Yeah, it’s scary. What if your parachute doesn’t open? Are you saver on the ground.
How many times have you heard an excuse such as this one?
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starting your business from home successfully is for everyone, but not everybody starts their own business. Why is that? Well, it’s simpler to stay in your comfort zone. You know what you can expect. You know your limits. You aren’t entirely happy about it, but you hesitate about taking the risk of starting your own business.
Starting a business is and has always been a jump into the unknown. That’s how entrepreneurs are born.
No money. No backup. Zero customers. Zero movement.
Many have the zeal to “Not give up!” but few ever have the zeal to continue failing.
Failing should be deleted from your mind. Replace it with Learning.
Here you were:
Failing in your first business. Here was me with my online e-tail glass store. Failing brought hurt. Anger. Shame.
Thus naturally, we would look for another way out of life…An easy way out.
Well, after falling down a multiple terms, grinding the stones, having zero customers, alas!
Many quited! Some persisted! Only 1% continued to learn and grow.
The 1% knew that they were in a learning process. A way of getting better.
For some who persisted, they are like sand castles easily shredded at the next failure.
The one percent learnt a great lesson, the others never learnt. That’s why when, they kept falling, they kept rising up again.
And again….and again….and again:
That’s the secret learnt by these entrepreneurs. When they kept having sharp abuse, closed doors on their faces.
When customers shredded to file them, they just kept showing up.
They fell from the bicycle: then gathered their wits, learnt something, then more and more lessons, then eventually started to walk again. Their success was a direct commission of their zeal to learn from every failure.
I was taken for a dyslexic at school. One teacher said teaching an alien gave more promise.
I failed to start up a successful business for three years. My first business as a retailer failed three times before my friend intervened to tell me I was acting stupid.
Three principles however dictate how I live even now…. they may help you achieve more than what the laws of attraction promise.
#Principle one: Think for yourself. No one should think for you whether through a book, video or post, especially if they are contradicting with your goals.
#Principle 2: For the sake of persistency, learn to embrace failure at all costs. Start small businesses, small grounds and start acting big.
#Principle 3: Embrace stories of failure> Learn more from stories of failure than those of success.
One more thing though. This isn’t free information. It has a cost. The cost is what I paid.
You have to endure, survive and thrive. You’ve got to start making your own path.
Don’t believe anything anyone or even me says, unless it coincides with your beliefs and can be stated and tested.
When you develop a strong belief system, there is no word in the world like failure or the like.
You can teach your kids entrepreneurship, business knowledge is an art, not a science. It’s teachable.
You could argue that they’re born with attributes that make them successful, like an open mind, drive, competitive spirit, or the ability to see the big picture. But what about the skills we develop over time, like creativity, courage, confidence, the ability to handle stress, and subject matter expertise?
To raise the next generation of entrepreneurs, we shouldn’t rely only on genetic traits. We should teach them how to be entrepreneurs—and there’s no better way to learn than by doing.
Help Kids to Start a Business
Encourage your kids to start with a lemonade stand. You’ve probably heard of Lemonade Day. If you haven’t, it’s a program for kids and teens to start a lemonade stand where some or all of the profits are donated to charity. Through this, kids learn business skills, responsibility, financial literacy, goal setting, and teamwork. Go to The Lemonade Day website for a free starter kit.
Kids as young as age five can start learning about business with this Pizza Store simulation from Osmo. It’s hands-on, integrates with technology, and teaches math and entrepreneur skills. Doesn’t it look fun?
Shopify offers a logo maker, guides, videos, and resources for kids ready to start a business.
Help your kids think of products to sell or a service they can offer. Then, help them implement. Consider the classic always needed lawn mowing, snow removal, office help, or babysitting businesses. Or think about your children’s passions. What do they like to create or do? My artsy daughter once spent an afternoon by the community pool selling her artwork and donated the profits to The Salvation Army. Not a full-blown business per say, but a pop-up stand and good experience.
A smart example of what teaching entrepreneurship looks like
N.b.
This a perfect story of what teaching entrepreneurship may look like.
Dad, I want to make money. Can I work for you?” My 10 year old boy asked me.
“We don’t work for money son. You must come up with a creative idea to make money through a business.”
“Oh, let me think,” he paused for a moment and said, “I have an idea! I could mow the lawn for the neighbors!”
“That’s not a business son!”
“Well, I could wash cars or walk their dogs over the weekends!”
“You’re still exchanging time for money son! That’s NOT a business. I want you to come up with a business idea!”
“I don’t understand dad!”
“I don’t want you to exchange time for money. Think how to solve this!”
Three days later…
“Dad, dad! I have an idea, what if I plant some vegetables in our backyard, grow them and sell them!”
“Now, THAT sounds more like a business son! Can you tell me the difference? How many hours will you invest to keeping up with your plants?” I asked.
“I need to water the plants every day after school.”
“What else?”
“Watch out for bugs eating my veggies?”
“Correct! How much time will you invest doing that?”
“Well, dad… nothing, maybe minutes!”
“So what is the difference between your veggie business and working for me or for the neighbors?”
“I’m going to save time!”
“Good! Now you have a new problem… You need to invest some money on your vegetable garden! How much money will you invest?
We went to Home Depot to buy stuff. He had his cash savings in his pocket.
”Dad, look! If we install this automatic water system I will be making money even while we’re on vacation!” He said excited after identifying a special hose to connect to his new pots.
“I will buy organic soil so my cucumbers and my tomatoes will be organic. I can sell them at a higher price to my neighbors and my friends.”
I smiled proudly as I could see how he was getting his business mind together.
We purchased everything. He negotiated a $50 dollar loan from me. We agreed that he will pay me interest.
Business is an art, not a science.
My boy is developing his entrepreneurial skills. He is learning everything that schools don’t teach him like how to invest, how to sell, how to keep track of money.
He will learn the pains of paying interest of a loan, and after this winter, he’s learning the pains of losing money and having to start over again!
Most importantly, I’m teaching and developing his mindset! Entrepreneurship is an art, an understanding of how to make money, it needs to be learned, not taught.
Launching a startup isn’t a fairytale! Unrealistic from-zero-to-hero movies and books have done more harm than good to the startup founders.
Okay, you’re a first time entrepreneur, you’re just getting started, congratulations, you’ve taken the first and most difficult step… getting started!
Amazing!
Now, I can almost read your mind… I can anticipate the mistake you’re most likely going to make or already making …
But wait, don’t feel bad. It’s okay, we all make this mistake, but I want to stop you before you continue…
I can tell you’re working on your BETA version of your product or service…
You want it to work perfectly before you get it to your customers.
Right?
Most likely you’re investing long nights and hundreds of hours of hard work to make this your perfect product.
Correct?
Most likely coding, buying inventory, making a hefty investment of time, money and effort…
That’s your mistake!
“What? This guy is crazy!” Yep, I know you’re thinking that. It’s okay, you’ll love me after I save you tons of money and effort.
You should not be buying inventory, coding or creating your product. You shouldn’t be renting office space or buying furniture, NO!
“So what will I sell? I need something to sell!”
Exactly! That’s your mistake.
You’re gambling!
“No, Hector! I’m not gambling! Everyone needs this product. If I could get just 1% of the market, we will be very successful!”
Yes… you said it correctly… “IF” you get a part of the market.
A very common mistake we all make is creating the product BEFORE we find the customers and that’s gambling.
In fact, it’s EXTREMELY expensive to find the ideal customer for YOUR product.
Here’s the key difference:
You create YOUR version, then go out to the world and say, “I’m trying to sell this! I need to find the PERFECT customer for my product.”
The correct way to do this is creating a ‘demo’ product and then going out to the world and saying, “I’m trying to learn what YOU need and I’ll make it for you.”
See the difference?
One is gambling… you invest everything into your business and THEN you go out to sell.
The other one is investing… you invest very little, find the customer and then create the product for one or more clients you KNOW will buy your product.
A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a product that has the minimum set of features to prove the most essential hypothesis in your business.
If you’re starting with an idea and nothing built, your first goal is to prove that people want what you’re planning to build. A Minimum Viable Product would be what you could build at a minimum to prove that.
It sounds obvious. But the reality is many products are made that no one cares about. A product may have many great features but building features doesn’t help a product in search of a problem.
Building a Minimum Viable Product can save you time and money, but it’s not an excuse to build a bad product. Making a Minimum Viable Product means thinking about all the elements your product could have – each feature, each potential page – and only doing the things most essential to prove people want it.
Example: How Unsplash started as a $19 Tumblr theme without writing a line of code. And is now it’s one of the fastest growing photography websites.
