one more thing

Let's start at the beginning. What's the plan? You have a business idea, hopefully. And because you picked the right community to serve, and became a pillar within it, you have a good plan of attack to get started on building your MVP (manual valuable process first, then a minimal viable product). You're going to get to a hundred customers, and only then worry about launching!

Soon after-or maybe you're already there-you will be profitable and in control of your destiny. You'll learn how to stay there as you get a good grip on the legal, operational, and financial components of running your business.

You'll craft a culture that attracts the kind of people you love working with and for. It won't be easy, but your business will grow, and you will start to solve new problems over time.

Most important, your identity will not be wrapped up in your business. You won't need to do anything you don't want to, at least not for more than a couple of hours a week. Take that, Tim!

Of course, even then the journey isn't over. It never is. It won't be easy or quick or straightforward. It will take a lot of time, and perhaps a few attempts, but that's okay, because you have a whole life ahead of you to figure things out. And it's not about avoiding failure but getting to success, eventually. The longer it takes to win, the more prepared you'll be, because you will get better every year that it takes.

In this book, we've mostly spoken about successful businesses. But every successful entrepreneur has many failed attempts. In the years before Gumroad's creation, I built and launched several dozen things. Almost all of them failed. Gumroad worked, though. And you only need to be right once.

But humanity needs millions if we hope to get out of this mess. (We'll always be in a mess.) Regardless, I believe the future of entrepreneurship is the future of humanity, and so the more companies that get started the better. And the best way to get more companies started is to make it easy, accessible, and attainable.

I'm not trying to convince you. Rather, I think you'll understand it deeply when you're running your own business. Your work is necessary. The business you will start is necessary. These kinds of businesses have been necessary for hundreds of years and will be for thousands of years more. There's nothing new about them.

If you're struggling to even come up with a problem to solve, be patient. Look around and pay attention. Humanity is just getting started, and it's unlikely that anything we do today will resemble how we do it in the future.

One day, your life and work will align. You'll have a purpose that unifies everything you do. You'll get paid to do what you love. Your business will grow as long as you keep being you .

All of these things will happen. But only if you do the most important thing and . . .

Start.