by Case Lane
Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs have a long, dynamic impact on the economy, and society in general. If you look at the great grand inventions like electricity and automobiles and planes – you can quickly conclude that entrepreneurs are basically indispensable to progress.
Now as our society evolves and changes with technology, what is the role of entrepreneurs?
In the documentary, Consume this Movie, they put the transition of human labor like this: when human beings first became settled around farms, they traded with each other using barter – you do something for me, I’ll do something for you and it’s even.
When cities were formed the farmers could sell their goods – grain, fruits and vegetables to the city dwellers and buy stuff they need for the farm – equipment, tools, implements – goods for goods on an individual basis.
When the industrial age came around, large groups of people left the farm and gave their time and their labor in exchange for money, they earned in large organized industrial enterprises which required concentrations of labor at a time so you traded – time for dollars.
Now in the technological age, we have a new trade going on for human brainpower – information, knowledge and how-tos. Which means entrepreneurs are among the best positioned people to take advantage of this evolution. Because 21st century entrepreneurs like you are all about the application of knowledge, and the distribution of information.
Are you ready to be part of the Brainpower Age?
The brainpower required in the digital age means that instead of needing to have a certain type of body to do a job, you need to have a certain type of mind. One that can think and produce results through your ability to analysis and act.
An entrepreneur is a brainpower person regardless of the type of product or service you are delivering to the global marketplace. You have to figure out first where you can add value. This requires observation, contemplation and curiosity about the opportunities around you.
As an aspiring entrepreneur, the Digital Age is a set-up that’s tailor-made for your chosen pursuit. Since you are already that person who is looking at the world critically and looking for opportunities. You are not just going passively go through life. Even when you may be working at your 9-to-5 or studying in school, you are actively looking at the world, and wondering where you can make your contribution.
This constant firing of your brainpower eventually leads to a spark that creates a business that provides a solution for those who want or need your product or service offering.
The evolution of our labor force towards a more knowledge-based individual is sweeping you up from your position as an entrepreneur. This inevitability is exciting and loaded with possibility. The knowledge you gain building your business can translate across other enterprises.
Many entrepreneurs do not build just one business, so your brainpower skills, the successes and challenges, are continuously worthwhile in an advanced economy.
Some may believe the Brainpower Age is going to limit the majority of humans from finding productive employment because, unlike during the agrarian and industrial ages, the thinking you have to do requires analysis that people do not typically use.
Without an education system that encourages analytical thinking, many people will rise to adulthood and not be able to cope with the demands of the tech age.
The transition has already begun, but it’s important to understand, the current lapse is not a permanent state. The education system just happens to be behind the times, eventually people will catch up.
The Tech Age is Designed for Entrepreneurs
For entrepreneurs, technology is actually designed to allow thinking people to participate in the new economy without having to code. How often do you see new software that specifically says – no coding required.
Living in the Brainpower Age is not an untouchable reality if you are not an engineer or computer programmer. You can take advantage of online tools by learning how to use them, or you can use online services to outsource to another individual who is willing and capable of doing the work.
In all cases, you are participating as an entrepreneur in this economy because you are thinking for yourself, and developing your contribution based on your own analysis. What makes you part of this evolution is your ability to look at the world differently – and to act on what you see.
Take Action
As Tony Robbins says – knowledge is not power, execution is power. You have the knowledge when you see opportunity that you can develop as an entrepreneur. But you become an entrepreneur when you execute on that knowledge and build your business.
And you execute really well, when you use existing technology resources to make your business move forward. You can get your landing page or website up and be doing business all over the world without being a computer programmer. But you do have to know and understand how to use the software tools that are available.
The difference for today’s entrepreneur is you have to be willing to adapt and experiment even with established software because there are so many features available. Microsoft Office products have been around for 35 years, which is amazing – and although there are tens of millions of people who use its core products like Word and Excel – there are probably not more than a handful, if any, who know what all the features are.
You, as an aspiring entrepreneur, take the features that are of interest to you, and adapt them to your business. You can share documents across borders, and people do not need an explanation of how to use the features either. Everything is just available.
In my fiction books, in the Life Online series, which take place in the near future are about global cyber threats. But the underlying societal situation involves a world where most people are docilely functioning under an omnipresent Network, and thinking people like entrepreneurs are taking advantage of technology to give themselves a better life.
You want to be using your brainpower to ensure you capture the gains of tech change and minimize the losses.
Summary: Your Opportunity as an Entrepreneur in the Digital Age
- We are past the time when you bartered and traded your production equally with someone else
- We are past the time when you produced goods with your labor and sold them for goods that others produced
- We are past the time when you traded your hours for dollars in organized industrial enterprises
- Now is the time you can use your brain to create from your imagination, observation and analysis, a valuable product or service that you can deliver directly to those who want or need it
- As an entrepreneur today, you are participating in the evolution of the labor force and society by being someone who is actively not only observing, but also taking action
- You provide value through thinking and organizing knowledge in a way that people want and need to absorb it
- And you create a community, tied to your vision and your brainpower
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How to Gently Dump Someone so You can Get On with Your New Business
by Case Lane
Ending a relationship is never an easy conversation. But it’s necessary.