Rather than spending months creating a website with profiles, logins, etc., we setup a Tumblr blog with a $19 theme and uploaded 10 hi-resolution photos to a public Dropbox folder. Within three hours, the first version of Unsplash was built.
The first version of Unsplash as a Tumblr theme:
Unsplash was submitted on Hacker News, an online community of designers, developers, and entrepreneurs we thought might like Unsplash.
Within a few hours of posting, over 20,000 photos were downloaded. Even though the first version of Unsplash was primitive and barely worked, it was enough to prove it solved a problem for many people.
Today, Unsplash gets over 7 million photo downloads a month. Interestingly, the basic look of the first version of Unsplash is still how Unsplash looks today. The simplicity of a Minimum Viable Product ended up being the thing that made Unsplash special.
Often you don’t even need to code or design anything to prove the product you want to make solves a problem.
Mark Randall, Chief Strategist, VP Creativity at Adobe said,
“Only write code when you can’t think of any other way to validate your hypothesis.”
At first, you may simply need to hop on the phone with a handful of potential customers or sketch out your idea for a website with pen and paper.
A Smoke Test is another tactic you could use to validate you’re solving a problem before you build.
An example of a Smoke Test is to create a one-page website that says what your product will do along with an email signup box. No actual product exists yet but the goal is to see if any potential customers signup for what you want to make before you spend time making it.
The aim of this two-page MVP was to check whether people would even consider using the app”, said Joel Gascoigne, Buffer Founder and CEO.
Although this basic version of a product might seem leagues away from what you want your product to be, it’s an essential first step toward getting there.
Even many of today’s most popular products had to start somewhere.
Minimum viable products of popular products
eBay
eBay, today’s most popular online auction website was originally called AuctionWeb when it launched in 1995. Here’s the earliest screenshot available of eBay’s original homepage compared to their homepage in 2014.
Apple
Apple is one of the world’s most valuable brands in the world. When the company was founded in 1976, there was a lot of risk. Personal computers weren’t a thing yet so Apple had to keep things minimal.
The Apple 1 was the first computer released by Apple in 1976 and was just a circuit board. It didn’t have a keyboard, monitor, or case.
Kickstarter
Kickstarter flipped the funding model for creative projects by allowing people to support and fund project creators from all over the world.
It seems like an obvious solution now but when Kickstarter founder, Perry Chen, first had the idea, it took 6 or 7 years to launch.
Although he wasn’t a designer, Perry sketched his initial vision for Kickstarter in 2006.
We see how successful products look today. Sometimes we forget it took years of evolution to get where they are.
The Minimum Viable Product approach doesn’t end after your first Minimum Viable Product is launched. It continues through the entire life of your product. Even when you have customers or you’re a well-established company, you still need to choose what to build first and what should wait.
Building a Minimum Viable Product isn’t the only approach to product development but it’s the one I adhere to almost always. Every time we’ve tried to build the perfect first version, the investment has rarely paid off. The idea either lost it’s magic, the product got complex, or it was delivered late. Worst of all, it never felt worth the extra time and money.
Even now, with a team of 15 designers and programmers and over $12 million in funding, we still start new projects as if we had no money or couldn’t code or design.
A Minimum Viable Product isn’t about making a bad first product. It’s about focusing on what’s most important and building that.
What is the purpose of building a minimum viable product.
Let’s start by looking at the Top 3 reasons startups fail?
Team
No market
Run out of resources
And those three reasons account for easily 90% of the causes.
Now, what there is overcome by a great product? In fact, none.
If the team disagrees with the direction the company is going or just can’t keep putting in the effort, they’re done, despite the product
If there is no market for what you have in mind, or more likely, you can’t acquire and secure it, why on Earth would you build more than the minimally viable?
Until you have a business model or funding, no amount of a great product will keep you from still burning cash and time.
Your job, as a founder, is actually to avoid 1, 2, and 3 until you crack the market and find a model or funding to keep going.
Most startups put too much time and effort in the product. Most founders are too fixated on the product they want or the affirmation they have that it’s right.
An as a result, most ventures experience teams that fall apart, discover they’re wrong, or run out of resources.
So, MVP.
Build as little as possible that can on its own work and persist. Be viable.
Most founders don’t do this. Even if they think they do, most aren’t.
An MVP could be something like a newsletter. You convert people, it grows, and you can get a sponsor. In your space: MVP.
And an MVP such as that is truly an MVP. It proves you can convert, grow, and make money. It will in and of itself subsist and live on. And most importantly, it gives you an market to develop.
But most founders want to build their thing. Most want to prove they’re right by showing people want that thing.
That’s not a company. That’s lunacy.
Companies build what the market wants. They invest minimally in determining that and then they iterate.
Find a team committed to a mission and vision, do the marketing to determine what people really want and will pay for, build the least viable thing you can, and make money.
Your 20s is a very important stage of life that’s often ignored by many, some waste it , some poorly use it. But to Create a richer life for yourself. You need to do this 17 things.
The world is divided in two types of people:
People who wait for others to give them permission to do what they want to do.
People who grant themselves permission to do what they want to do.
Want to avoid regrets in life?
STOP being a people-pleaser and live YOUR own life. Start today!
1. You don’t have to be born smart to make it in life.
Learn to differentiate between assets and liabilities and how to avoid accumulating liabilities. If you don’t, you’ll still be spending your money on worthless liabilities in your 30s, 40s, and 50s.Take care of yourself when you’re still in your 20s. A time will come when you can’t stretch yourself without feeling pain. Make sure you eat well and eat healthy food to avoid getting an irreversibly shapeless body when you’re in your 30s, 40s, and 50s.
Don’t waste your time trying to look like the celebrities.
2. Don’t waste your time trying to loo
Most celebrities are struggling to be happy because they lost their own identity chasing money and fame. Find and maintain your own identity and you’ll be happier and proud of yourself.
3. Learn a valuable skill.
If you want to be on top of the world, learn a valuable skill that people are begging you for. Learning a valuable skill is an asset in itself. Leverage the Internet to accumulate as much relevant knowledge as possible to cushion yourself against inflation, obsolescence, and irrelevancy.
4. Start a side hustle
Whether you’re studying or working in a 9-to-5 job, start a side hustle to generate your income and move away from depending on your parents/guardians for cash. Nothing can be as fulfilling as buying your independence. This is a sign of maturity, growth, and personal responsibility.
5. Don’t succumb to cultural pressure.
Don’t succumb to cultural pressures and fall into an early marriage trap, by getting into a relationship with someone you don’t love. Legally, nobody is supposed to force you to do anything against your will. Don’t do something you will regret not only in your 30s and 40s, but also for the rest of your life.
6. Fall in
Don’t wait to fall in love until you’re in your 30s or 40s, or until you’re bored with life. Falling in love feels better when you’re younger, and energetic, and the blood is still boiling. If you wait too long, falling in love will taste like food without salt.
7. Have enough fun.
Having fun may seem like a trivial issue, but scientists tell us that it reduces stress, enhances the growth hormone, and actually prolongs life. Surprisingly, the earlier you surrender to fun, the more you increase your probability to live longer.
8. Don’t over indulge yourself in immoral acts.
Don’t put yourself at risk by overindulging in illicit sex, smoking, liquor and drug abuse, which may deplete your sex hormones slowly. That’s sad news for teenagers who enjoy these vices in their twenties, only to realize that they can’t have ‘normal babies’ in their 30s and 40s.
9. Don’t have to pull along your childhood friends.
Relationships can be confusing in your 20s, 30s and 40s. Friendship circles also change when you leave school, join college, change jobs or careers, or get married. You don’t have to pull along your childhood friends into your adult life, for most of them have already forgotten about you and moved on.
10. Treat the elderly has you’ll like to be treated.
How you treat people, especially the elderly in your twenties reflects how you would like to be treated by the younger generation when you’re in your 30s, 40s and even beyond your 50s.
11. Believe you are the beautiful thing on earth.
It’s not your fault that you were born ugly, beautiful or handsome. You’re just as ugly, beautiful or handsome as you think. More importantly, people see you just as you see yourself.
12. Your adult life starts now.
Your adult life starts in your mid-twenties. Choices you make at this age will not only have an impact in your teen years, but will also cascade into your 30s, 40s and even beyond your 50s.
13. Learn to take responsibility
The important thing is to take personal responsibility for your actions, mistakes, and the choices you make in your twenties. When you’re in your 30s, 40s and even beyond your 50s, it will be extremely difficult to alter your habits.
14. Know your circle.
If possible, have a small circle of about 5 trusted friends, for consultation, brainstorming, and laughing. Life is designed such that you can’t effectively look at your back even with a mirror. You need a team to tell you exactly what’s happening.
