How to Keep Your Entrepreneurial Dreams Alive
Some of us come from cultures where being a businessperson or entrepreneur may be frowned upon. You might hear phrases like: “Get a Real Job,” “You can’t dream your way to paying the bills,” “Your ideas are just dirty business not helpful.”
Have you heard those types of phrases? In some cultures, if you do not become a doctor or a lawyer, you are a failure. You have responsibilities to ‘do the right thing,’ and you cannot take any risks.
People may go after you about becoming a businessperson because they either fear for you and want to keep you safe from risk OR they are afraid you will surpass them in life and be lost to them forever. Both of these reactions are primal responses to our basic human instinct for survival.
If you become a successful entrepreneur you may become be the richest, and therefore most powerful person among your family and friends. Someone else currently holds this title, and if that person is insulting your entrepreneurial dreams it’s could be because they do not want to give up the crown.
If you are an entrepreneur running your own business, you may also be the only person in your circle with lifestyle freedom. For some around you, your ability to do what you want may be worse than your ability to make more money. When they go off to work every day, fighting traffic and colleagues they cannot stand, you will go into your own domain, maybe a comfortable home office, a coffee shop or the beach. If you have an online business, you may even wear your PJs all day or at least comfortable sweats. You will have no commute, no gasoline expenses, no office gossip, no internal fighting.
Is this your office?
Although no commute and no time wasted at the office water cooler may mean you also work at least four hours a day longer than those who are envying your freedom, but they will not see that. They will only see that you can arrange your own schedule, attend the events your really want to see, and get work done on your terms.
If negative emotions arise, like jealously, anger and conflict, you could be facing someone who simply does not know how to compete with you.
For humans, survival is at the heart of all their reactions. It’s that classic concept: if you and your friend come upon a bear in the woods, you do not have to outrun the bear, you only have to outrun your friend.
It’s a rare person, maybe Mother Theresa type nuns, who is not in some kind of competition with the people around them. Look at social media. The number of “likes” and “followers” you have is your way of showing people your value in the world. People love to tell you how many people are following, implying behind, them. If their number is higher than yours, you are subtly reminded the bear will stop to devour you.
But if you are running your own business, focused on your value and the product or service idea you plan to deliver to the world, you can ignore social media and all the other distractions designed to make you feel like you should put your dreams in check.
“Likes” and “follows,” are not the most important metric when you are your own CEO. You are going to be looking at growing an audience, earning revenue, and investing for your own benefit.
You will be operating on a stage those around you cannot even see. You will be out there, hustling, with like-minded people in your own separate world. And you’ll be loving it because you have business ideas in your head and have always wanted to be an independent operator.
You will put in the time every day knowing every drop of sweat is coming right back to you in direct compensation you control. Those around you may be facing struggles at work, you will not have those concerns. If the business is facing hard times, you will know about it. If it’s thriving, you’ll be planning how to reinvest your money. Your entire picture defining entrepreneurial success will be written on your terms.
Keep your entrepreneurial dreams alive by remembering these factors:
- Those around you who are against your plans are activating their own survival mechanism, which essentially says they need to hang on to you to keep you at their level. Understand where they are coming from, but do not let them win. For the ones who say they do not want you to get hurt in the entrepreneurial arena, tell them that will be impossible. Everything that happens as you are working on setting up your business will be part of your learning. If the first business does not work out, you take the lessons learned and move on to the next one.
- Do not linger on your decision and give naysayers a chance to say “I told you so.” Keep moving forward. People will tell you most businesses fail – but what about most entrepreneurs. Do you know the term “serial entrepreneur?” Those are the people who keep setting up businesses until they find one that works.
- For the people who say you should not move forward with your entrepreneurial dreams because they are afraid of losing their own place in your world, you can say good-bye. There is not enough time in life to fight with people who do not support your hopes, dreams and plans for your life.
You could be an entrepreneurial success if you keep pursuing your goals.
Everything you are doing as an entrepreneur is to have a better life. Whether to gain control of your work schedule so you can spend more time with your friends or family, or to earn more money so you can build financial security. All of these activities are about improvement.
People who do not support your plans to have a better life do not deserve to be in your life unless they are willing to grow with you. If they are afraid for their futures, you might want to encourage them to start a business too, and be part of the solution, not the problem.
In a world where everyone should lead, follow or get-out-of -the-way, those who choose neither and become obstructionists have cost society a fortune. They have slowed down progress that could have helped people, in the name only of protecting their own status quo. I’m not talking about governments and kings here, only your siblings, colleagues, friends, teachers, or the guy next door who can’t wait to tell you: “you will never make it in business.”
Those people are not your people.
You keep your entrepreneurial dream alive, by first recognizing why others are trying to slow you down. Separate the naysayers into two groups. Those who love you and want to protect you from risk can be educated about the value of entrepreneurship.
Those who are acting on their evolutionary instinct to be king of the jungle can be removed from your life.
This may be a tough call. But it’s a lot tougher to live a life you do not want to live, and die disappointed you did not even try to fulfill your dreams.
Be Born With Confidence
You know those people you see who speak freely to strangers, laugh without inhibition, and take on every room as if they own it – all those people have is more confidence than you. And their confidence, if they’re entrepreneurs, leads them to establish businesses, make connections, and reset their life to be the living vision of their dreams.
Were those people born with confidence or did they learn to develop their self-assurance?
Do you want to wake up every morning feeling exhilarated, excited and ready to work on your dreams and goals for the future?
How can you be born with confidence if you wake-up every morning feeling afraid?
What can you do to change the way you feel?