A bad boyfriend or girlfriend needs to be removed so you can move on and find someone new. Ending a marriage is more dramatic and typically requires third parties to finish the process, but the reasoning is the same – both sides must be permitted to move on.
But when it comes to toxic friends and family, many aspiring entrepreneurs remain aspiring because you feel obligated to remain among those you have always have in your life. Even when you have made an effort to improve your personal development or began researching how to execute on your business idea, you play along to get along with the people who are in your life.
Define ‘why’
You want to start your own business and spend time on the product or service idea you have developed, but maybe you are married, or with someone or have other family obligations, or a lot of friends who expect you at parties and events, or you feel you must be wherever they are.
That’s your first mistake. You are holding yourself back. By discovering and reading this article, you have already declared your intention to start your own business. If the people around you do not want to move forward to the next level, you need to breakoff the relationship.
But how do you get away…gently?
Consider dumping toxic people – your friends, maybe your family too, and definitely your colleagues at work – is all for a good cause, your personal lifelong dream to start your own business.
Identify your Supporters
You don’t have to dump anyone if they are all on your side. But unfortunately for many aspiring entrepreneurs no one is cheering them on. And to break away and really do what you want to do, you have to practice some tough love.
Recognize Your Contribution
You have done everything you were supposed to do – college, professional life, family relationships, and connection with friends. You do everything the way you’re supposed to do it – you go to every birthday party and wedding, you ‘like’ every Facebook post, you stay on the phone for an hour, or more while someone goes on about some guy who just left or the girl who just showed up – and that’s your life.
At work, you attend all the right meetings, fill out the mandated reports, and smile politely and engage in idle chatter with everyone with a title.
But during those birthday parties, and phone conversations and meetings, you are thinking about your business idea, marketing for the product or service, plans for your website – and you find that thinking along those lines makes you happier than the other activities.
But you feel guilty. After all, you have dutifully gone along with all the friends and family and colleague rituals for years. You’ve laughed, cried and hugged everyone. No one would ever suspect that the whole time, you were trying to figure out how to gracefully dump everyone so you could concentrate on the real passion of your life.
Recognize Your Actions
Every day you think about your business, you also feel more and more drawn to getting started. You listen to the Ready Entrepreneur podcast, read books about entrepreneurs, and research your business idea and target industry.
In fact, in reading books about entrepreneurs, you notice a common pattern. The most successful people never settle for ‘regular’ lives. They were able to roll right into starting their own business without holding back and clinging to all those old relationship ties.
The 19th century moguls – Carnegie and Morgan – were all business, all the time. Bill Gates dropped out of college to go work on his business, so did Mark Zuckerberg. Patricia and Mel Ziegler who founded Banana Republic were both working at a newspaper and left together to start their business. Sir Richard Branson was always involved in some entrepreneurial venture right out of school.
So it seems at least as the writers tell the story, these famous entrepreneurs never had to figure out a way to sneak away. In fact, from the beginning they found friends who were also business partners, like Gates and Paul Allen, and built their business together.
So what should you do?
Strategies for Gently Dumping People from Your Life
One huge caveat: people who are married or who have minor children will probably not be able to just walk away, and should to reach an amicable solution with those to whom they are legally obligated.
For aspiring entrepreneurs who are trying to gently remove people from their present lives who do not reflect their future, your task is going to be to take these strategies and wedge them into your life.
Communicate
You do not owe everyone an explanation, but there may be people in your life who you are particularly active with and therefore you need to explain what you are doing when you decide to back away.
Tell them you are starting a business and see how they react. The people who want to laugh at you or tell you you can’t do it are the first people you can walk away from without feeling guilty.
For the people who are supportive, you won’t have to worry about stepping away. They will understand.
Start Saying ‘No’
You need to start saying ‘no.‘ For once-in-a-lifetime events like weddings and funerals, you can say yes,’ especially when you know it’s easier to say ‘yes’ than to explain why you were not there.
But for the regular occurrences of parties and dinner, saying ‘no’ is going to be difficult at first. People are going to be insulted and angry by your indifference. But you have to make time for your business and for the plans you have.
Remember you are becoming an entrepreneur because you have an idea for a product or service that will add value for people who want or need your product. You are going to be helping many people with your solution. Your new community is waiting for you. If the old one does not understand, you will have to move on.
Roll out your ‘no’s’ slowly. Start with the least important events while making sure you let your existing community know you are committed to the big events.
Be Present When You Do Attend
When you are with people, be your old self. Engage with them and let them tell you their stories. Learn to be a listener. You will be attending fewer and fewer events so these few hours when you make the effort may be tedious and boring, but limited on your agenda.
At the office, focus on the work over idle gossip. Recognizing that every office is different, and the dynamics of your situation will dictate your behavior, but the idea is to use the time at the office to your advantage.
If you’re still at the office, use the time to learn as much as you can about business operations or administration that you could use in your business. Talk to people you have never spoken to about their work, and let them teach you information you can use. You can learn what not to do, and the activities you think are good or trivial.