15. Exercise keeps your muscles active.
Your physical muscles tend to get tired, and even start receding as you grow older, when your body senses that you’re no longer actively using them. Maintaining regular workouts and exercise can keep your muscles active into your 40s and 50s.
16. Watch whom you laugh with.
Watch whom you laugh with. A simple light joke can be taken way out of proportion. A simple word can be taken way out of context. A simple action can be taken way out of meaning. These are simple, hard lessons you learn as you grow older in your 40s and 50s.
17. Don’t throw away your strength on multiple partners.
Don’t throw away your strength and virility on multiple partners. What you’re looking for tastes the same irrespective of size, color of skin, or shape. Preserve your vitality so that you don’t get bored in your 40s, 50s, and beyond, when companionship matters most.
When it comes to our small business, we don’t always have a CEO mindset. We can quickly & easily get caught up in an employee mindset. An employee mindset is one that is focused on the single job at hand – we have on blinders, but not in a good way. We’re down in the trenches of our business; juggling the day-to-day operations and not always thinking (or having TIME to think) about the bigger picture!
An employee mindset is lethal for small businesses because we can spend more time working IN the business then ON the business. As the Bloguettes say: “…you end up with a slew of short-term plans & no business direction!”!
So, how do you shift your mindset? How can we view our small business from a CEO perspective?
What is a CEO mindset
In October 1911, two teams of explorers embarked on a journey that no one had ever successfully completed. The explorers left the Antarctic in an attempt to reach the South Pole. One team, led by Roald Amundsen, was Norwegian. The other, led by Robert Scott, was British.
The disparity between the teams’ success was immense. Amundsen and his team made it to the South Pole, and they returned to their base on the exact date that Amundsen had marked in his planning journals. It was a precise victory. Scott and his team had a different fate: They made it to the South Pole—more than a month after the Norwegians did—but they sadly perished on their return.
How could two leaders, presumably with access to similar training, tools, and resources, produce such drastically different outcomes? The answer is in how they prepared.
Amundsen’s success was connected to his incremental approach. He advanced fifteen miles every day and built his system around that goal. In addition, he prepared—mentally and physically—for this particular moment his whole life. He ran miles, cycled from Norway to Spain instead of taking the train, lived with Eskimos to adapt to extreme temperatures, learned how to use dogs and sleds, figured out whether dolphins could be a food of last resort, and thoroughly tested all his equipment. He also packed significant extra supplies for the arduous trip. And finally: Amundsen and his team formed a camaraderie before they all set off on their expedition.
These methods are in stark contrast to how Scott ran his team. Scott took an aggressive, impetuous approach. He had no plan or marked target for progress, unlike the fifteen-mile mark favored by his rival. Scott bet his luck on unproven methods. He utilized motor sledges, which were cutting edge but also untested technology at the time. The motor sledges broke down, leaving Scott’s expedition to rely on horses, which were also unsuitable for the conditions and, ultimately, manpower. And, perhaps most telling, Scott’s teammates did not bond and form a fellowship before the expedition.
This story of two leaders is rich in lessons—of consistency, foresight, fortitude, of strategy, and ultimately of immutable leadership secrets.
Top five mindset of CEOs
Decisive Mindset
This CEO knows when to make the tough calls – but more importantly, how to be accountable for the outcomes. They get the data, make a definite decision and then stay with it as long as it makes sense. CEOs often have to change course. They are all about passion as well as profit. Many people may be perfect on paper, but are otherwise uncommitted to achieving success as a group.
Prosperous Mindset
A good CEO sees challenges as opportunities to grow and even prosper. In the face of adversity, this type of CEO is the leader who sees problems as learning opportunities. They don’t focus on what’s lacking, but how it can be improved.
Performance Mindset
The best CEOs choose the best talent consistently. They set the bar high and focus on performance metrics relevant to meeting business goals.
Engaged Mindset
The best CEOs are also engaged and engaging, and they seek engagement. To avoid having a warped perception, great CEOs stay engaged by regularly getting “out there.” They talk with all employees, spending quality time with all people in the organization, regardless of level or department. Staying in the leadership team bubble is comfortable, but it’s not great leadership.
Emotive Mindset
Finally, successful CEOs understand when to show emotion (EQ). This is more about how a CEO makes the team feel: Leadership is not always driving and hard hitting. Good leaders share the “whys” with their team — why the company exists, and the higher mission and purpose for the organization. It’s not just about getting things done, but understanding the bigger picture.
Bringing this mindset shift into your small business
Develop a company ‘mission’ – your reason for being. Without considering ‘why’ you exist, what your purpose is, and why clients will require your product or services, you will struggle to get off the ground.
Create a solid business plan, incorporating five and ten-year goals – it may be market expansion, team growth or profit-related. Consider your strategy for growth – do you want to operate on a franchise basis (this model has worked for my business niche), or build to eventually sell? Aim high!
Implement the processes and systems that you know will be needed in the future. Introduce a company handbook – even if it’s just you to start with, including all business and HR policies. It may seem unnecessary, but it will get you thinking about what you stand for, and what kind of employer you want to be.
Invest in branding. If you have the funds, appoint professionals to support you with your website, logo design and marketing. Having a strong, visual brand in place will ensure clients take notice from the beginning.
The simple truth is that in order to move from meager growth to exponential growth, you’ve got to think big. Allow yourself to envision a time in the not-so-distant future —
Understanding how to see the big picture can help you prioritize effectively, set better goals and improve time management. By developing a complete perspective of a situation, you can make decisions that drive long-term results, which can help you advance in your career.
What is the big picture
In Getting Things Done, David Allen uses an altitude metaphor to describe what he calls “horizons of focus.” It’s a good way to understand the concept because the metaphor gives you a framework for how to see the big picture in your business. The higher you go, the more you see.
0 feet – the runway: this is the day to day, where you are focused on your calendar and next actions 10,000 feet – projects: all the balls you have in the air at any given time 20,000 feet – areas of responsibility: in your solopreneur business, this would be all the different hats you wear, like CEO, CFO, marketing, product development, etc. 30,000 feet – 1-to 2-year goals and objectives 40,000 feet – 3-to 5-year vision 50,000 feet – purpose and values
Seeing the bigger picture means thinking about how your actions can affect the overall success of a project or company aim, rather than focusing on minor details. Big-picture thinking can be crucial for achievement in the workplace because knowing what to focus on can help you budget your time efficiently, manage stress levels and create actionable, achievable goals. You can use big picture thinking in a variety of roles, including:
Getting clarity for your big picture
In order to hone in on what your big-picture vision is for your company, start by asking yourself two questions:
What do you want to create with your business?
How far do you want your business to go in the world?
In answering these questions, look at where you’ve come from, what passion drove you to launch your business and what goals you’ve had thus far. What has worked? What feels like it might need some fresh direction? Give yourself space to reflect and envision a powerful future for you and your company.
Schedule some time to unplug completely, and take a walk in nature. Studies have shown again and again that this kind of personal time is ideal for emotional health and creativity, so use this to jumpstart your big-picture vision
Here are some more leading questions to toss around in your creative mind as you work on honing your vision:
What unique skills make you the very best at something? How much are you charging for your products/services now? Should you be charging more? How many employees do you have? How many do you need for your company to achieve exponential growth? What will your employees ideally be saying about working for you in this future vision? What will your clients be saying? How is your company perceived by the public in three years time? What is the media saying about you? How will most of your time be spent in relation to your company? How much personal time will you have? What will your gross revenue, net profit, salary and other key financials look like in three years time? Once you imagine where you want to be in life and career, focus on making that a reality. Picture it as if it will absolutely manifest. Allow doubt to fall away, and put all your energy and enthusiasm behind making this dream a reality.
If you’re wondering where to start in manifesting this big-picture vision, giving yourself creative quiet time — like the nature walk I mentioned — is key. If you stay in worker-bee mode, with your head down, mired in whatever work is in front of you that particular day, it will be next to impossible to create the kind of growth you need to succeed.
Needing help seeing the big picture here are five steps
Know your assumptions
Know your assumptions. It is important to clearly define and understand your assumptions. You must know what your assumptions are so you can monitor your results and adjust accordingly. If you aren’t reaching your projected numbers you can then compare the actual results to your assumptions and see what needs to be changed.
Have consistent marketing
Marketing is the relationship your business has with your customers – advertising, promotions and sales are all functions of marketing. Line up all your promotional material, business cards, e-mail signatures and online profiles and make sure they are consistent.