You can overlay the feelings you have on inadequacy or intimidation by creating the impression you were born with confidence by: understanding your personal value, knowing your goal, practicing excellence and thinking as a business leader.
These are activities you do on you own. You do not need anyone to validate your behavior or give you permission to be you. You begin immediately to implement the steps necessary to wake up as a confident person. As an aspiring entrepreneur, if you are thinking you cannot start a business only because you are feeling you do not have the ability or courage to go out on your own – quickly change your mindset.
This is a common feeling, but you have to overcome it if you want to use entrepreneurship to achieve your lifestyle dream.
You can be born with confidence if you evolve the way you think, act, and do to reflect confidence. Once you understand your personal value, know your goals, practice excellence and think like a CEO, you will transform your mental limitations into the boundless opportunity to move forward.
Understand Your Personal Value
Do you have the answer to the question: why do humans exist? As far as I know, there are no perfect answers to this question. Some say we are just existing, others say we are here to make a contribution. Others attribute their existence to the will of a religious deity, for some the reason lies in science. I agree with those who say, you are here for a reason. You do not have to know the reason right now, but you do have to recognize the reason exists.
You are valuable. Few people are taught to recognize and embrace their value. Maybe people told you, you were conceited or self-centered if you tried to define your unique gifts. But people like you who think about business ideas and doing more than the average person are the people who move all of society forward.
Since you have decided you want to be an entrepreneur, you know you want to contribute more. What is the business, product or service you want to establish in the global market? What is the problem you want to solve? Your ability to answer these questions goes a long way into helping you recognize your personal value.
Embrace this fact about yourself.
Know Your Goal
Right now, you may be at the beginning or end of another workday. What was it like? Were you able to be productive and valued in your work environment, or counting the hours until you could get home? Most of you were probably counting the hours.
If you were focused on starting your business, you could have been doing research or even thinking about your business opportunity. The time you have available may be directed towards activities that really interest you. Of course, you cannot use this approach if you work in a company where you have no downtime, but if you have a break, use the opportunity to work on your business idea.
You must know your goal – to leave the 9-to-5 grind and establish your own business. Formulate and embed your goal in your mind. Keep the goal in full view as you pass through your day.
Practice Excellence
There is a story about Apple founder Steve Jobs’ father teaching him to be just as careful when painting the back of the fence, as the front, even though people will not see it. By doing every job with a commitment to quality and excellence, you instill a life-long habit of making sure your work is always the best you can do. This applies to every activity you undertake from making a telephone sales request to writing another tedious report.
As you continue to do your own work with excellence, you will instill a success habit into your capabilities. The quality of your work will likely be noticed, and the compliments will help boost your self-esteem. Even if the quality is not noticed, you will be aware of your own improvements and capabilities. The more you feel good about what you can accomplish, the more the feelings will dominate your mind.
Think as a Business Leader
In any job you may have you could be critically looking at the operations and procedures within your current company and identifying the processes you could use in your own business. You can also think about the operations that do not work well and consider how you would change them to improve the situation.
Think like a CEO at all times. Even if you are not in a decision-making position at work, make decisions (even in your own mind) based on your own analysis and understanding of a situation. Always be thinking as the leader and operator of the business.
This practice will help boost your confidence because you will be able to see where ideas that you had been thinking about were considered and launched. You may miss out on the accolades but next time, you may have the confidence to speak up and implement the new idea first.
The ability to build your confidence comes from within you – not someone else.
Understand your value – be proud of yourself and the contribution you know you can make to the world
Know your goals – You want to be an entrepreneur. You want to start your own business. The activities you do each day should be supporting and defining those goals to help you achieve your dreams faster.
Practice Excellence – This may be difficult but you will start to feel better and better about your abilities and your prospects if you know the work you produce is consistently among the best you can do.
Think like a CEO – Regardless of your job, ask yourself what you would do if you were the boss. Think critically and strategically about the options available to you, and make decisions. Even if you are only making decisions for your own mind , the practice will help you develop the habit of being a leader and a decision-maker.
Being born a person of confidence now means erasing years of unfavorable comments and unsuccessful moments. But knowing your goal is to have confidence means embracing a future of active engagement with your own plans and goals with a positive, successful, winning attitude.
Ultimately the accomplishment of your objectives, starting your own business and achieving the lifestyle freedom you have always wanted will serve to validate your confidence practices and the decision you made to place yourself among those who can walk into any room.
*
Ready to make the move to entrepreneurship? Download Life Dream: 7 Universal Steps to Get the Life You Want through Entrepreneurship and begin implementing the changes you need to transition to start your own business and transition to your dream lifestyle.
Disclosure: book links are affiliate links to Amazon.com which when used may result in compensation for Ready Entrepreneur and Case Lane.
Want more advice on finding the confidence, time and money to start your own business? Sign-up for the Ready Entrepreneur global group list to receive tips, strategies, information, news, giveaways and more. By entering your e-mail address you are consenting to receive communication from Ready Entrepreneur and Case Lane. We do not spam and we do not share your e-mail with third parties.
Popularity vs Excellence: A Decision Guide for Rising Entrepreneurs
In the battle for relevance between popularity and excellence, how should rising entrepreneurs market their business?
This post discusses how the decision to create a ‘popularity Oscar’ signals our society’s shift from value, quality and excellence to popularity. Rising entrepreneurs must make a decision about how to market a product, service or business, and decide whether to place emphasis on popularity or excellence. This post looks at some of the factors to consider.
The Academy has given in.
