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Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

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‘The Universe Will Provide’ Is Not a Viable Business Strategy

An #abundancemindset is great, but it won’t read your contracts, keep your books, or build your financial model

Amy Chan
Marker
Published in
5 min readNov 13, 2019

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Photo: Greg Rakozy

LLaunch. Iterate later. That was my mantra when I first launched my business. It was either that, or remain paralyzed with overwhelm. I always had passion projects while climbing the corporate ladder, but to make my side hustle my main hustle was a whole other level of petrifying.

When I came up with the idea for my business, a 4-day retreat that helps people rewire patterns after heartbreak, my plan was to make it just another side hustle while I continued to work my nine to five.

After a year of planning, I finally set a date to launch the first Renew Breakup Bootcamp with a friend of mine, who was both a psychologist and a seasoned entrepreneur. As long as she was by my side, I felt comfortable to move forward. So I booked the venue, put a deposit down, sold spots, and invited the press.

A few weeks before the retreat, she had to drop out. I panicked. I couldn’t do it alone and my automatic reaction was to postpone. The thought of cancelling the retreat was like getting a shot of mental morphine — I could feel my angst dissipating with warm fuzzy relief. But my friend, knowing I was letting fear get the better of me, convinced me to keep the launch date:

“You’re not cancelling. You need to start at some point. Stop delaying the inevitable.”

Her advice (or more like, her orders) was the push I needed. She was right. There would always be some other excuse about why I wasn’t ready.

If not now, then when?

Perfectionism is procrastination in disguise

I didn’t feel ready, but figured I probably never would. How does one ever feel fully ready to put themselves out there in such a raw and vulnerable way? If you get fired from a job, you can always blame bad management or budget cuts. If a side hustle fails, you can always blame it on your real job for sucking up too much of your time.

But if the company you create fails — that’s all you. It’s telling the world,Hey I put everything I…

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Marker
Marker

Published in Marker

Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Amy Chan
Amy Chan

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