe that you are committed. You want this. And if you want to get on this path, I'm telling you, the best time to start was yesterday, okay? The next best time is today. So let's get going. Now, if you want more, if you want to stop making excuses, and take action. Join my three Things Newsletter. It's absolutely free. Every week I send you three things. Something to think about, something to do, and something to learn. It's my way to coach you from afar and give you the tools to succeed. Go to 1-000- MBA-NET and sign up for any of our free guides and you'll be added to our newsletter automatically. Again, it's absolutely free and it's one step closer for you. Take that one step closer for you to start and grow your business. I'm Omar Zainom and I just want to remind you to own your journey. Take action every day because those little actions compound and before you know, you look back like, wow, how did I get here? And I'm positive that if you continue to do that, that you're going to see progress. I believe in you and I'll check you in the next episode. Did you know that the pet industry is a booming $150 billion industry? People absolutely love their dogs, don't you? If you're looking for a new investment and love dogs, there's only one name you need to know. That's Dogtopia. 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