On September 5, 2018, the Academy rescinded its decision to award a ‘popular’ Oscar. So this post is now dated but still applicable for the overall message.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the people who put on the Oscars, have announced their latest category “outstanding achievement in popular film.” Although the eligibility rules for this category have not been announced yet, people are assuming this will be the Oscar for ‘getting people to like you.’
The most glaring example yet of the transformation of our society from value to likeability, from excellence to acceptance.
Are you a businessperson or an entrepreneur?
People often ask the question:
What is the difference between a businessperson and an entrepreneur?
Some would say the businessperson is the blue suited MBA with a briefcase, process workflows, five-year strategic plans and a corporate AMEX card.
The entrepreneur is the disheveled garage dweller testing concept after concept in a bubble of failed experiments and idea frustrations.
Others would say difference only depends on where you are in the process. If you are bringing a product or service to market, you will transform from one image to the other…from entrepreneur to businessperson.
The entrepreneur is often considered the idea person. You are an entrepreneur if you create a product or service idea that you want to place in the marketplace. When entrepreneurs get started, they have to think of the business aspects of their idea. After all, it’s not possible to put the product or service into the market unless you think about the specific business activities you need to do.
A businessperson is often seen as the manager with the numbers, holding meetings about strategy, and dealing with taxes and lawyers. The business is the entity built after the entrepreneur’s idea is commercialized.
When you start a business, the entrepreneur often has to do everything. There is no divide between the two titles – businessperson or entrepreneur – when you get started, especially if you are bootstrapping which is the practice of paying all your own bills without external financing.
Over time, perhaps as you professionalize your business, or you open multiple businesses, you transform into the more familiar business image that Wall Street loves.
If you start a business, based on your idea, you are both an entrepreneur and a businessperson.
An entrepreneur is often defined as: a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so.
A businessperson is defined as: a person who works in business or commerce, especially at an executive level.
If you did not start the business, but you work for it in a management role, you are the businessperson.
You can call yourself an entrepreneur if you take the business idea and turn it into a company that delivers products or services to the marketplace. You eventually hire businesspeople to run the operations, administration, production, distribution and marketing for you. As you continue to develop ideas and create new opportunities for your product or service, you remain the entrepreneur.
That’s the achievement you want to be able to be the entrepreneur hiring businesspeople to help you run your business. At that point you have the life dream you wanted to achieve when you got started.
What do you need to make it happen?
TIRED OF THE DAILY GRIND?
WANT TO REACH YOUR LIFESTYLE FREEDOM DREAM?
Check Out one or all of these free resources from Ready Entrepreneur
LEARN: Enroll in a FREE COURSE Three Forward Steps to Start Your Business Today. Start on your business immediately by learning the practical strategies you can implement now to set you on the road to lifestyle freedom.
READ: Life Dream: 7 Universal Moves to Get the Life You Want through Entrepreneurship by Case Lane. This book is an inspirational global guide to setting yourself on the road to lifestyle freedom. Download at Amazon.com
LISTEN: Want to think like an entrepreneur while commuting, working out, shopping or other listening safely activities? Check out The Ready Entrepreneur Podcast on iTunes
WRITE: Send me an email to contactcase@readyentrepreneur.com and let me know the entrepreneur challenges you are facing. Or fill out a very short survey by clicking this link. (I ask the same question – tell me what you need to get started).
CONNECT: Discuss the content of this blog or other ideas? Send me an email to: contactcase@readyentrepreneur.com
Rising Entrepreneurs: Is Advertising Worth the Cost?
How to Measure Your ROI when Making Marketing Decisions
Big Words vs. Your Business Numbers: Bad advice and wild declarations could be preventing you from maximizing opportunities for your business. Here is a straightforward process for determining, for yourself, whether you are making or losing money from your marketing decisions.
Do you listen to – just about everybody – as you try and build your business? Are you wondering who is right and who is wrong about spending ideas like buying advertising on Facebook or managing your own website?
How should you decide what to do?
One option is to decide based only on numbers – the actual profit – you could make from your decision. Even if your business has no customers or profits, you can be disciplined about evaluating every decision along economic lines. Make your calculations against a long-term vision for your business. You do not have to worry about making money tomorrow, only about making money.
When you hear someone say a particular business decision is “expensive,” you have to determine, for yourself, if the statement is true. The word ‘expensive’ is relative to your own costs and profit goals.
You have to do your own assessment. Taking someone else’s statement at face value may be costing you your opportunity to be successful with your business plans. If you are a rising entrepreneur, you may be missing an approach for directly making money if you take advice without knowing your own numbers.
What is expensive to You as CEO?
Entrepreneurs must understand whether or not your business spend is making you money – or you may soon go broke. When you spend money on your business, you have to learn how to measure the return you are getting from your investment. Another person’s declaration of what is or is not expensive should have no effect on you, if you truly understand how you make money.
You must be able to calculate your ROI – return on investment – for your spend. An ROI greater than 100% is the minimum goal. You want to earn back every penny you put in, and more. But the question is: 100% of what measure? The calculation of ROI is relative to your objectives.
Want a FREE PDF copy of this blog post?
Enter your email address to receive a free PDF copy of this blog post and all of our latest updates, news and great content from Ready Entrepreneur
Your Business Must Make Sales
Most entrepreneurs have something to sell – either products or services or both – into the global marketplace. You offer solutions to problems, conveniences, value, opportunities, short cuts and other benefits to consumers who want or need what you have to offer.
You want your business sales to return greater than 100% of the cost you pay to run the business. For example, authors want to receive more than 100% of costs returned as royalties from book sales.
To determine if the spend is getting a return consider: how you earn revenue, the timeframe when you will recover costs, and who you expect to eventually receive the payment from.
