You’d have to have blinders on to not notice the entrepreneurial renaissance that is happening all across the United States, and especially in Kansas City. An infinite amount of good things are going to come from this with ramifications that will indubitably affect our generation forever. But the added spotlight on entrepreneurship has created at least one very notable side-effect: Kansas City wantrapreneurs. This is a trendy term describing the people that seem to be in a chronic state of pre-launch. If you or a loved one is experiencing any of these symptoms, we’re prescribing a hard dose of the reality capsuled in this article.

1. You Wrote A Business Plan, Yet You Have No Revenue

A business plan is a boring, long, and extinct document. If someone hands us a business plan it’s a red flag that they haven’t read anything from a prolific startup entrepreneur in the last half decade. EVERYONE is screaming not to do them, including us. It’s a waste of time. More importantly, it promotes a bad habit. The habit is it enables your confidence to think you have some sort of fortune telling ability.

Let this sink in: almost everything you think you know will happen in the first couple of years is wrong.

A business plan is just proof that you think too highly of your guesses. It will be harder to tweak your offering based on what your customers are saying if it’s written down. You need to be fast and flexible; a long winded document filled with a series of guesses is the opposite of that. Get in the habit of assuming everything you think you know is wrong, and you’ll be open to more experiments that test alternative models or features. Alternative models represent an opportunity to truly disrupt – something that couldn’t be done if you only go in the direction for which your plans push you.

2. You Go To The Events, Have The T-Shirts, Collect The Stickers…And You Haven’t Launched Yet

What does any of this have to do with starting? Probably nothing.

We’ve noticed that the biggest name droppers, the most popular pre-launched entrepreneurs in the city, and the most stereotypically dressed “entrepreneurs” seldom turn into success stories. We don’t mean that networking events, startup t-shirts, and stickers on your laptop are the reason they’re failing. We just mean that if you’re going insane with those types of things you’ve probably mis-prioritized what to do.

“Anytime someone has a shirt for their startup before they have made their first dollar is doomed to fail” – Founder of AppSumo, Noah Kagan.

3. You Have Business Cards But Your Product Isn’t Available To Be Bought Yet

We’re only teasing people who have cards, but no product – not business card holders in general. We think networking events and the tools that leverage those experiences are great ways to make new sales and keep your finger on the pulse of your industry’s trends. A little of this pre-launch is okay, but mostly it’s a waste of time.

“But”….but what?

You’re doing it for sales? You have nothing to sell.

You’re doing it for feedback? If you have nothing tangible and just a dream: I promise that everyone is going to “love it”.

You’re doing it to raise money? You’ve got a rash and it’s called symptom number 4….

4. You’re Complaining There “Are No Investors In This City”

We say this in most of of the essays we publish on the topic, but if you’re not a historically rockstar entrepreneur: pre-launch investors would be gambling, not investing. So unless you’re finding gamblers, friends, or family – it’s 99.99% likely you’re too early for a sophisticated angel group in Kansas City or a Missouri professional investor, especially in the Midwest. Go get some traction and you’ll be shocked at how many more investors will appear. Start this hunt too early and you’ll get a bad rap amongst the KC angel investors for shopping a deal that no one wants – which is a reputation that will haunt your company when you finally warrant growth capital.

5. You’re Worried What Your First Set Of Customers Are Going To Say

Is your market only five people? Find another business.

Is your market millions of people? Getting closer.

Is it millions-and-millions, possibly billions of people? Ding, ding, ding.

If this is true – why are you worried about embarrassing yourself with the first hundred? Launch early, launch fast, and inhale feedback like a drug. Tweak your offering and repeat the process. Eventually customers will rave rather than run and the embarrassment will fade to pride.

What’s that you say? You’re gonna have more than a hundred first customers? Probably not. If you do, you probably waited to long to launch or spent too much money before you knew what worked and didn’t work.

“Most every startup, even the best, start with a pathetically small amount of customers” – Eric Ries, national startup coaching God.

Be okay with this. It’s more of an opportunity than it is an insult.

6. You’re Paying The Most Expensive Service Providers In The City To Fix You Up

I call them the ‘Ferrari’s of.’

The Ferrari’s of [law, UI/UX design, programming, cooking, constructing, engineering…whatever]. They’re the service providers that Kansas entrepreneurs need to get their business built, and they’re the ones that are at the top of their game. That’s why you were probably referred to them – or found their site on Google – but why are you choosing to use them?

Some of the richest people in Kansas City raise money to leverage their own cash. Why? Because it’s effin’ expensive to start a company. So what makes you think it’s acceptable to not be frugal? What do smart, but frugal, people not buy?

Ferrari’s.

Your runway (the time you have to get your company off the ground before it dies), has a lot to do with your burn rate. AKA how much money you have left in the bank divided by your monthly expenses. The longer your runway, the better chance you have at getting off the ground. This isn’t instinctual to rookies and they sacrifice crucial dollars for the pursuit of perfection. What they don’t realize is it’s perfect to them – probably not their customers – and now they’re broke.

So for the time being I strongly suggest learning how to do a lot of the things you need service providers for yourself. In a lot of situations that’s not possible. If this is the case, choose service providers based on speed and affordability over quality and perfection. Don’t misunderstand us, this advice becomes more-and-more wrong monthly. But that’s because every month you morph into more of a real business as opposed a startup – at which point, advice tends to change. Until you’re a real business, build things you’re okay with killing if it fails.

Once you know what you’re doing, what your customers need, which team members lasted longer than six months, what your burn rate is… that kind of stuff… start hiring the better-and-better service providers. Launch with speed and frugality in-mind and spend the rest of your days tweaking your business to the point of perfection – not the other way around.

– – – – – – –

There you have it: the six most common symptoms of exhibited by Kansas City wantrapreneurs. If you or a loved one is experiencing any of these symptoms be sure to push them towards the cure. The cure is a magic drug that’s not FDA approved yet, but is highly effective. It’s called ‘Just Start Already’. Get your RX here.