I want you to be thrilled. I want you to be ecstatic with emotions in beginning an online business. But please set aside your emotions for just a moment and give me your mind – your unemotional, rational and logical self for just a few paragraphs. Are you ready?
Let me ask you a question. Why are you doing this? Why are you really considering starting an online business?Be careful now. Don’t get emotional on me. Don’t say, “Because I love shopping online!” Or, “I have always wanted to have my own business, and be my own boss.” These are good reasons for about 30 seconds of dreaming. They are not reasons that will last. Allow me to discourage you for a moment and, for the time being, get your logical side in perspective.
“Do what you love,” it is said, “and the money will follow.” This is only partly true. The reason it is only partly true is because you won’t be loving all of what you do. You’ll have to do long, tedious, and boring work in starting an internet business (or any other business for that matter).
If you love shopping online or surfing the internet, then by all means keep at it. But don’t begin an online business. If you do, then you’ll be trading what you love doing for the very thing that will distract you from your love of browsing the web.
What about the “be my own boss” dream?
You are really talking about control issues. The lure of being in control is a deceptive trap. You will feel in control for a season, but you will find out in a short time that you are not. The business will consume you – at least in the beginning. You will have a new boss. It will be the business itself.
The business is more demanding than any boss you’ve ever worked for. It will show no mercy. And once you make the commitment, you’ll have so much invested in it emotionally (not to mention your pride), you will feel compelled to keep going. You may eventually burnout with information overload and the business will fail.
Look at it this way - at least you can do your job and leave it behind at the end of the day. If you begin getting online customers (many more than a local retail store), you’ll spend a lot of time replying to emails and phone calls. All that time you thought you’d be able to have off will never come. Your new boss won’t let you get away. Now you will not only have your work to do, but the responsibility of coordinating customer service, new products, updating web content and staying current with marketing techniques.
This is not about loving the internet. It is about running a business. Like it or not, this misconception is the single most reason why most small businesses fail in their first year or two. Most small businesses begin in the heart of a wellintentioned risk taker. They let their passion run away and it fuels them for a while. But not forever. Businesses don’t run on passion alone. They run on great business practices – something most impassioned people know very little about.
Please reread this chapter again and then let someone close to you read it as well (I am not talking about a negative friend who always looks on the bad side of things, but rather a positive, yet practical person). Have conversations and sort through your motivations for starting an online business. You may find that you really shouldn’t begin one. That realization is not failure, but it is actually success in discovering who you are!
If you are still determined to get started, I trust this handbook will help you think through some great ideas that will skyrocket your chances of succeeding. My hat is off to your passion and determination.