Once you know you’re going to leave to start your own business, stop joining in the office gossip, and going out to lunch. If anyone is in your confidence, you can tell them what you’re doing, otherwise just make your excuses. Soon your colleagues will stop asking you to join them and your time will be free.
Schedule Text and Social Media Time
You are going to have to slowly wean yourself off of texting and social media with friends and family. Schedule the time when you will look at your phone for social reasons, for example at 9 am, 3 pm and 8 pm – or something similar. Turn off the buzzer on your phone, and turn off all social media notifications.
If your work and personal phone are the same, try not to look at the personal posts and emails. You will not be able to get on with your business if you are trying to get to your phone every minute.
Those closest to you will call if there is an emergency.
Summary: How to Gently Dump Someone so You can get on with Your New Business
These simple behaviors are designed to give you the time to focus on starting your business, and moving your life towards your goal of lifestyle freedom. You are doing this to have purpose and fulfillment in your life.
Some people may not support your intent, but those that do will be with you on this gloriously fun entrepreneurship journey.
- If you have already done everything you are supposed to do, then you likely have a life of family, friends and colleagues who expect you to participate in their social interactions and casual banter just when you want to work on your business
- To move away from them – communicate – with the ones closest to you so they know what you are doing
- Start saying ‘no’ to the least important events, and work your way up until you have to say ‘yes’ to the once-in-a-lifetime events
- Be present when you attend functions and events. If you still want to be with everyone, let them know you still care
- If you’re at work, use the time to understand business concepts. If appropriate, speak to people about their work to learn information you may be able to use in your business
- Say ‘no’ to gossiping and social lunches – soon your colleagues will stop asking you to join them, and it will be easier to walk away
- Schedule text and social media time, outside of work to limit the hours when you will check for texts and social media
If you implement these tips, hopefully you can have a graceful exit from the past and a triumphant entry into your new future.
by Case Lane
When you are first starting as an entrepreneur and manage to put away 15 minutes a day to work on your business, you will likely start by researching more about your business idea.
The purpose of your research should be to find sufficient information to move on to the next step in launching your business. But many aspiring entrepreneurs get caught in analysis paralysis, endlessly researching similar products or services in an effort to understand the competition. But there are more productive ways to spend your time.
When researching:
Investigate your Business Idea
Once you have a business idea, you have to find the information to fill in the gaps in your knowledge.
Most business ideas come from the entrepreneur’s own questions around their likes, dislikes, hobbies, experiences, work and education. Some people have also asked others to contribute to an idea. The origin of the idea is the foundation for going forward and doing your research.
Research Leads to Action
All research should be leading to action. The research provides the details about how you can bring your product or service to your community, then you can begin to take the action steps necessary to make it happen.
Research helps you realize what you need to do. The information can help you decide how to determine what you like or do not like that is already available, to identify best practices and good ideas, and to put together an action plan for yourself.
You want to see what’s going on in the marketplace – if anything – related to your product or service. And this exercise exists even if you have an idea of a product or service that does not exist in the marketplace.
Look at the context and functions for your idea
Looking at the broader market will help you determine the context for your product or service.
For example, there is a saying that if Henry Ford had listened to his customers, they would have said they want a faster horse. The statement is supposed to be profound because Ford of course brought the car to the masses. The masses could not have envisioned a car, they could only envision a faster horse.
But if you look at the context of this example, you see a different story. Consider the functional not literal product Ford delivered.
The customers were saying they want to get around faster. And Ford responded by giving them away to get around faster than a horse. He even emulated the infrastructure needed to manage his new product.
The car needs care and feeding, just like a horse, but this time with hay not gasoline. The product needs to be stored, not in a stable but in a garage. And it must be maintained, not with horse shoes but with tires. Ford actually gave people the functionality of a faster horse – that’s just not what we ended up calling it.
So when you are looking at your product or service, you are looking at the context for how you will introduce the product, and the functions it will perform.
Even if you have invented a new product or service, you still need to research the other products or services that try to address the same or a similar problem.
Go Offline
After all the online research, it’s important to remember there is a world outside where potential customers could be demonstrating the literal or functional use of your product or service.
If you look and touch the real world, you might learn more about what you intend to offer. Go out to see your product or service in live action. You can go to a store and see people shop or ask questions about the product, or maybe just walk down the street to see if your idea evolves based on your real world interactions.
Even if your product is completely digital, consider if the problem you are trying to solve also plays out in the physical world.
Limit Your Research Time
When starting research, Now I mentioned earlier that you do not need to do endless research. You can decide how much time you really want to spend. Part of the decision rests on how your life is currently organized. If you are only taking 15 mins a day to research because you are slowly working up to your available time then it make take you several weeks to put together sufficient information.
Generally if you have one or two hours a day, start with one week, and see how much information you can gather. If you still feel you need more information, go one more week. But do not keep procrastinating or delaying the work.
You are much better off getting started than just trying to keep researching forever.
You will know you are finished when you have enough information to move forward. For example, if you are starting a podcast and you’ve researched equipment and learned how you can do the recording, and where to host the completed file, at that point it’s time to create content.
You don’t need to keep looking at microphones. You can go with the most recommended one and if you don’t like it you can upgrade later. The same is true for the hosting platform or recording software. You can always change your mind after you get started and receive initial feedback on how the process is working.
