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**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:25)
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**Omar Zinhome** (0:40)
What I'm about to say is going to feel uncomfortable for a lot of you trying to build something from home. Your home is the worst possible place to start a business. That's just called the facts. I'm telling you, one of the biggest lies online right now is starting a business from home is easy. It isn't. Social media sold people a fantasy. The truth is they don't show you the reality. The reality that your environment shapes your behavior more than you think. If you haven't built the habits of an entrepreneur yet, it's one of the biggest mistakes you can make. You're just making things harder for yourself. You're lowering the chances of success by putting yourself in an environment that is not conducive to focus. Today, I'm going to tell you what to do instead. I'm going to give you a game plan so that you can jumpstart your business and be successful as fast as possible. The topic for today's episode comes from a question from Kathy. If you want to submit a question for yourself here on Q&A Wednesday, just go to 100mba.net/q and we'll make sure to pick it up and make it a topic on the show.
Welcome back to The $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, to help you start, grow and scale your business.
If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week, and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much.
The honest truth about working from home is that it fails most new entrepreneurs. Many people that are listening right now are going to say, I can build self-discipline Omar. Don't worry, I got this. Most people believe that it's just about willpower, more focus, more drive, more determination, and that they can make it happen from home. And then they blame themselves when it doesn't work out. But here is what I want you to understand. Discipline is not something you summon out of thin air.
Discipline is built through your environment, through your habits, through repetition over time, by making sure that the deck is stacked in your favor so that you have no other choice but to do what you gotta do. If you're brand new to entrepreneurship, if you have spent your entire career working in an office, at a school, at a hospital, at a place, a building that's other than your home, you can't expect yourself to operate at high efficiency when you're in a place that you're not used to working from. The places you go to work to, these offices, they're actually built by design to keep you focused as much as possible. Unlike your house where you have a fridge full of food, where you have a TV, where the PlayStation is waiting, calling your name, you got the dog wanting attention, you got the kids yelling out, hey, I want this, I want that, and on and on and on. And what happens is that you try to force this, try to build your business from a bedroom, from a corner in your living room, from the garage, whatever it might be, and you start to crack because of these distractions, these temptations, and you're only human. And humans are wired to respond to their environment. That's just the bottom line. You can't avoid this. So what I'm asking you to do is to consider this. How about you just stop fighting your environment? How about you make things easy on yourself and change the environment? Let me show you what I mean. When I was a teacher building my custom clothing business on the side while I was in my job, I learned this the hard way. I didn't try to work from home after I finished my job at school, at the university. I decided that that is not going to help me succeed. I went to a co-working space instead. Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. I went to this co-working space on my way home. And then on Saturdays, I did a full eight hours at the co-working space. That gave me 16 hours a week of solid, dedicated, distraction-free environment and space so that I can build a strong business.