Get comfortable with your numbers
A common mistake for small business owners is to view finances through an emotional lens, meaning they either look at them with fear when times are tight or delight when business is booming. However, looking at finances from this standpoint means you will miss important information such as what and why things are working or not working. Instead be open and curious with your finances. When you are constantly curious — in both good times and bad — you will always be learning and thinking constructively on how you can improve your business.
Every blog needs visitors, and those visitors need the best experience, or they may leave for good.
Why everyone visitors to your blog have different intents. It’s quite bad when they leave unsatisfied. That’s their expectations are not met. Or they meet a bad experience on the way.
It may not be that your content is poor. But many things can contribute to a poor visitors experience.
Let’s look at some of the most boring.
1. A dark background with light writing
Or even worse… colored writing on a dark background. Yikes!! Talk about mega eye strain and a headache! The thing is I, like most other people, am relatively lazy when it comes to websites. I want the information to be presented to me in the easiest way for me to read – if I have to strain to read your website then I’m not going to put in the effort and I’ll head off somewhere else.
Using a white background can be the best fit for your blog. It’s good on the eye.
2. click next to see more pages
Many bloggers use this trick to get more clicks, which only makes their visitors wowed to not visit their blogs anymore.
Bah this one frustrates me the most. If I have clicked through to your post it is because I want to read it. I don’t want to have to keep proving how much I want to read it by clicking again and waiting again for load times. I want to read it all in one go, right in front of me.
This honestly will make me leave your site straight away. I refuse to be baited into clicking more on a site just to improve their stats. There’s nothing I want to read bad enough that will make me click through on one of these.
3. newsletter popups you can’t click off.
If I have just landed on your site – haven’t even read the first sentence, and a pop up comes up asking me to subscribe to your newsletter, and I can’t click off the pop-up, then I’m going to be leaving your site.
You haven’t offered me anything of value, I don’t even know you yet, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t know what your message is – and you want me to sign up for a newsletter? I don’t mind if you’re offering me something awesome… but just a newsletter?
There’s no denying it – like them or not, pop-ups work. But… and this is a big but… not all pop-ups are the same.
4. Ads blocking me from where I want to click.
Everyone wants to make a living from their content. Sometimes monetization can be against you. And set your readers in an incredible confusion.
Not only is this against the rules for ad networks like Google Adsense, but it is also incredibly frustrating. If you have an ad that shows directly below your drop-down menu, and I can’t click on the topic I want to read about because I keep clicking on the ad below instead, then I won’t be coming back to your site.
5. Constantly trying to sell me something
Again, I don’t even know you yet and you’re already asking for my money? Before I buy anything from anyone I want to know more about it than just the title and price.
You should be using your blog to show me how amazingly knowledgeable you are and prove that I’d be better off if I had your product, then there’s a higher chance of me handing over my money. Not so much if you berate me into buying it.
6. Over design.
It is common knowledge that clean, clear, and crisp website designs are the way to go. Increase your whitespace and make your blog visually pleasing and I’ll stick around to read anything you have to say.
If I’m struggling to find your blog post through the ten advertisements, eight blogging award buttons, six background images, four-link parties, and two pop-ups then I’m going to get a little frustrated.
Maybe you have a friend that has tried this blogging thing and it doesn’t work. Or do you already have a blog that you have been posting on for months and no traffic or discussion of making money?
You are not alone, whatever your present situation may be on this blogging journey, just squeeze to this post.
So, if you’re stuck wondering, whether you should start a blog or not, or have just started a blog and are not seeing results, I want you to take a deep, deep breath and just relax.
It’s completely normal to not know where your blog is going or to wonder if it will all work out.
I’m not here to bring down your hopes and/or discourage you from blogging. But instead, show you a few realistic expectations from starting a blog and growing it from scratch and show you how a few ways you can cope.
This post we the discuss in three segments
Three harsh truths about why bloggers failed. Three harsh truths about why bloggers don’t get traffic Three harsh truths about why bloggers don’t make money. Once you understand what to expect along the way, you’ll be better prepared to tackle these little obstacles and blog more effectively.
So, let’s begin with a few harsh truths most bloggers fail
Reasons most bloggers failed. (quite)
Your Mindset Is: I’ll Give This A Try For 3 Months And If It Doesn’t Work I’ll Give Up To me, this is the #1 reason, bloggers failed. Because with this mindset you’ve already failed.
If that’s where your mindset is, it’s basically like you already gave up.
Because if you put that in your head, you’re already giving yourself that excuse and that reason to give up.
I see so many people doing this.
They give it a go for a few weeks. They post consistently for a little while. They don’t see results right away and they just give up.
After some bunch of months, they repeat the same process. Not seeing sustainable results they quit.
You lack persistence: when we dey start coming So many people get really excited to launch their blog and they start posting a few blog posts. They’re not getting any views or maybe they’re getting like 10 views here and there.
And then they feel really disappointed and feel like giving up.
If you’ve posted, say, 3 blog posts or 5 blog posts and you are really disappointed because you’re not getting any views yet, then what you need is more patience.
The thing is you need to build quite a big portfolio of blog posts in order to get constant results in time, as in months and years.
In time, this actually happens passively.
You’re going to start getting traffic and earning money passively from your blog, but that takes a long time of working on your blog.
It’s not something that happens after 3 blog posts.
They stop making research: Whatever niche you decide to blog in, you need to be on top of things always.
No one was born with that knowledge they write daily, but day to day they keep making research. Reading other blogs,
I read an average of two blog posts daily. You can afford to shoot back and wonder why ideas do not come out. You need to find it, and hustle it
For Instance you are Blogger that teaches young women how to build online businesses that stand out from the norm.”
Aside from this, you will need to constantly research on blogging and business because the rules change every day.
Whether it comes to SEO, traffic, and/or content marketing, it’s good to constantly read and familiarize yourself with this line of work.
The reason most bloggers don’t get traffic
You’ll have to niche down Choosing a “niche” is unpalatable for many new bloggers for several reasons.
To begin with, humans are multi-passionate people, and we like to talk about all manner of topics. Choosing just one thing to blog about for the rest of time can feel restrictive. That’s why so many new bloggers end up going with a vague “lifestyle blog” and write about ten different, essentially unrelated topics.
For example, I’ve come across so many blogs that write about fashion, recipes, fitness, parenting, and travel all on one site.
But it’s not an effective strategy because: You’re not positioning yourself as an “expert” in any one field which gives you less credibility.
It’s much harder to build an engaged email list because your subscribers’ interests will be all over the map. Google won’t really know what your site is about, and your posts are less likely to show up in the SERPs. It’s like entrepreneur Meredith Hill says:
“When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.” But choosing a specific niche poses a problem for many new bloggers because it can take time to figure out “your thing.”
The good news is, that it’s okay to start with a slightly broader niche and then rein it in as you discover what resonates most with your audience.
Building that traffic takes a Dawn long time. This is another harsh truth about blogging that you need to let it soaked in.
If SEO is your marketing strategy, it will take months of blogging consistent, quality content before Google pays your site the tiniest bit of attention.
Even if you have a solid social media strategy, it will take a long time to build up an audience.
I blogged my heart out for 11 months before I had enough traffic to monetize with my previous blog with ads ads. It was even longer before I was made any sales through affiliate links.
You don’t post enough & you don’t do it consistently.
Blogging is about building relationships with your audience. So if you post on your blog for 2 weeks and you’re like “peace out” the next 2 months, it doesn’t give your audience a chance to build a relationship with you. Every time you post, it gives your readers more reason to visit your blog again because they want to be updated with the latest tips.
And then from a technical perspective, Google favors blogs that publish new & fresh content. If your blog is stagnant, your rank on Google will be stagnant.
You’ll learn how to create even better content each post you publish. So, if you were to post 1x a week, the quality of your content will be much better after 2 months. Not only that, but you’ll also get a better idea of the kind of content your audience likes. Because you have that experience of publishing content they didn’t like, content they kind of liked, and content they ABSOLUTELY LOVED.
Three harsh truths about why bloggers don’t make money
You must know how to make money, to make money. This happens on any platform.
Even if you have an Instagram account, a YouTube channel, whatever it may be.
If you don’t know how to monetize it, you’re just not going to make money
That’s just the truth of it. So many people feel like once they’re starting to get traffic, money will magically fall into the bank.
But unless you have a clear idea of how you’re going to monetize that traffic, that income won’t just come with traffic.
Remember a blog is a business As a blogger, that service is usually providing information that helps your audience solve a problem.
If you aren’t writing for someone (i.e., a specific audience), people aren’t going to find you, or if they do stumble upon your blog, they’re not going to stick around.
Anytime you write anything, you need to ask yourself: who is this helping and how?
Think like an SEO — what answers are people searching for? What kind of things do you search for on google? If you always put your audience first and create killer blog posts that help them, you will find your people!