In general, you are doing research to give you enough information to move your business along, not to have an excuse to delay starting your business.
Summary for How to Research Your Business Idea
- After you have selected your business idea, research is used to determine what you need to do next to take action on getting your business started
- Think about the functional use for your product or service and the context that people will use it, not just the literal use of similar products or services
- Go out into the real world with your research, not just online. Look up how similar products and services are presented in the marketplace
- Keep going until you have enough information to move on to the next step of your plan. A week of 1-2 hour days is a good start. Make sure you stop and move on. You can always change your mind after you have started and tested the results of your decision.
- It’s better to start the business with a little research, than to not start at all while you continue to spend time endlessly looking things up
The key to researching your business idea is to get enough information to move you along to the next step.
The idea as always is to just get started.
How to Get Started with No Audience or Market
If you are an aspiring entrepreneur with no friends, family or colleagues who support your idea of becoming an entrepreneur; or you have tons of friends, but all of them are only interested in partying, celebrities, sports or other things, and nobody ever wants to talk about business, how do you get your business idea out into the global marketplace?.
You may have a business idea in your head, but when you try and share your plans, you get the cold shoulder. No one is going to give you any feedback about whether or not your idea is any good. But you are ready to launch. You have a product or service you want to put out into the global marketplace, but you have no idea how to make sure your potential customers know about you.
How do you get started?
Product Launch
When you start a business you often do something called a product launch. One of the best ways to think of it, is it’s like a movie premiere. The final official launch of a new movie is a big party announcing the ‘product’ is now available for everyone to see.
If you are a billion-dollar Hollywood studio, you throw a huge bash, invite all the stars, roll out the red carpet, tell the press, and bam! your product is launched, and gets mountains of free publicity.
Publicity that comes months after – trailers, bus side posters, interviews in the press, and many other promotional activities have already taken place. If you are a Hollywood studio, you spend money to launch a product and you’re done.
How can your business idea get the red carpet treatment?
But if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur and you don’t have the multi-million dollar budget, how do you get started?
If you would like to hear these strategies, check out the Ready Entrepreneur Podcast Episode 063: How to Get Started with No Audience or Market on Apple Podcasts or wherever you enjoy your podcasts
Friends and Family
Many entrepreneur how-to gurus will tell you to start your promotion with friends and family. If you can get the people around you to try your product or service, and maybe even review it, you can easily get started with immediate feedback and ‘social proof.’
The early support is helpful and inspiring, but really only works best when friends and family are your potential community. If they’re not, the support your receive may not be genuine, as they may not be interested in contributing to your idea, or might provide a half-baked response.
Using friends and family works best for those who have strong, supportive and active friends and family. If you belong to religious groups or organizations that support individual endeavors, you can leverage those connections.
If you don’t have a supportive immediate circle, you have to think like a Hollywood studio.
Publicity
When launching a new product or service, an entrepreneur needs publicity. And you get publicity by creating a compelling story about your product or service, and then telling people who are, or can connect you with, media influencers.
There are many ways to start telling people about your product or service. Start with social media. Develop the message of your product or service and post about it on social media. Different platforms perform differently for this approach.
If you use Instagram and your product or service can be displayed in pretty pictures, then go ahead and post attractive photos. You can also use hashtags to highlight your product or service for people who are looking for something similar. Instagram works best for this because it gives you the popularity of hashtags.
Twitter works in a similar way. Sometimes people search for an idea, or phrase ,and you can lead them to your product or service if you are using a hashtag that is associated with your product or service.
If you use Facebook, you can write a detailed post, with links to your site. However, you may have a more challenging time circulating your posts to others.
If you have some friends or family who you know are not interested in your business, try and get them to circulate your message others by encouraging them to repost or pass it on to someone who may be interested.
Social media allows you to move forward if you have no other resources, and you just want to see what kind of an organic response your idea may receive from the marketplace.
Giveaways
Before a Hollywood studio releases a movie, they let a lot of people see it for free. They hope those people enjoy the movie, write reviews and spread the word to others. You can do the same with your product or service.
You can offer the product or service for free, or offer a portion of it or a companion product that prompts people to just pick up and try your idea.
Free promos have been part of the marketing playbook for years. You may already be familiar with the practice inside your local Costco. There is a reason they are giving out free samples. The store is trying to prompt the customer to buy the whole product. You can use the same tactic.
Depending on your product or service, you have to find the best place to provide your free offer. The aisles at Costco are controlled. But you may be able to find a local event or product fair that suits your style and business intent.
Online you can use tools like webinars, YouTube videos or Internet calls to provide free services that allow people to sample what you have to offer and how you deliver it.
Once you are able to obtain a potential customer’s attention through a free offer, then you have an opportunity to retain them by collecting an e-mail address, and continuing to communicate and follow-up.
Blog, Podcast or Video posts
You can also build your audience through blogging, podcasting and online videos. These platforms can be free to use, and provide you with an opportunity to present a more detailed and thoughtful message about your product or service.