To illustrate, we will use the example of purchasing advertising from Facebook or Google to promote your business. When you make the decision to purchase advertising do you expect to eventually sell to people who see your ad, click on it, or convert by taking a specific action?
These are the factors you must consider – where is the revenue eventually going to come from?
To determine your parameters for calculating your return, ask yourself a few questions: Why are you buying ads? What do you expect the ads to do for your business?
If you cannot answer those questions with exactness, meaning exact dollar figures, you may be pursuing a blind advertising strategy for your product or service.
Entrepreneurs buy advertising to reach an audience. Facebook or Google advertising allows you to target people who may be interested in your ad because they fit a specific demographic or interest group connected to your product or service. For example, if you write thriller books, you can target all the thriller fans who have claimed the interest on a digital platform.
To Calculate ROI on Advertising:
Set-up your Ad
This example will focus on calculating your ROI for advertising spend only. You will not find the information on how to do a Facebook ad or use Google Adwords. If you want information on technical features such as creating or placing your ad, tweaking the ad, or writing better copy, put a note in comments to request a future article.
When setting up your ad, you will want a measure of performance. For example, people create an ad to prompt a Call-To-Action (CTA) – an activity they want the ad viewer to do. The CTA is aimed at fueling an end goal for your business. You are then able to measure performance based on how many people do what you want them to do.
The value of the return starts with your reason for creating the ad.
Let’s use the following illustrative example: You have a brand new product that no one has heard about, but you are interested in targeting potential customers who may be interested. You can create an ad campaign with ads that have a CTA to click to enter an e-mail address and receive an incentive from you such as an introductory product supplement or important research information related to your new product.
For this campaign, two measures are important – how many people click the ad, and how many people enter their e-mail address to receive the incentive.
Calculate your expected profit from selling the new product
To apply real numbers to the calculation of your return, you must determine your expected profit. If, as a result of the advertising campaign, you were able to sell the product to everyone who executed the CTA, what would you earn from each sale?
More generally, determine how you expect to drive sales through the money you are spending. If you set up a website, buy supplies, take a competitor to lunch, attend a conference – how are you creating sales for your business? The same thought process must be applied to your advertising.
Once you know the potential profit you expect to receive, you can determine the return you need to achieve it.
What is the expected profit from the sale of the product?
Know Your Costs for Each Outcome
In our advertising example, you must know the ad spend for each successful CTA by a potential customer.
One note: This article is only about recovering your cost for specific spend such as advertising, and not all the other potential costs you can have when creating your product or service. For this example, this calculation does not include the costs for creating, producing or distributing your product or service, the cost of your time, materials, outsourcing, or web services. The actual total cost of the product or service includes more than advertising spend or another targeted expense. But we are not going to consider the ROI on your entire production and distribution process.
The purpose of this article is to help you weed out facts from hubris when listening to third party advice about your business decisions. You have to know your own numbers to avoid having people persuade you to take action that may be against your best interests.
With your advertising expenses, you should know exactly how much money is being spent, which means you can track the value of that spend directly to your results.
Tracking Your Results
Using our earlier example for digital advertising, you must decide which result statistic matches your overall strategy.
From earlier, if you decided on measuring how many people click on the ad, and how many people enter an email address, you have the important statistics you want to analyze. The people who enter their e-mail are conversions.
You want to pick one of these measures to track against the money you are spending.
Conversions are the number of people who acted on your CTA – such as those who entered an email address or went to your website. For many advertisers, the number of conversions is the statistic that matters.
You will have to decide which measure optimizes returns for your marketing strategy. How are you going to continue to motivate customers – with great products, added value, more information or other incentives?
Based on this overall plan, you must set your goal for the ads. What is the connection between your marketing and the potential for a sale?
For example, an author may give away one free book in a series, in the hope the potential customer will buy the next book in the series. Perfumers give away free samples in the hope you will buy the whole bottle. Cruise ships throw in the drink package to tempt you to take the cruise. When was the last time you got through Costco without sampling a new food or drink?
Make the connection. This goal is speculative. You have no idea if someone will eventually end up buying your book or perfume or food. Nor do you know if they bought the product or service only because of the advertising. You’re guessing based on past performance, research, habits for people in your industry and other concepts. Maybe you can clearly see a bump in sales after you advertise. But there are no guarantees. You will want to generate enough ongoing interest to keep the new customer engaged on some level.
Calculate Your Return
Go back to the expected profit and our advertising example. If you assume that your advertising will lead a customer to buy your product, perhaps within one year, you want the expected cost per conversion to be less than the expected profit per customer.
To calculate the return, divide the total amount spent and total number of conversions (number of successful CTAs or email addresses received). This will give you the cost-per-conversion. Then you can assess the value of your marketing.
For example, if your expected profit on each sale is $2.09, and cost-per-conversion is below $2.09 you can feel good about earning the money back. If it’s above $2.09, you may need to tweak the ads or target audience to try and get that amount down.
You should always know your expected profit from your product, and the cost-per-conversion so that you can automatically see if you have the potential to earn more money than you are spending on your ads.
Ideally, you want to minimize the cost-per-conversion number as much as possible. You really only want to pay $0.01 (one cent or less) per conversion. [This means if you were spending $10 a day on advertising, you would need 1,000 conversions a day, which would be awesome, but you see the challenge].
The key is to understand what each conversion means to you. When you look at your overall campaign, focus on the number you originally determined to use as the basis for a return. If cost-per-click is not a factor for you, do not bother tracking the number. Only worry about the number you want to use to track performance. Other numbers remain interesting to your overall results, but not important to determining your return.