What works is constantly changing. It’s also important to stay current on all the algorithm changes on Google, Pinterest, or wherever else you’re getting traffic from.
Because One of the most frustrating things about blogging is what worked last month might not work next month.
Affiliate programs come and go; your top earner last week may never make another cent next week. Or, partners can cut your commissions at the drop of a hat, (like the Amazon Associates commissions cull of April 2020).
Display ads pay more at certain times of the year than others, and recent privacy concerns over third-party cookies may completely change how display ads work in the future.
Topic popularity trends and wanes. For example, my home fitness blog exploded in 2020 with the pandemic, but all the travel bloggers took a massive hit on income because no one was leaving their houses.
To bring it home. Why blogging is still a lucrative side hustle. It doesn’t take off Immediately.
Like any other entrepreneurial endeavor, those who keep at it succeed.
I believe that one thing set a successful blogger from a average blogger, and that is mindset.
I’ve seen many that have been successful blogs on the side of why having a full-time job and demeaning family.
To some, it was hard, some were working two jobs a day. And still went through all odds to create what was beneficial to the society.
Then have seen many that after a month or two blogging. Quit and began to campaign that blogging doesn’t worth it.
Only one thing can get you through In the beginning, you’ll feel so excited about your new project.
It’s like that rush you get at the start of the year when you’re setting your goals and you can’t wait to crush them.
You make to-do lists and carve out a plan.
You set your plan into motion, but then as the days go by, you lose that palpable energy you had at the start.
You get busy with school, work, relationships, you name it. You lose your momentum.
It’s happened to me time and time again.
I love the start of a new project when my creativity seems to be overflowing.
I’ll have so many content ideas that I can’t wait to work on them.
My energy is at its peak because of this creative adrenalin rush.
I’ll be glued to by computer working at it until late at night because I’m so focused.
And then, I’ll miss one day of working on my project because of something unexpected.
I’ll get tested with how I manage my focus and time.
I’ll miss another day and another.
Before I know it, I’m so busy that when I finally have the time to work on content, it’s a struggle to get back to it.
There will be days that you’ll feel the challenge to even start writing a new post or record a new video.
Other times, it could be that you’ve been pushing yourself to create, create, create and you don’t get the results you’d hoped for.
You may feel like you put in a lot of effort to produce something you’re proud about, but then you get less than 20 views.
There will be days when you feel like all that effort and hard work is for nothing.
It’s as if you’re stuck and you haven’t made much progress. So what’s the point of continuing?
If you’re having a tough time, will you just give up?
It happens to all of us, but it’s your mindset, your grit and your perseverance that will get you through.
Know why you are blogging.
Motivated by blog income reports from seasoned bloggers, they think it’ll rain dolla dolla bills once their site goes live.
Like many of us, they start with high hopes and when results aren’t produced fast enough, they lose focus and eventually give up.
When the going gets tough, and you don’t have a clear goal established, it’ll be that very moment that’ll either make or break the course of your blogging journey.
Here’s the thing- when you strongly believe in your why, your purpose becomes much more stronger than your challenges.
So, take a moment and ask yourself: Why do I want to start a blog?
A simple answer like “I need money quick,” surely ain’t gonna cut it.
Rather, give some depth to your why.
For example, I started this blog because I wanted a flexible and fulfilling career where I could genuinely help others and be able to live life on MY own terms- all while building a passive income stream.
Think about how you can use your expertise to provide value to others and how you can solve your readers’ problems.
Once your why is clear, your journey to become a successful blogger will be that much easier and meaningful.
Constantly take action on your blog every day It is easy to dream big but if we don’t take consistent action to turn them dreams into reality; everything is just going to stay as a mere dream. We all can have what we desire in life or have the excuses for not working towards what we want. Which one do you want?
Everything starts from taking action. But to turn your dreams into reality you need to take consistent action. Using your small progresses as stepping stones, you can shift the power inside your head to take more effective actions that are going to bring in the results.
Stick to your blog routine as your life depends on it Now the only way you are going to make it big is by taking consistent action towards a common goal – being successful. Be persistent and do whatever it takes. Create a routine that best suits you and stick to it like your life depends on it.
There are times where I totally do not want to follow my schedule and do what I need to do because I am either too tired or overwhelmed or simply because I want to spend quality time with my family. These are the times when I believe in myself that I have to do it which invigorates me to really get my ass into it.
Learn to treat failure as lesson You will make many mistakes and there will strategies that won’t work. Your blog might break or your niche might not be the right fit for you or your audience.
But don’t despair.
It does not matter how many times you fall.
You just have to keep getting up and trying. There’s no other way
conclusion, for blogging, you need the right mindset to become successful. For that your focus should be on the problem, provide a solution by helping them, and how do you find the problem and the solution, then it’s simple you have to focus on subcategories and put yourself in their shoes, understand the difference between knowledge and specific information. In short, this type of mindset you have to build for your audience.
I get it. Your startup is your baby and you’re used to doing everything on your own.
As your team grows, you naturally continue to feel like you need to have your hand in everything, from making UX decisions to paying electricity bills. But this is where the long line of startup delegation mistakes begins.
While it may feel natural for an entrepreneur, being a control freak is one of the worst things you can do for your product and your team.
Let’s be frank — delegating tasks can be scary, especially when you’re new at it. If you are the one in the position to do the delegating, then you’re the one who will bear the responsibility if things go wrong. If you’re a manager in a large company and a subordinate fails at an important task you delegated, upper management will demand an explanation from you. If you’re the business owner, the loss and liability of the subordinate’s mistakes will ultimately be yours.
Those concerns freeze many potential leaders. They don’t trust anyone else to do the task as well as they can and doubt their own ability to teach someone how to do it. This is a career and business dead end. There’s a limit to how much one person, no matter how energetic and productive, can get done.
Fancy Hands connects you with US-based virtual assistants who can help you complete personal or business tasks, from booking travel to paying bills. Their lowest plan is $29.99, and you can get five requests per month (typically up to 20 minutes of work per request). They also have options if you need a dedicated virtual assistant.
Magic offers personal assistants for 50 cents per minute and business assistants for 59 cents per minute. Send a message through their app, and Magic will assign someone from their team of assistants to complete your request.
Zirtual has a team of US-based assistants that can complete personal and business tasks such as email management, social media scheduling, and vacation research. Plans start at $449/month for 12 hours of task work.
Design Picklemight be a good fit for you if you’re looking to outsource graphic design tasks. This website will pair you with a dedicated graphic designer to do the skilled work for you. Plans start at $399/month for unlimited requests and unlimited revisions
To decide which tasks to delegate, consider your own strengths and weaknesses, what takes up most of your time, and what you dislike doing. There are several tasks that most small business owners will want to delegate to a VA.
Calendar Management
Keeping your schedule in order may sound simple, but you’ll keep gaining more responsibilities as your business grows. Moving items around on your calendar and rescheduling appointments — all while making sure you never miss a deadline — can pose a challenge. A virtual assistant can take care of your calendar for you, even sending you notifications before a meeting or when you need to complete an important to-do.
Email Management
Email has a way of taking up all our time — and yet we still manage to forget to respond to urgent messages. Your virtual assistant can sort your inbox for you: deleting spam, notifying you of messages you need to see immediately, and storing other messages that can wait until later. Your VA can even respond to some of the emails for you.
Research
It’s common for founders of new businesses to conduct a great deal of research. You may need to find out what your competitors are doing and other key information about the market, learn more about potential clients and investors, and search for new opportunities.
If you’ve ever done any online research, you’ll know how easily the hours slip away — particularly if you’re unsure where to look or you keep getting sidetracked. A virtual assistant who’s experienced at research will know where to go to find the information you need and will focus just on the task at hand.
Other Admin Tasks
Other admin work you may consider outsourcing to a VA include:
Data entry
Travel arrangements
Making online purchases
Shipping packages
Sending handwritten notes
Managing your CRM
An advantage of outsourcing these tasks is that you can find a general virtual assistant who charges a low rate. This means you’ll free up your schedule by eliminating some of your dullest tasks for only a small investment. If a task is a waste of your time, it makes no sense not to delegate it.
Data can be hugely useful for a startup — but if you know how to use it. From website and social media analytics to raw data like information on business cards, a VA can turn data into a meaningful report or insights.
Project Management
Whether you have a team of virtual workers or you’re collaborating with another business, you need someone to manage the project. When there are many moving parts, you may need to be constantly monitoring progress, communicating with team members, setting deadlines for each new task, and checking everyone is meeting their objectives. It could be better to delegate all this to a virtual assistant with experience in project management than to try and handle it yourself.