Plan your ‘message’ from the perspective of the customer. What would you want to hear about a new product or service that would peak your interest and stop you in your tracks? You can write a story about your product, or the reason you decided to start your service, or a testimonial from someone else. And if you come up with a compelling idea, you may even be able to leverage other people’s audiences.
Other people’s audiences
If your idea resonates with the audience of another blogger, podcaster or vlogger, you can ask to appear on their established platform. These influencers are often looking for great new ideas for their audience. If you can present your product or service in a way that appeals to them, you may be able to ‘launch’ to an established audience.
But make sure you do your research. Do not approach influencers who have nothing to do with your product or service, or whose audiences would be completely different from your intended community. When you reach out, make sure you have something to offer that’s compelling and interesting enough for the influencer to want to present you to their community.
Most businesses began with no visible market. In fact, many aspiring entrepreneurs were told their idea would not work, and their business will not be successful.
The founding entrepreneur had to reach the people who would be interested in the product or service they had to offer. Ben and Jerry drove around selling ice-cream out of the back of their van. They took the product to the potential customers, and let them spread the word.
Summary:
- You can start your own publicity machine with family and friends if they are supportive
- If the people around you are not your intended community, reach out to social media with your messages, photos and hashtags that appeal to the people you are trying to reach
- You can giveaway your product or service in the arena that is most appropriate, whether that be at a physical event or online. Let people give your product or service a test run, and then become the testimonials for your future promotions
- Use online tools like blogging, podcasting or vlogging to create a compelling message about your product or service, and deliver it to a larger audience
- Reach out to people who have established blogs, podcasts or vlogs and let them know if you have a product or service that may be beneficial to their community. You have to show them how you provide value.
A Quick Start Guide to Online Entrepreneurship
Many aspiring entrepreneurs want to start an online business. The idea of low or no start-up costs, running an empire from your laptop, and being able to use all the latest technology in your day-to-day operations is appealing and romantic.
Many believe online entrepreneurs move faster, get things done easier, and reap immediate rewards by keeping their entire business infrastructure online.
The Internet is full of success stories from people doing what you want to do. But what, if anything, makes their process different from any other type of entrepreneur?
To listen to these tips, check out the Ready Entrepreneur Podcast Episode 062: A Quick Start Guide to Online Entrepreneurship at Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen to your podcast
What does it mean to be an online entrepreneur?
Being an online entrepreneur is the same as being an entrepreneur in general.
Entrepreneurs identify value to deliver to the global marketplace. If you have a product or service that people want or need, and you want to bring that product or service to a potential community, then you are already thinking like an entrepreneur.
You become an entrepreneur when you get the business started and reach out your potential customers.
What is different for an online entrepreneur?
To understand any potential differences between online entrepreneurs and traditional entrepreneurs start with the definition of an online business.
An online business means a business enterprise that delivers products or services only over the Internet, and you earn your revenue the same way. You take advantage of online tools and resources to get your idea in front of your community.
Some of the most popular online businesses include blogger, vlogger, podcaster, author, teacher, software designer, artist, editor, copywriter, marketer…and the list goes on and on. These are all businesses that can be started and function only online.
For the purposes of this article, online businesses are those that were created through the rise of the Internet, and its applications.
Old vs. New
Traditional businesses that are now conducted online are different from new economy businesses that were invented online. If you are a licensed professional in a traditional business like healthcare, and you start providing medical advice online, you are governed by a different set of rules than a blogger who starts providing opinion about a healthcare issue online.
An aspiring entrepreneur starting an online business must decide: what business you are in. If you are in a regulated industry, you must follow that industry’s rules even online. If you are in a new economy industry, the rules are still murky and somewhat free. However, the environment of online law is changing rapidly, by the day, and all entrepreneurs must be aware of how these changes may effect their business.
A Website or Landing Page vs. Social Media presence
When starting an online business, an aspiring entrepreneur must know if there are potential customers. And the potential customers must know where to find the entrepreneur.
Many online businesses start with a website, but some avoid even that early expense by focusing on a social media presence.
If you have only social media, your biggest challenge will be in knowing who your audience is, and finding a way to keep them as part of your business. Setting up on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram provides you with a free forum for posting about your product or service offering. You may even be able to communicate directly with your community using services like Messenger. This may set up your initial business, and even provide you with a few customers.
But you also have to think of the customer experience. With a website, you can set-up and organize all your information in an easy-to-navigate format. Most importantly, you can host a permanent location for new and interested customers to sign-up with you and learn more about your product or service.
Own your audience
From the first day you begin an online business, you want to be able to own the potential customers who come looking for you by maintaining a relationship with them. You start by giving them a place to sign up for more information. When they sign up you get their e-mail address, and you can ethically continue to communicate with them about your product, service or related issues.
If your audience is only located on a third party platform like Facebook, then that company owns the audience. You can be kicked off of Facebook at any minute, and at that point you lose the audience and all the comments and connections you may have made.
If you own your audience, you control the relationship.
To own your audience, you can sign-up for an e-mail management service like ConvertKit that provides both forms and landing pages for you to collect e-mails, and back end organization for the e-mail lists you have. You can learn to use the service’s features which automatically upgrade your plan as your email list grows.