If you set an ROI number based on conversions you only have to worry that conversions are performing. Do not get obsessed with clicks if your conversions are delivering.
To determine your long-term prospects for earning your money back, you can also track how many products you would have to sell to break even. For example, based on the above numbers, if after one month, you have 500 people on your e-mail list, but no sales, you need to sell at least 144 products to earn your ad money back. [Note the math: Spending $10 a day for 30 days = $300, potential profit is $2.09, $300/$2.09 = 143.54 – rounded up).
You can envision selling 144 products over the next year, so the prospects still look good. But if after a year of the same monthly spend and you still have no sales, you would need to sell 1,723 products to break even. Now you may be a little worried.
However, if you have 6,000 e-mails on your list you can work on marketing to your list and try and earn the money by promoting the next product to your existing ‘warm’ leads. You can think of new incentives and ideas to show your customers the value you have to offer and how you can help them find satisfying solutions.
Be Wary of Big Talkers Making Pronouncements
The next time you hear someone say “Advertising is expensive,” remember to do your own math. You have to determine “by what measure?” and then apply the measure to your business.
Using our ongoing example again, if next year, cost-per-conversion goes from $2.09 to $4.09, and you receive fewer conversions with the same ads, then you can agree ads are getting too expensive for your business model. But you cannot know exactly what your risk is until you have run your own numbers.
You must decide:
Why you are creating the ads?
What you want to achieve through the ads?
Which product or service you plan to sell and what is potential profit?
Decide on your own definition of “expensive.”
If you have an opportunity to reach an audience, and good marketing ideas, do not let the moment pass you by because someone else has found the prospect daunting. Pursue your own advertising strategy based on the options that work for your business.
–$–
Case Lane founded Ready Entrepreneur to help people who struggle to get the information they need to start a business and fulfill their lifestyle dreams. Ready Entrepreneur works with aspiring entrepreneurs, wantrepreneurs and rising entrepreneurs who are frustrated, confused by the technology solutions but thirsty for the information they need to grow the business. Case shows you how to access the resources you have to tactically develop a business that can be competitive in the global market and deliver market share, profit and cash flow. Please feel free to visit her blog to find unique articles and resources that support this vision.
Sign-Up to Join Case’s Insiders Group and get the latest information on getting started as an entrepreneur.
How do you define Real Success as an Entrepreneur?
When people set out with a goal, like to start their own business, the achievement is clear. When the business opens, the goal has been reached.
But many entrepreneurs do not feel successful at that moment. Doubt quickly creeps in: What if the business has no customers? What if only the launch went well? Most new businesses fail. Owning a business is only a dream.
Fear soon overtakes you and you press on until you reach the next milestone moment. And that moment…whenever it comes…it hits you like a bright burst of sunshine.
Perhaps it’s the day you first realize that you have control of your own schedule and can really go to your friend’s wedding for a week, and not just one day. Or maybe it’s the day when your child asks if you are coming to the game and you do not hesitate in saying: “yes of course I’ll be there.”
You don’t check the calendar. You don’t ask permission. You just know, you can be part of that moment.
The average person spends 2,080 hours a year on the job. This is only one-third of your entire year. Yet it feels like so much more. Your employment and the commitments associated with it take so much of your energy and fill many worry spots in your brain. When you are finally free of someone else’s all encompassing agenda, you can take that time back.
That’s when you have achieved success.
The word success comes from the Latin, succedere, which means to ‘come close after.’ This definition seems to be an unintended origin for such an important word in our language. After all, to ‘come close’ is not to succeed at all in our culture. Coming close means you didn’t win. It’s like what they say about winning a silver medal at the Olympics – you’re the best of all the losers. People don’t say you’re the second best in the world – okay some will – but they’re thinking…You lost. You lost the gold medal.
Society measures success by those who win the awards, contests, and at making money. Regardless of whether you credit extraordinary ability, hard work, luck or circumstance – success means you are popular, wealthy, recognized, honored, and so on. In all circumstances it is the opposite of failure, of being a loser or a nobody in a world searching for approbation.
As an entrepreneur, it does you little good to try and cling to that broad meaning of success. You’re never going to know exactly how much money everyone else has. So if you try and run the money race, you’ll be a rat on a spinning wheel. You’re also never going to know if you’re the most popular person in your world – or in your neighborhood, in your genre, your industry – because it’s a big world and there are so many products or services. You could be number #1 by one measure today, and find out you’re #93 by a different measure or # 1,993,000 tomorrow.
What was the number one movie at the box office last week? What about number one year to date? What about in China the world’s biggest market? What about number one in terms of uninflated dollars? Who is number one? What is number one?
The only way to know if you have achieved success is to create the definition for yourself and stick to your idea of what success means to you.
Success has its more positive meanings. For individuals who are pursuing goals and objectives, success to is to achieve the result or accomplish a particular purpose. If you left the 9-to-5 grind to start your own business, success could mean getting away from all the reasons you wanted out of the job in the first place. Just as you left the formal workforce and went out on your own to live on your terms, you should define success as you see fit as well.
Aspiring entrepreneurs can define their own success by setting goals and working to achieve them. For some, the objective will be to create an online product available for sale, for others perhaps getting the first 1,000 names on an e-mail list, or 100 attendees at a webinar. Each goal is its own measure of success of your success. Real success, tied to you – the entrepreneur’s faith in moving forward and achieving even more.