Financial Tasks
All the numbers entrepreneurs need to deal with are enough to give anyone a headache. A virtual assistant can keep your accounts up to date. Tasks to delegate could include invoicing, managing expenses, payroll, and other bookkeeping tasks.
Social Media
To gain greater awareness and stay connected with customers, you need to be active on social media. The problem is that creating content, responding to comments, and strategizing all takes up a lot of time. You can benefit from social media without taking time away from other work by delegating some (or even all) of your social media-related tasks to a virtual assistant.
A simple exercise so you can start delegating today
Step 1: Write down 10 things you need to get done that you don’t want to do or shouldn’t be doing yourself.
Step 2: Think of the six levels of delegation and notice that as you move through the levels, you move from outsourcing (“do as I say”) down to true delegation (which is “just get it done”). Ultimately, you want to get to level six, “just get it done.”
Step 3: Take those 10 things and see which of the six levels they might fall under, and that will clue you in to where your issues are and which providers you may need to hire to get these things done.
Being your own boss is thrilling. You have the weight of the world on your shoulders, but you also have the boundless freedom to soar wherever you’d like.
When you’re the boss, you get to call all the shots—but you also have all the responsibility. Mess up at your 9-to-5, and you’ll likely get loads more opportunity before there’s any real consequence. Mess up when you’re the one-and-only boss, and you might not get a paycheck that month.
On the flip side, you also get the full return on your investment when you’re the boss. If you invest more time and energy into your business and it succeeds, you make more money—and your business (read: your baby) becomes that much stronger.
That’s not usually the case at your full-time job—if you do well, you get a pat on the back and maybe a petty bonus at the end of the year. Ultimately, you’re spending 40 hours a week (or more) building someone else’s dream.
“If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help build theirs.” — Tony Gaskins, Author and Professional Life Coach
Entrepreneurs and business owners are often stereotyped as always traveling the world, flying first class, sipping cocktails on the beach, or lounging by the poolside all day long. Sure, that’s life for the fortunate .001%—but that’s not the day-to-day life of your typical entrepreneur.
You’ll have long sleepless nights grinding out what needs to be done, and you’ll need to tap a shoulder or 2 to ask a favor. You’ll have days when you’re overwhelmingly busy and days when you don’t know what to do. It’s all part of being an entrepreneur.
All this is to say that being your own boss is incredible—but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
Now that you know what being your own boss is all about, it’s time to make it happen. Below, we’ll show you the 6-step process for how to ditch your 9-to-5 and pursue a profitable passion as the head honcho.
1. Figure Out What You Want to Do
So many ideas, so little time. After browsing through our list of online business ideas and side hustles, finding an idea won’t be the problem—but narrowing it down to one will be.
Think about what skills you have, or consider what you want to accomplish. Do you want to build an ecommerce business, or would you like to sell your talents to other companies as a freelancer or consultant?
There’s no right answer. Sure, some businesses might have better profit margins than others, and a few will be a bit riskier. But you’re the boss—you get to choose what’ll make you happy and fulfilled.
Don’t worry too much about finding the perfect startup idea. Chances are you’d be a good fit for various business types. Find what makes you happy now. You can always pursue another idea later.
2. Validate Your Business Idea
Once you’ve got an idea for your business, it’s time to find out whether it can go the distance. Before you invest too much time and money into your idea, you’ll want to validate it.
When you present your business idea to friends, family, and colleagues, chances are you’ll hear a lot of “that sounds awesome!” even if your plan is lousy. Seriously. Go try it. Come up with a terrible idea and pitch it to your friends—see what they say.
There are a few ways you can validate a business idea, but we like to go with the classic landing page smoke test. Here’s how you do it:
Create a landing page marketing your product or service
Include a “Buy Now” button on your page
Drive real traffic to the page with a small advertising budget
See if people click the “Buy Now” button
Set a benchmark for the click-through rate you’d like to see
This test lets you bypass friend, family, and even stranger bias. You don’t want to hear whether you have a good idea or not—you want to know if customers will open their wallets and buy what you’re selling.
3. Build a Business Plan
Part of being your own boss is doing all the planning. You’ll need a game plan for how you’re going to take your business from Point A to Point B.
While it seems fresh and creative to just wing it, that’s a solid strategy to end up broken and battered. Get out your pen and paper (or Google Doc) and answer the hard questions from the get-go:
What is your business?
Who will you serve?
What are you selling?
What problem do you help solve?
How will you make money?
Who are your competitors?
What makes you different from all the other businesses?
How will you finance your startup costs?
How will you get your product or service in front of customers?
It’s a lot to think about. Take a look at our guide on how to create a business plan. It’ll walk you step-by-step through everything you need to outline and answer to improve your chances of success.
After you have a strong business plan, you’re ready to make things happen. Don’t worry—you don’t need to quit your 9-to-5 just yet. You can always start your business on the side (nice and slow) while you prove out your idea.
Launch your business and aim to make your first sale.
Once things start to pick up and you’re making consistent income, then you might decide to go all-in on your business and be your own boss. Or you might just skip the proving phase altogether and take the leap.
You’re the boss. You get to decide how you move your new career forward.
5. Grow Your Business
There’s no one-way-fits-all method for growing your business. You might want to expand your operations or increase your customer base. You may want to add additional products and services or boost your prices.
Resist the urge to be complacent, especially early on. Your business is either moving forward or back—it rarely sits stagnant. Take the right steps to keep it moving in the right direction.
Here are a few ways you could grow your business:
Hire help to accelerate work or increase bandwidth to help customers
Obtain additional financing to expand operations with upgraded equipment or more aggressive marketing campaigns
Expand your products and services to help customers in more ways
Raise your prices to earn more from every sale
Become more efficient to reduce your expenses and improve your ROI
When you’re the boss, you get to decide what direction you take your business. Once you’ve got a solid set of customers and consistent income, you may choose to dedicate more time to your family or a hobby. It’ll impact your business, but you get to make the decisions.
6. Do It Again (Optional)
After you’ve grown a successful business from the ground up, you may get the itch to do it all over again. You might want to start a complementary business, or you may want to build something in an entirely new industry.
Again, you’re the boss. You get to decide.
Managing multiple businesses isn’t easy, but for some, the thrill of the adventure beats out the demands of the journey. However, you may decide to launch, build, and exit your company before starting a new one. Or, you may just stick with your initial business for the next decade or 2.
You can be your own boss, but we want you to know what you’re getting into. It’s not just money, sports cars, and champagne toasts. It’s highs, lows, celebrations, and disappointments. It’s a journey.
Entrepreneurs and business owners are often stereotyped as always traveling the world, flying first class, sipping cocktails on the beach, or lounging by the poolside all day long. Sure, that’s life for the fortunate .001%—but that’s not the day-to-day life of your typical entrepreneur.
You’ll have long sleepless nights grinding out what needs to be done, and you’ll need to tap a shoulder or 2 to ask a favor. You’ll have days when you’re overwhelmingly busy and days when you don’t know what to do. It’s all part of being an entrepreneur.
All this is to say that being your own boss is incredible—but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
This article will take you through exactly what it’s like to be your own boss. We’ll walk you through the reality check, pros and cons, and must-have traits before giving you the step-by-step process for how to become your own boss.
Traits You Need to Be Your Own Boss
It’s fluffy and sweet to say anyone can be their own boss, but that’s just not the case. Not everyone is made out for this kind of work, and that’s OK.
Just like there are special people in this world who love numbers (bless you, accountants) and others who love to code (developers, we’re talking about you), there are unique individuals who can be the boss.
Here are a few must-have traits you’ll need to be your own boss:
Patience
Overnight success stories are few and far between—expect to invest time and money before you see the fruits of your labors. At times, you’ll be tempted to quit and go back to the cushy, uninspired 9-to-5.
You’ll need to be patient and hold on. It’s always going to be challenging initially, but things start to smooth out as you learn the ropes and pick up the momentum.
You’re the boss. Nobody is going to tell you to get to work, stop watching YouTube, or pick up the slack. You’re going to need to have the self-discipline to notice (and look for) these things yourself and take action when you see something that needs doing.
You’ll also need the self-discipline to back off. You’ll do your business, your customers, and yourself no favors by hustling more than you can handle. Learn when to slow down and take a break to avoid burnout. There are always things to do, so it’ll be hard to ease up—but you’ll have to do it to succeed in the long run.
Drive
You’ll need a purpose. Being your own boss isn’t so much a purpose as a perk of being in the driver’s seat. Find what motivates you and gives you energy. Harness your drive and turn it into results.