New Rules
Aspiring entrepreneurs should be aware of the regulations that are being implemented to protect people’s personal information, children, and commerce in general.
Taking possession of someone’s email information means you are subject to privacy regulations. Most legitimate entrepreneurs state upfront that they never sell or share an e-mail with a third party. This type of transparency helps build trust with your audience, and positions you as a business that does not need to run scams to attract people for only their e-mail address.
If the content you provide is not suitable for children, you must also be aware of the appropriate warnings that you need to include to warn parents and others.
Even with the focus on issue like privacy, other Internet practices are not diligently governed, and you must police yourself using common ethical standards and practices.
The Internet is global, anyone, anywhere in the world can put up any type of online front page and be in business. The governance for this behavior is not universal, nor recognized by everyone.
The reality is both an opportunity and a trap. If you are doing business with the public, you are subject to certain rules and ethical practices. If you abuse people’s trust, they will find a way to bring down your business. The same forces that allow you to successfully join the global business community in a matter of minutes can end your business just as quickly if you prove to be unworthy of their trust.
The best practice for an aspiring entrepreneur is to be prepared to behave online as if you are facing your customer directly in the face, and not as if you are anonymous and unaccountable for your actions.
Which Online Business should you select?
The criteria for deciding which business idea is best for you to start is another article. In general, you should consider:
- A thoughtful, truthful personal brainstorm on your strengths
- Issues or problems that come up in every day life
- Products or services you would use to make your life better
- Align the above with your education, experience, knowledge and hobbies
When you have your idea, you decide which platform is best for delivering it to the global marketplace. Here are some useful links depending on the type of person you identified with above:
For personalities – Start Video-blogging
For Teaching Others – Start an Online courses
For techy types and gamers – Create an App
For software designers – Create Software as a Service (saas)
Online entrepreneurship is the same as all entrepreneurship. You identify value you can deliver to the global marketplace through a product or service that will solve a problem, or deliver a solution.
Summary of The Quick Start Guide to Online Entrepreneurship:
- As you are getting started, decide if you are moving a traditional physical world business online, or starting with a new economy purely online business like blogging
- If you cannot decide, check out the resources just above this section for how to get started in the new economy areas
- Once you have an idea of what you want to do, decide if you want to have a website or strictly social media presence as the place where your potential community can connect with you. If you have a website or landing page, you can begin immediately to collect e-mail addresses and communicate directly with people who are interested in your product or service. If you only use social media, you can get started right away, but you do not own your audience
- Be aware that just because you are online does not mean you are above the law. You must still recognize laws, regulations and ethical practices when dealing with the public and operating online
Disclosure: links to ConvertKit on my site are affiliate links which means I earn revenue for eligible purchases that helps support this website and other resources for aspiring entrepreneurs.
How to Wake Up Ready
by Case Lane
When you set out to take control of your life, by starting your own business, there are two things you are trying to do at the same time – transform your life to the routine you really want, and start a business.
These ambitious plans and activities should not be taken lightly. To accomplish this major rewiring of your attitudes and your actions, you need to wake up ready to go. Each morning has to be about jumping at the chance to put yourself exactly where you want to be.
But at the same time you’re facing your reality – going to a job you might not like, family demands, financial issues. You need to psyche yourself up for the amazing plan you have to get to lifestyle freedom.
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
Set Your Reason for Getting Up
First and foremost, you want to control your own life – your working life. You want to be your own boss, do work that you really value, and bring your ideas forward into the global marketplace.
To do that, you want to start your own business. You want to become an entrepreneur, be that person who takes the risks, but reaps the reward of doing something unique.
Given that goal, you need your energy, perseverance and courage to make the changes you need to make to be where you want to be. You need to wake up ready.
Value Yourself
You must believe in your personal value, and your contribution to the world because when you do – you wake up with a smile on your face, ready to roll.
When you value yourself, each day is about achieving more, challenging yourself and embracing opportunity. Your ability to be ready is tied to your own vision of why it’s important for you to be ready.
You have something to offer. An idea for a product or service that the global marketplace wants or needs. And you are willing to take the risk to bring this product forward so that you can help people solve a problem.
Give yourself all these great reasons to wake up in the morning? To jump up and get on with the job. You have a clear purpose. But just as important, you know you are the person who can fulfill that purpose.
Picture Your Entrepreneurial Life
Have a clear idea in your mind of exactly the life you are trying to achieve. Not just in a general sense of a product or service you know you want to deliver. But the entire picture. What does your perfect life dream look like?
Make sure you know your own vision. If you wake up thinking about your plans, you can give yourself the spark to get to work immediately on making the dream a reality. Fall asleep with your goals too. And wake up ready to implement.
Someone once said ‘it doesn’t matter where a girl comes from, as long as she knows where she’s going.’ That’s a great phrase.
Have a Morning Phrase
Give yourself a morning phrase – a summary of your intention. Pick a line like the one above and repeat it. Make sure it’s a phrase that gives you confidence to get things done.
Establish a Morning Routine
Create a consistent morning routine. Hal Elrod’s best-selling book ‘The Miracle Morning‘ is a great place to start. Hal took six commonly known self-reflection activities – reading, mediating, visualization, affirmations, exercise and writing – and developed a process for you to do all six each day with intention. The key to getting the activities done is to get up earlier, and make the routine the first thing you do each day.
