The bit

If you wanted to drill for oil you need to set up an oil rig, a platform miles from the shore with all the necessary sophisticated machinery that's required to drill for oil, plus the right skilled people to handle the drilling. The cost of this operation is around $2,000,000 a day.

But without the drill bit (which they call "the bit") although it's the smallest part of the machinery, you can't drill without it, because the bit is the part that can drill through rock, which creates the initial small opening to drill wider and deeper. 

So why am I talking about drilling for oil and the bit? Because as entrepreneurs, we often forget about the bit, we build our rigs and our platforms and make all the right moves but we forget about the bit.

We bring everything we know to the platform and we never question what we don't know. so when we drill for our oil without the bit, we don't understand why we are not striking oil. 

Usually it's because we have only used what we already know, without questioning the stuff we don't know, without asking for assistance or reaching out to those that might offer us the bit, which will make the ultimate difference.

It doesn't matter how skilled or learned we think we are, without the bit we will keep asking ourselves, what's going wrong, why are clients not coming, I'm doing  all the right things, all the marketing, creating the name and brand awareness and it's not happening. You're doing what you know, not what you don't know. 

We have a tendency to initiate action in what we do well and forget to question what we don't do well and perhaps what others can help us do better, which is sometimes not obvious, we don't see it and it may be something small like the bit, yet it's more powerful than your entire marketing plan, it's the missing component to your start up.

You thought you were doing it so right and so by the book that you couldn't see the missing bit.

Sometimes it means stepping outside your comfort zone to learn new things or to find people that know what you don't know.

It's no secret that the most successful people surround themselves with the best people, because they are aware from the start that without people that know what they don't know, they would not rise to the heights that they have. 

You might say, you're just getting started and your budget doesn't allow for the luxury of the best people. Fortunately today there is so much free information on the Internet that you can educate yourself exponentially at no cost.

You can get the bit at no cost.

So write down all the things you are good at when you get started and also write down all the things you are not good at and either learn them or ask people that do know. 

That's what I advise my clients to do, because it makes sense. Now you can drill.