From time to time, you’ll lose your drive. That’s OK—it’s all part of the journey. Learn to recognize when you’re losing steam and find ways to get your head back in the game. That might mean stepping back from the business for a long weekend, or it might be reading an email from a happy customer.
Find a drive that’ll keep you going, and tap into it when the going gets tough.
You’ll need to be able to ruthlessly prioritize. As the boss, you’ll have a million things you can do but only a handful of things you should do. Learn to avoid shiny object syndrome and stay focused.
That’s easier said than done, but it’s easy to lose yourself chasing the next idea or spending hours trying to find ways to save more time. Prioritize your to-do list, make a schedule, and stay on track.
Empathy
This isn’t necessarily a must-have trait of a successful boss—plenty of less-than-pleasant people out there know how to run a business like a well-oiled machine.
However, don’t forget to be the boss you always wished you had. When you hire employees, remember to treat them with kindness and respect. Remember the reasons that made you want to quit your 9-to-5 and work to create a better environment for those you employ.
You don’t know if a launch was successful without quantifiable metrics. While every business will have different KPIs, these metrics are some of the most common metrics that will give you a sense of whether or not your product launch was a success.
Revenue: You’ll know your product launch was a winner if it generated revenue, especially if it generated a lot of it. If you’ve created a new online course, released a new clothing collection, or launched a new premium level for your project management software, you’ll be able to track the success of product launch via the revenue it generated.
Market share: Another measurement is how well your product performs against competitors. If your product launch inspires customers to choose your brand over competitors, it’s a win.
User retention: If you’re launching a new feature or capability, you may measure the success of the launch by whether or not it increases your customer retention rate. Any seasoned business owner will tell you that it’s cheaper to keep existing customers than to attract new ones. So anything you can do to keep customers happy, and therefore keep their business, benefits the bottom line and is well worth your time and effort.
Product trials: If you’re offering trials for a new product, trial sign-ups can indicate the interest in your product and how much traction your launch marketing had.
Product usage: For subscription-based products, customer usage is an even stronger indicator of success than product trials. This is because while trial sign-ups are a good sign, they don’t mean anything if the customers never use the product. Product usage, on the other hand, tells you that not only did your product marketing appeal to the customer, the product is also meeting their needs.
Leads generated: Generating leads is the first step towards generating revenue. You may not close every sale or convert every customer on the first contact, making leads a worthwhile KPI for many new product launches.
Marketing channel metrics: Open rates on emails, click-through rates, and social media engagement can all indicate how well the messaging is working.
Web traffic: You’ll want to measure how your website traffic changes (and hopefully increases) as a result of your product launch efforts. You’ll want to measure traffic to new product pages and any content related to the launch.
Media coverage: If you have a major launch and you’re trying to get PR coverage, you’ll also want to include media mentions in your product launch KPIs. Media coverage can create awareness that’s ongoing (especially if your product is named in web content that itself has high search value and so makes it more likely that customers will continue to encounter it as time passes). If the mention also includes a link to your site, this can provide 2 additional benefits. It can directly convert to sales, and it also can contribute to your domain authority. Essentially, when Google sees other credible websites linking to your website, they consider your site to have more value, making it easier for you to rank in the search engine.
Internal and external feedback: Feedback is the most nebulous of the metrics because it’s not as clearly quantifiable, but it’s nevertheless important. Pay close attention to feedback and where the trends are. Whether positive or negative, feedback from customers and employees can help you determine whether or not you’ve achieved your launch goal.
To me, one of the strongest word in English language is this four words. “Be your own boss” nothing give more meaning and freedom to your life than it. Especially when you are running the venture from home.
But many aspiring entrepreneurs are met with a rude awakening upon launching their endeavors. Not only are they their own boss, but also their own human resources, talent acquisition, marketing, public relations, facilities, and events. The price to pay for unlimited freedom is a substantial amount of responsibility
You’ll increase your chances for success (and your enjoyment level) if you make your entrepreneurial efforts realistic and scalable. You don’t need to start small, but you definitely need to start smart. In the early stages, efficiency is the name of the game.
Perhaps you want to be a freelancer or consultant, or you could have your eyes set on other goals. Whatever you decide, seriously consider working from your home. In sports, they talk about home field and home court advantage, and that’s exactly what you can give your business when you base your operations out of a place that is stable and familiar.
Start with a homegrown plan
When starting your business from home, your plan will have a decidedly homegrown feel to it. For example, in the executive summary you can state some of the distinct benefits you’ll enjoy from working out of your home as opposed to an external location that would only complicate matters and add costs.
After you’ve written the executive summary, which serves as your elevator pitch, you can pick and choose from additional business plan section options such as:
The product or service you offer Your financial projections Your market analysis Description of your management Your marketing and sales
Running a home-based business will be a relevant factor in the creation of all these sections. And if you’re seeking financing, your ability to turn the location of your business into an advantage will attract the attention of prospective lenders and investors.
A common mistake for entrepreneurs is to promptly purchase their domain, then forget to renew it when the time comes. You can prevent this by setting up autopay. If that isn’t possible, at least add a reminder to your calendar so you’ll always know when the renewal date is approaching.
To promote your business and protect your brand, you’ll also need to create accounts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You might not have plans to use these platforms right away, but it’s advisable to have the accounts in your control so that nobody else can create accounts to pose as your business.
get your home in order
As a home-based entrepreneur, you’ll need to enlist the help of as many digital tools as possible. Why? Because when you are burdened down by wearing too many hats, the likely results are a headache and the inability to turn your head from side to side. It’s a miserable way to live.
Modern technology has plenty of pleasant surprises that can automate tasks and simplify things for small business owners. The timesaving capabilities are huge, but you also shouldn’t underestimate the cost savings and reduction of human error.
Popular digital tools for home-based business include:
RescueTime (time management) Mailchimp (email planning and management) Hootsuite (social media posting and scheduling) Deluxe (payroll management) Marketo (sales and marketing) QuickBooks (financial management) Slack (communication and collaboration) TripIt (travel management) Quip (sales optimization) 17hats (project management) Talk to other entrepreneurs to find out which apps and software solutions have worked best for them. If you can automate just 5-7 tasks a day, you’ll be amazed by how much it changes both your business performance and your outlook on life.
Successfully Managing Your Home Office While working from home offers a fleet of benefits, it also brings its share of challenges. There are unique temptations when it comes to working from home, and without a clear line of demarcation between your private and personal lives, it’s easy for things to get blurred together.
Doctors of today are sandwiched between the rising cost of acquiring their degree and the falling remuneration as medicine gets more corporatised with each passing year. We’re witnessing increased burnout and decreased satisfaction.
According to Medscape’s 2019 National Physicians, Burnout and Depression Report more than 40% of physicians and 50% of female physicians are burned out.
Furthermore, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open, there was an increase in physician burnout from 2014 to 2017.
These are sobering statistics, that paint an increasingly alarming picture. That’s why now, like never before, doctors need side hustle options.
Doctors like to ignore the money issue. We don’t discuss it in medical school even though it is a large part of the reason we are studying medicine. Faculty don’t teach us about it. They may not even know much themselves.
Our parents may have avoided that taboo subject too. Unfortunately, those who don’t understand money are not likely to manage it well.Doctors who are bad with money are bad with other things. Important things. That leads to frustration, burnout, exhaustion, marital stress, and even suicide.
Build many streams of income. Become financially independent, preferably in your 40s. It opens an array of options such as early retirement, part-time work, and mission trips.
I’m here to tell you that regardless of your specialty or practice location, you too can start a side hustle that will grow your wealth ladder. Here are some reasons every physician should side hustle.
1. Get P.A.I.D.
Passive income is great. You put your money or time in some case, both to work. and it comes back to you in the form of dividends, interest, capital gains or rent. There’s nothing better than easy money. Unfortunately, passive income streams often need capital to get started.
Luckily, your medical degree is a passport to getting P.A.I.D.
– Passive Aggressive Income Design. Your active hustles generate the cash you use to fund your passive hustles. You make active income, maximize self-employed deductions to minimize taxes, and funnel the remainder into passive ventures. You’d be surprised how quickly this can amplify your retirement savings.
2. Hobbies can turn into side hustles.
Many of our hobbies are actually full-time occupations for some people. I know several computer programmers who dabble in photography in their free time. Some of them actually are transitioning to full-time photographers, starting with small-time events through Craigslist and then eventually larger venues through word of mouth.
One of the plastic surgeons in my area dabbles in woodworking and produces craftsman-style furniture. Could he dive into this full-time? Absolutely, but I’m sure that he wouldn’t be happy if his livelihood depended on it. However, it is conceivable that he could turn this skill into a side-hustle. Will he do that? Probably not, because he is busy enough correcting ptosis or making people beautiful.