TMMers (that’s the community built around the book) recognize that the early start to specifically focus on having a great day – sets up a great day. Not all advice fits every lifestyle, and the six practices can easily be modified or adapted to suit a particular lifestyle.
But the basic concept remains the same. But the key is to give yourself something to do immediately when you wake up.
You may even prefer different activities like – sing a song, cook, check the stock market figures – any consistently done morning activity gives you a reason to get up and start your day.
Know Your Daily Goals
Know the key activities you want to accomplish each day to advance your business. These goals can be set and reset as often as needed, and can be tactical activity in support of larger annual or monthly goals.
You want to give yourself designated activities to do every day. Daily goals include activities you want to be doing consistently.
Also keep a goal to review all goals on a regular basis so you are adjusting to the changing reality of your situation.
Summary for How to Wake Up Ready
You are working on transitioning to the life you really want by becoming an entrepreneur and starting your own business. To wake up ready every day…
- Start by valuing yourself. When you wake up knowing that you are a valuable person with a contribution that must be made, you can instantly put a smile on your face and a spring in your step
- Have a clear idea of the life you are trying to achieve. Go to bed thinking of the world you are building for yourself and others, and wake up each morning with that vision ready to set you up for the day
- Give yourself a morning phrase – what can you tell yourself each morning to keep yourself on track
- Have a morning routine. When you wake up and you instantly have something to do, you prompt yourself to act immediately
- Set and review your goals. If you have daily goals already set, you can look at them the night before, and be ready the next day to execute on exactly what you need to do
Disclosure: Links to books and physical products are affiliate links to Amazon.com. I earn for eligible purchases. There is no additional cost to you.
Offline U: The Education You Get from Not Going to College for Business
by Case Lane
Aspiring entrepreneurs have heard they do not need to go to college to obtain the information they need to run a business. There are other ways to obtain an education. But the ‘other ways’ are not always clearly defined.
The value of post-secondary education has always been in its formality. Not only do you do through a prescribed set of courses that result in a diploma, but also the diploma is recognized because other people understand the process, and the value of the paper.
But given the cost, time and demands of a formal college education, many are opting to move forward with a business and you do not want to use formal education to help you. Aspiring entrepreneurs want to learn in the real world, doing real business activities.
How do you succeed without the college formula?
Neither business school nor college is necessary to become an entrepreneur. Many successful entrepreneurs did not go to college, and few (as a percentage of all entrepreneurs) come out of the B-schools.
But both business school and college are also considered outstanding opportunities. College is still the ticket to higher wages, professional careers and advancing in life.
The challenge is to determine which path fits for each individual situation.
Go ‘Offline’
An aspiring entrepreneur can obtain an education, learn the facts and concepts necessary for business outside of the formal college campus. A self-disciplined person can pursue an ‘offline ‘course of study that will help achieve the success they’ve been looking for.
And self-discipline can be imposed if the person has some idea about what to do to achieve similar results to the formal college student.
This approach is Offline U because many courses of study are presented online, and are still formal methods of learning.
Offline U means turning away from all structured education to learn through direct action, observation and doing.
Image by Sebastian Šoška from Pixabay
You get the information you need from available sources, usually for free. Following this path, you have to remember the information is not going to be presented in any particular order or context like in business school. You are not going to be able to segregate the marketing information from the finance information. You are going to require your own system for doing that.
So to start, you decide how you are going to organize the information you receive.
If you already have a business idea, the ‘offline’ course of study can be even more productive because questions and information gathering can take place within the context of turning your idea into a business. The research becomes directly practical.
If you don’t have a business idea, you can use one that already exists to practice how to frame your ‘offline’ studies around a specific product or service.
Once the organizational infrastructure has been set-up for your offline education, you can implement the following practices to give yourself an Offline education that advances your business opportunities:
Read books and articles about successful entrepreneurs
The information you need about how entrepreneurs built their businesses is readily available in thousands of magazine articles and hundreds of books. The blueprints are spelled out in black and white.
If Sir Richard Branson were your best friend, you would read all his books to have the answers about how he built his business, not ask him to explain the story (or else he would know you had never read his books).
Reading the entrepreneur’s story allows you to understand the background how the enterprise was built.
Reading entrepreneurs’ stories also reveals one obvious and timeless fact – the most successful entrepreneurs did the work. They worked night and day on their business enterprise, and reaped the reward. It’s as simple, and as difficult, as that.
Interview someone who is doing what you want to do
If you know anyone near you who is a successful entrepreneur, ask for an interview. For the cost of coffee or a lunch, you may get information that is never taught in school.
To get the interview, honestly make the request from the perspective of a niche demographic that is either unique or aligned with the person’s causes or ideas. Even if you are a working professional, if you belong to any type of club or organization find a connection with the person you want to interview.
You can also interview on behalf of the organization perhaps as a profile for their newsletter. But make sure the request is legitimate.
Research the information other people are saying
Today you can find a lot of material about entrepreneurs and businesses, including interviews, documentaries and profiles that reveal more about how the business is run than you may have calculated.