Those who do not set goals tend to drift, uncertain of where they can establish their footing and begin to change their outcomes. Sometimes the idea of the goal itself prompts those who are afraid of their own success, to curl up and avoid any semblance of working on achievement. These people are unlikely to be entrepreneurs. Unlikely to be striving for a weightier outcome.
As you consider your own world, where are you positioned going forward? If you are tired of the 9-to-5 grind and hoping one day to have control of your own schedule, then you are likely leaning towards a life as an entrepreneur who works to make her own magic happen.
Being an entrepreneur is not an easy task. The best thing is your opportunity to live your life on your terms as you deliver value based on your singular ability. The worst is the risk you take on for the privilege.
Those that shy away from the entrepreneur’s life are likely unable to fathom having no regular paycheck or daily routine to fall back on if the project does not turn out as imagined.
But those who embrace the life are quite prepared to risk the initial disruption to give themselves an opportunity for long-term gain. Because when the work is done, and the business is thriving, the entrepreneur at the helm is truly in charge, not just of a business operation, but also of her own life.
No more asking permission to take a day off, or missing events held during a week day, or dealing with difficult people who have limited stakes in the work. Instead, you establish the world you want to work in and live to that standard every day.
Being an entrepreneur, your own boss is the goal, but it’s a destination. To get there you must travel a journey of ups-and-downs. And you must stay focused on where you want to be and on the value you have placed in reaching that location.
Define what real success looks like to you.
Then move forward with that vision as your guide and umbrella on the road to your lifestyle dream.
You can set typical business goals such as revenue, profit and customers. But you also set personal goals like going to the events you would pass up in the past, or making sure you attend everyone of your child’s games or recitals. Or reading all the great classics, one after another for a year or two. Or traveling to the top of the Eiffel Tower or to walk on the Great Wall. Whatever it is that your dreaming about doing one day – make that the definition of your success.
When you achieve each activity you have only dreamt of doing, you have reached success.
And when you are able to achieve these activities, because you decided to become an entrepreneur and take control of your own life, you have exponentially achieved even more.
You have made yourself the focus of your own success story. And that is the greatest success of all.
TIRED OF THE DAILY GRIND?
WANT TO REACH YOUR LIFESTYLE FREEDOM DREAM?
Check Out one or all of these free resources from Ready Entrepreneur
LEARN: Attend a FREE Webinar: Three Forward Steps to Start Your Business Today. Start on your business immediately by learning the practical strategies you can implement now to set you on the road to lifestyle freedom.
READ: Life Dream: 7 Universal Moves to Get the Life You Want through Entrepreneurship by Case Lane. This book is an inspirational global guide to setting yourself on the road to lifestyle freedom. Download at Amazon.com
LISTEN: Want to think like an entrepreneur while commuting, working out, gardening or other listening safely activities? Check out The Ready Entrepreneur Podcast on iTunes
WRITE: Send an email and let me know the entrepreneur challenges you are facing. Send me an email to: contactcase(at)readyentrepreneur(dot)com or fill out a very short survey by clicking this link. (I ask the same question – tell me what you need to get started).
CONNECT: Discuss the content of this blog or other ideas? Send me an email to:contactcase(at)readyentrepreneur(dot)com
Can Entrepreneurship be Taught?
Who are the entrepreneurs in the world, the people who start businesses? Could it be the most clever or the hustler or the cheapskate or the visionary or the lucky or the hardest working or the liar or the cheater or the privileged or anyone who isn’t you?
Or is it really just the people who had an idea and decided to see if they can put it into fruition?
And if it is those people then is that not a gift in itself, or can entrepreneurship taught?
Whether or not the answer to the question is ‘yes,’ entrepreneurship is being taught at schools everywhere and in business school programs. People believe you can learn how to be an independent businessperson and start your own business. But if you read the biographies and autobiographies of famous business owners, you will almost certainly come to realize that none of them took any special courses in how to be an entrepreneur.
They had an idea. And put the idea into action. They took risks, used persistence, ignored naysayers and defied the odds to keep going when others told them to stop. Can those behaviors be taught?
The answer is still ‘yes.’
The answer is ‘yes’ because one way to understand how to do something is to see what others do and emulate them. If the ‘secret sauce’ for successful entrepreneurship is not giving up on your business idea, people can be taught the concept that perseverance is a key to being a successful entrepreneur.
For people who want to start their own business, many simply do not know how it’s done. There is an information gap when it comes to explaining what it really takes to get a business going. Even the books about entrepreneurs do not really give you the details. A book may say an entrepreneur started with ‘nothing,’ but then suddenly the person is able to buy a storefront – how did that happen?
Or the person has one, two or ten friends who are on their exact same wavelength and work with them day and night to get the business going – where does one meet such people?
Or there are favorable laws that can be exploited in a particular jurisdiction or a relative who left behind an old truck and a recipe or an observation that triggered a bright idea.
When successful people write their own stories, you get the version they want to tell you that is a little bit entertaining, maybe glamorous, and always an idea about how they want to be viewed by others. You do not get the whole story. The blanks need to be filled in.
Typically, ‘the blanks’ the boring part is all about the work required in the average day for a rising entrepreneur. From the beginning of a business idea you must figure out how to bring the idea to market. Often you will try and fail to bring the idea to market and you will have to change your approach. If you begin with no money, you may have to work all day at a paying job for someone else and then work on your business all evening and weekends. That kind of effort rarely makes for dynamic page-turning in a biography.
The rising entrepreneur may have to approach people who can help advance the business. You may contact people every day and never receive a response. People may be short with you, bored with talking to you or tell you your idea is ‘stupid.’ You hang up and call someone else. Successful people are unlikely to want to recall those rejections either.
