Assuming you have taken your leap and you have a product or service to sell, now it is time to build your business. No book can tell you the exact steps and path you will take to achieve your ten-year goal, because every path is different.

As you might imagine, building a $100 million national restaurant chain is a lot different than building a $1 million cabinet-making company. However, every entrepreneur faces some very consistent milestones, hurdles, events, and steps along the way.

Today we’ll address the first of the nine stages of building your business that I discuss in Entrepreneurial Leap. These stages will help you stay one step ahead of the barriers that slow or prevent many entrepreneurs from growing their businesses to their full potential.

Stage One: Generating Cash

You don’t have a business without cash flow. To generate cash, you must sell something. Until you’ve done that, you’ve not proven your product or service has value. Don’t fall into the trap of your mom, dad, or anyone else telling you that you have a great idea. Until customers or clients start paying you, you have nothing.

The day you launch your business, the number one goal you must obsess about is generating cash. Even with forty other things competing for your attention—marketing, a product failure, paying bills, hiring someone, your vision, your customers, your phone ringing, your website, signing a contract, needing a new laptop—what matters most is generating cash.

Welcome to entrepreneurship.

Next Steps

Take a few minutes right now and list all of the ways you can make a sale right now.

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