Then there are doctors who really kick themselves into overdrive and basically find ways to make a name for themselves outside of clinical medicine. Some of the more popular routes include becoming a CEO of a hospital, joining an advisory board of a company, and or even becoming a writer.
3. Burnout is prevalent in the field.
Burnout is prevalent in medicine. Recent studies from the Mayo Clinic and @Medscape have burnout rates for physicians in the 50% range. One study reported that Emergency Room physicians, Internists, and Urologists have a burnout rate of 55%! Another study reported that Critical Care physicians had the highest burnout rate. It’s also not just the stress of medicine or long hours that contribute to the burnout; survey respondents report that the increasing amount of bureaucracy and computerization of the healthcare system that are the top offenders. Essentially, many of the tasks that cause burnout are things that we don’t like doing.
4. Expand a Professional Network
A side hustle can also open up avenues to network in new ways. Through a side hustle, physicians can meet people who may become clients, service providers, or professional partners. Side hustle customers can also become a source of referrals, introducing friends and family when they are looking for a new care provider. And, a side hustle can be a point of differentiation at traditional networking events, making physicians memorable when the room is full of doctors or healthcare professionals.
5. Hedge Against the Unknown
The business of medicine is full of uncertainty. There are many things outside of a healthcare practitioner’s control–regulatory changes, supply chain issues, insurance carriers that dictate timing and amount of reimbursement, and even public health matters that impact hours of operation or the scheduling of procedures.
A side hustle–particularly one outside of medicine–can provide another way to keep income flow steady when a primary job is in flux.
6. Escape Hatch
Some people wake up one morning and realize they could make enough money from their side jobs to quit their main job all together. If your dream is to walk (or run) away from clinical medicine, this might be your escape hatch.
Everyone has their own reasons for side hustling. Whether it’s to pay off debt, boost savings, add some variety to your life, reduce clinical hours or leave medicine entirely, there is a reason that’s right for you. The hardest step is deciding to start. Today is the day! Time to stop procrastinating and start hustling! You’ll be glad you did.
Some side hustle doctors can consider starting today.
So if you’re a doctor, and you want to take back control of your life – take heart! You can start shaping a new, less frantic life by looking at some fantastic side hustle options.
1. Become a Conference Speaker
You might be wondering about the need for this, but consider the following projection: “The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently posted that between 2016-2026 the meeting and event industry would grow an average of 11%”
Clearly here lies a viable opportunity to pursue as a side hustle. Currently, there is much interest in the link between diet, lifestyle and auto-immune diseases.
NBC News reports that in 2018, “keto diet” was the most-searched word on Google. This is backed up by Google’s “Year in Search” report. This is just one example of an area you could focus on and specialize in.
Promote yourself through your LinkedIn profile and your own personal network, and pitch yourself to events and conferences you identify as good fits for your message. While on-site, make a point to network with attendees and position yourself for future speaking invitations.
2. Practice Telemedicine from Home
Thanks to the widespread availability of inexpensive web cameras and video chat programs like Skype, more doctors than ever are providing care remotely. Patients get cheap medical advice from qualified professionals and doctors avoid spending a lot on administrative overhead. Top telemedicine contractors include iSelectMD, NowClinic, Ringadoc and American Well. The American Telemedicine Association is a terrific resource for physicians interested in providing telemedicine consultations.
3. Start a Medical Equipment Business
According to the most recent statistics, the medical device industry is worth roughly $155 billion in the United States. You can easily snag a piece of that pie by working as a sales representative for major suppliers. If you want to go all the way, you could become a middleman and bid on supply contracts for smaller hospitals in your immediate area
4. Podcasting and Blogging
The beauty of today’s digital media world is you don’t have to wait for someone to hire you to start writing or speaking. With a few Google searches, you can learn how to start a blog or launch a podcast to talk directly to patients, fellow physicians, or general health consumers. Some physicians enjoy blogging or podcasting for the opportunity to debunk common health myths or provide expert perspective on current medical headlines. Successful podcasts and blogs take work, but they can attract advertising income if they reach a large enough audience.
5. Freelance Writing
Your years of practice have made you a subject matter expert, and freelance writing gives you the opportunity to translate that knowledge into paid content. Start by researching online health sites or medical publications and pitch story ideas, or look for non-editorial jobs such as writing scientific manuscripts, medical marketing communications, CME content, or test prep materials. Many health websites also employ independent medical reviewers. Conversely, you can make yourself available as a medical source to journalists through sites like Help a Reporter Out (HARO), though these interviews are typically unpaid.
6. Teach Online
Teaching online is a side-hustle that definitely deserves consideration is producing an online course to educate others.
Consider this statistic. “Market research from Global Industry Analysts projected ‘e-learning’ would reach $107 billion in 2015 and it did. Now, Research and Markets forecasts show trip the revenue of 2015 – e-learning will grow to $325 billion by 2025”.
This reveals that e-learning is a substantial area that offers great potential to generate a side hustle. An example of an avenue through which to do this is Udemy. With Udemy you are able to record courses, choose your own price and make money for each one of your courses that is purchased.
7. Kindle Publishing
“Self-published books now represent 31% of e-book sales on Amazon’s Kindle Store”. Clearly, self-publishing is going from strength to strength and using a well-known and trusted platform like Amazon only adds to this.
Kindle publishing allows you to publish your work on Amazon kindle. Choosing a niche can be based on your expertise combined with ideas you can glean from tools like Google Trends.
Some common mistakes doctors make when it come to side hustle and money
Invest in wide money scheme
Everyone likes to get in on a good deal. We can’t wait to tell others about our successes.
Over the course of your career, hundreds of people will offer you deals. The offers may come from neighbors, in-laws, former schoolmates, peers, work colleagues, etc. The deals may involve new medical devices, pharmaceutical compounds, or real estate.
Each will claim to offer a lucrative once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You will be seduced by promises of dizzyingly high returns with minimal risk. In reality, most of these ventures end in tears and sometimes lawsuits.
Money truisms include: “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” and “There’s no free lunch.” If something seems too good to be true it most likely is too good to be true.
Only a tiny percentage of business ideas survive and evolve to investing success.Stick with what you understand.For most of us, that means a passive strategy focused on diversification and low fees. All other opportunities should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Procrastinate
Doctors are masters of procrastination. This may be partly due to their medical training. In medicine, it is best to wait for the body to heal itself instead of jumping to surgery or drugs. Unlike in medicine, when it comes to finance and side hustling, time is the enemy. Every day that goes by without action is lost forever, along with its growth crucial to our nest eggs.
Rely blindly on advisors
Doctors often find it easier to identify an advisor they trust and let the advisor make all decisions. Many physicians have no interest in money matters. They prefer to spend their time on medicine and family.
The problem is that “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” You are the cat and you are electing to not oversee your advisors’ (the mice) activities.They may act in ways you wouldn’t condone.
The resulting misunderstandings undermine trust and foster anxiety. In extreme cases ignoring advisors’ activities can result in crimes of opportunity or fraud.
Conclusion
Breaking all the outlook of limitations that may hinders or cause you to justify, and accept that your side hustle can be one of the rewarding decision you can make today. Though, it’s not easy but still far may doctors are making it and there is chance to 100 that you can.
Want to master entrepreneurship? Keep reading for my secrets on how I “did it all” (effortlessly) and built my company with ZERO funding. Just kidding. I hope you know me better than that. Let’s get serious:
There isn’t a post from an expert that can solve all the challenges of running a business. There is no webinar with the answers, no book, no mentor or coach that can do it for you.
(I really wanted to write that there is no “Entrepreneurship for Dummies” book but there actually is. Could be a start?) That’s just not how entrepreneurship works. Nothing in the world can really prepare you for the wild ride that is starting a side hustle, being a solopreneur, hiring employees, trying to scale up, scale down, start or exit a company. And mastering anything takes a LOT of time.
Did your favorite chef learn their culinary craft during their first line cook job? Does every Olympic athlete just come out of the womb as a superhuman? Did every influencer on the internet get rich quick? (They might make it look like they did but…) Absolutely not. Entrepreneurship is no different.
So go easy on yourself. It’s the small things that matter. The small habits, the daily actions, the way you speak to yourself, how you pick yourself up from a loss, your ability to persevere, to not give up in the face of challenge, to solve problems, to make decisions, to act when you don’t feel like it… These actions lead to big wins. And in my opinion, there is no other way to get there. If you made it this far, I want you to know that YOU are capable of seriously kick-ass things. (I tell myself this every day, especially when I feel like I am not capable at all.) What is one action you can take this week that will move you in the right direction? One decision you can make? One small habit to change?
Lets hustle 