You might have to attend meetings where someone will only speak to you for five minutes, after you spend five days getting ready to meet them. You may make a presentation where the person asks a question you never thought of and then thinks you’re an idiot because you cannot answer it. You go to the bank and ask for a loan and get turned down because that lender, that day, did not like your idea. You move on to the next bank, the next day.
You will not go out partying with friends, you will not drink, do drugs or smoke. You will not take vacation or go to the movies. If you have a car you will use it for the business. You will eat, because you need food for nutrition, but you will not see the insides of any fancy restaurants. Possibly for years.
If you are on your own you will do these things while maintaining your housework, laundry, and other mundane household chores so that you remain a civilized person operating at a level of dignity.
If you are an entrepreneur, or even an entrepreneur-in-training, you will keep doing this until your business is a success.
Is managing this life until you are successful an academic skill or possible only if you have certain personality traits?
You have to be tough…with yourself. You have to have an iron self-discipline and will to forsake all the ‘normal’ rituals of everyday life in favor of building your business. This attitude applies even if you have children and a spouse. You have to convince them that changing your daily life now to concentrate on building a business is worth the effort for everyone.
You have to be able to shut out whining and complaining and wishing. You cannot set a deadline. For example to declare, ‘if the business if the is not viable by Jan. 1 we’ll do something else.’ Because setting a deadline could set you up to lose. Or worse, quit just before the business turns the corner. Instead from the beginning, you must decide you will build a successful business and that’s it. You will put your effort into creating the business you want or die trying.
A deadline will emerge on its own because you will find yourself determined to be successful to satisfy all those who may be counting on you to make it big…or to fail.
But if you are the kind of person who gives up, who believes you can in fact end your quest for entrepreneurship, then no amount of courses or books or lessons will help you. You can be told you must keep on going until you have a successful business, but you cannot be taught the personality traits needed to be that person.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, a person who runs your own business and manages your own lifestyle based on individual enterprise – you must be realistic about how you run your life.
Walk away from the daily ritual of a so-called ‘normal’ life, and set your sights on building your business dream. This is what you are being told, not taught.
Now it’s up to you go ahead and implement on that vision.
Additional Resources for Wantrepreneurs
Free Video Training
Check out free training for wantrepreneurs if you would like help to get started.
Check out: free video training series for wantrepreneurs. This training is for those of you who have always wanted to start a business, but need to find the confidence, time and money to get started.
Money Management Tips
Facing money challenges? Download my book: A Better Plan: Spend to Live, Save to Wealth: A Real Life Guide to Building Wealth from Nothing and Living a Life Without Financial Fear
For Amazon (Kindle): https://www.amazon.com/Better-Plan-Building-Nothing-Financial-ebook/dp/B06W5GXLP1/
For iBooks (Apple products): https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/better-plan-real-life-guide-to-building-wealth-from/id1222099554
For Smashwords (all formats): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/705684
Want to discuss the content of this blog or other ideas? Send me an email to: contactcase(at)readyentrepreneur(dot)com
Sign-up for the Ready Entrepreneur Global Group List and stay up-to-date with news, tips, strategies, courses, giveaways and more about leveraging the global marketplace to achieve your lifestyle freedom.
Start Your Business Around Your 9-to-5 Job
Some of you have asked, ‘how do I balance becoming an entrepreneur while still keeping up my 9-to-5 job?’ For the answer, I go back to a basic question: What are you trying to achieve with your life?
Do you want to live your dream lifestyle before your life ends? If the answer is yes, you have to begin to change the way you use your time so you can focus on creating the business.
We are going to assume you cannot leave your job. That is, you have dependents or other responsibilities relying on you to provide steady income. But you know you can reach an even more reliable income if you were an entrepreneur running your own enterprise.
Want a FREE PDF copy of this blog post?
Enter your email address to receive a free PDF copy of this blog post and all of our latest updates, news and great content from Ready Entrepreneur
So you go into this process with the desire to start your own business. You want to be an entrepreneur and you know you will have to make changes to accomplish your goals.
Next, recognize how much time you have available to work on your business. You say your job is 9-to-5 – that means you are working just over 2,000 hours a year (probably less).
How many hours does that leave you to work on your business each year?
Almost 7,000. (*Check the math at the end if you don’t believe it)
That’s right, you have more than three times as many hours to work on your business, compared to the time you’re spending at your job. So what was that you were saying about working around your day job?
The question you should really be asking is: how do I convert the time I’m using for other activities to work on my business?
#1 – Decide what you want to do with the time you find
First, decide what you want to do with your time. This is critical. If you start looking for time before deciding what you are going to do with it, you could end up wasting the minutes you have available. You need to identify the activities you will be doing to start your business. Imagine you are not going to your job and you have all the time in the world every day to work on your business, where would you start?
If you do not have a business idea: Spend the time researching possible products or services you could be providing to the marketplace.
If you have a business idea: Spend the time researching how you will turn your idea into a business, and map out every activity you need to do to get the business open.
If you already have a struggling business: Spend the time re-assessing how to take advantage of the assets you have already built, and research options for growing your business.
Once you have decided what you want to do with your time, you will begin trading off activities that do not add value to your life for those that will get you to your dream lifestyle.
#2 – Start looking for time/activity trade-offs
You really have to decide what is more important to you.
To start your business, you need time to work on your business, and to find the time you have to trade-off from other activities you do. If you are serious about reaching lifestyle freedom, you have to be prepared to make these changes in your life now.
If you have dependents who will not alleviate you from your financial responsibilities, that is you are keeping your day job to pay the bills, then they should give you back some time.
Remember you are working on getting to lifestyle freedom. Once you’ve achieved it, you will have all the time in the world to do everything you want to do.
To trade-off your time, you should be honest and prepared. If you are in a family where the term ‘family is everything,’ means giving up on yourself for appearances sake, you should have a serious discussion with your dependents.
Begin by envisioning your dream lifestyle together. Maybe they feel like you do. The work grind and answering to others is not the world you want to stay in forever. Get your family to see the value of taking time now to step away from all the false obligations of attending every event – and focus on moving you forward on your dreams. You can do this precisely because ‘family is everything.’ You want more time with them, more freedom to do what you would like to do, and more stability and security in your professional life.
This is can be a very difficult step because we are programmed to believe that we must be ‘social.’ But outside of once-in-a-lifetime activities like weddings (okay some will be twice) where you wish to share the joy of someone you care about; and funerals where you wish to pay your last respects, there are few events that you absolutely must attend. Of course people will have special birthdays or graduations, but often the event is another party with the same set of people, engaged in the same set of conversation, drinking and eating.
You must make a stand for your own life vision, and turn them down.
When you pitch to your dependents that you need time, you should begin with your plan to achieve lifestyle freedom. Short-term pain for long-term gain. The conversation does not start “I’m not going to Aunt Martha’s birthday party because I might want to look at some stuff about starting a business.” The conversation is “I set aside time today to do research on my product offering. I’m skipping Aunt Martha’s birthday party (and no, it’s not her 100th).
By the way, if you think this is ‘mean,’ remember you are the one dreaming of a new lifestyle. Does that lifestyle look like the one you are in now? Or are you in Tahiti during Aunt Martha’s next birthday? Think about it. How many more of Aunt Martha’s birthday parties are you going to attend when you are a millionaire entrepreneur?
You can also look at replacing some of the dependent or friend-related time taking activities with more efficient practices. Maybe you go to the mall every weekend because that’s when you spend time together. But you can do all your shopping online, and have products delivered. Use the time you would normally be driving to the mall, looking for parking and fighting crowds to spend time together. And use the time you would normally be wandering around the mall to work on your business.
Engage your dependents, in the business planning. Kids love to surf the Internet. Let them be involved in doing research especially to look at your potential market and the competitive environment.
Here’s something to ask the kids: go on Instagram, search #[add the name of your product or service]; and tell me all the marketing and social media buzz you see related to my idea or something like this. You can do this for every variation of your product or service, the industry, market, and every social media platform – should keep everyone busy for a while.
You do not have to do this every weekend. You can replace going to the mall, twice a month, and make those Saturday afternoons lifestyle dream time. Make sure everyone has articulated what the lifestyle dream looks like to them so that they know exactly why they are doing the work.
You can also trade-off time at work. If you work in an organization where your time for lunch and breaks is your own, you can do research, make calls, take meetings and prepare documents related to your business during free time you have available at work.
For the same reason that you are not going to attend every family event, you do not have to attend every work excuse to socialize. If your colleagues go to lunch every day to gossip, once or twice a week you can say you have something else to do, and go and find a quiet corner to work on your business.
You should not have any trouble deciding what to do with your time, because you should have mapped out your plan of activities — every step needed to build the business — ahead of time. See #1. You can select one or two activities to work on during the workday or in the evenings and weekends.
You can also change your activities during your commuting time. If you are not driving, you have plenty of options to do business-related activities on the train or bus. If you are driving, you can focus your listening time on audiobooks, podcasts or radio programs focused on your area of business. If you are car-pooling and have no control over the listening devices, you can canvas your carpool friends about your business ideas. If the product or service is not for them, assign them the task to ask other people who may be your potential customers what they think of the idea.
If you think your colleagues will ridicule you for trying to start a business on the side, or ‘rat you out’ to the boss, then you may be forced to sit there and listen to their nonsense talk, which is even more of a reason to get out of that job and get into your own business.
You must always remember why you are doing the work of creating an independent business. If you keep looking for excuses that you cannot find time, or your day job is getting in the way, you must ask yourself how badly you want to be an entrepreneur living life on your own terms.
The real issue here is taking the time you have to repurpose the non-productive hours of your day towards building your business. First, you start by knowing exactly what you want to be doing. Second, you identify where you can make trade-offs with your dependents, friends and your work colleagues.
#3 – Use the time to create your business
You will be thanking yourself as you push yourself closer and closer to your dream lifestyle. Take all the time you have found or created with more efficient practices, and focus on getting where you really want to go.
You know you are going to make changes to reach your dream lifestyle. So make changes now on the road to getting there. You’ll be happy that you did.
*Here’s the math: You have 24 hours in a day for 365 or 366 days that equals 8,760 or 8,784. You work 9-to-5 that’s 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks of the year or 2,080 hours. That assumes you never take a holiday or a personal day. There are 10 statutory federal holidays, and most people get at least 10 personal days. So that’s another 160 hours you are not working. Bringing your total to less than 2,000.
More Resources for Rising Entrepreneurs
Learn to Find Time, Money and Overcome Obstacles
If you would like some help in getting started, click this link to check out free video training series for wantrepreneurs. This training is for those of you who have always wanted to start a business but need to find the confidence, time and money to get started.
Learn money management tips for all situations
Facing money challenges? Download my book: A Better Plan: Spend to Live, Save to Wealth: A Real Life Guide to Building Wealth from Nothing and Living a Life Without Financial Fear
For Amazon (Kindle): click here
For iBooks (Apple products): click here
For Smashwords (all formats): click here