Do a search for these resources, both positive and negative. Give yourself time each day to spend an extra hour or two with stories that give you ideas. Take notes, and then go back and review your notes, and put them in the context of your own business idea.
Meet like-minded people
Take a look at the meet-ups for entrepreneurs in your city or events that involve entrepreneurs. If you’re shy, approach different people with the same prepared set of questions. For example, ask:
‘I’m curious, how’d you get started as an entrepreneur?’
‘What do you wish you knew from the beginning?’
‘What do you think was the one key to growing your business?’
People love to talk about themselves, especially if they have a willing, eager audience. While stroking an ego, you can give yourself an entrepreneurship 101 lesson.
Go to work for an entrepreneur or organization you admire
If you want work that is meaningful, but are not quite ready with your own business, you can check the job openings at companies you admire, or with organizations you are interested in exploring.
One caution, going to work for any company may not be as glamorous as you could hope, and you may never meet the founding entrepreneur. In fact, the experience may even be a turn-off. But you will learn.
All experience – work, education, going to the store – could teach you something you did not already know which could help you in your business.
If there is a business run by someone you admire, and you think they could use someone like you, there’s no harm in applying, and earning money instead of spending it to get the information you believe you can use in your own business.
Attend conferences
Conferences will cost you some money, but the events are rapid-fire learning experiences. Pick the conference that focuses on your business idea or industry, and use the opportunity to not only learn about the industry, but also to meet other people working in the same field.
You might even find the connections that will feed back into interviews, meetings or employment opportunities that lead you exactly where you want to go.
In summary, to get an ‘offline’ business education outside of formal college or B-school:
- Read books and articles about successful entrepreneurs, and learn how businesses are built
- Interview someone who is doing what you want to do, and ask them about getting started and growing a business
- Research the information other people have about successful entrepreneurs including through interviews, analysis, documentaries and articles, that present both positive and negative views.
- Meet like-minded people at your local meet-ups or entrepreneurial events
- Go to work for an entrepreneur or organization you admire
- Attend conferences
Disclosure: links to books and physical products are Amazon affiliate links. I earn for eligible purchases at no additional cost to you.
Stay One Step Ahead of the Robots
by Case Lane
The rise of technology into every area of our lives has frightened many people into believing the unchecked advances will eventually overwhelm us. Humans will fight the machines…and lose.
But when humans face a new fear – diseases, rodents, other humans – the response has usually been to…fight. Throughout history, humans have challenged attackers head on. The survival instinct has made fighting part of human DNA.
The Rise of Robots
Now comes the rise of robots. Or more specifically the advent of robotic and artificial intelligence products and services that can replace the work currently being done by humans. The fear is that these technological marvels will render humans useless.
People with no work lose their self-confidence and dignity. They turn to substance abuse, violence and other harms to express their frustration. A world where humans believe they have no work is a world no humans would want to live in.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Although many people have been faced with technological change in the workplace, to the point of losing their jobs to technology, the response has been to expect more of the same.
But the response could be…to redefine your value.
The New Hope for Humans
The rise of technology matches the rise of human freedom and independence. Although there are many governments who will use technology to control their population, the difference with advances in the past is that those governments can also have technology used against them.
For the first time, the people have within their ‘brain’ power, the opportunity to override government action with technology solutions of their own. And in so doing to maintain their freedom and independence.
Aspiring entrepreneurs can take advantage of the same opportunity. The rise of a global, high tech future means the every day person has the opportunity to live life on their terms.
This type of freedom has never existed before in history. People were always constrained. In the beginning you were politically free but controlled by your resources, and up to the 20th century your freedom was politically controlled although resources were abundant.
Now the shackles are being thrown off, but a new fear has emerged. The one where you are so free, you are not wanted by anyone, and your value is reduced to nothing by technology that can do everything you can do.
Entrepreneurs Do What the Robots Cannot Do
For an aspiring entrepreneur, this potentially dire fate is actually an open door. Aspiring entrepreneurs can control of their own futures, by starting a business, defining the value you intend to create, and becoming valued for being human with the ability to deliver your product and service in a way only humans can make viable.
Entrepreneurs by definition identify new opportunities. Sometimes the product or service you intend to bring to market already exists in form. If you want to help people learn to paint, or sing or you want to create a new bag or t-shirt. Those products and services exist – but they may not necessarily exist for the audience you intend to target.
For the aspiring entrepreneur, your audience is the one that wants the product or service from you because of the way you design, produce and/or distribute it. You can buy books anywhere, but you buy books on Amazon because they are delivered to your door.
Many companies make computers, but people buy Apple computers because they’re slickly designed.
And when it comes to fashion – t-shirts to haut couture dresses, flip-flops to high heels – the marketplace wants an extraordinary variety of products.
Entrepreneurs fill gaps in the global marketplace. The plan for the robots is to do work that already exists. But not all work can be delivered by robots. Even if you believe that may not be the case someday, the chances that you living right now, will see robots do absolutely every single possible job in the world is probably zero.
Robots also do not do the most human-contact type of work from hair stylists to surgeons. As long as humans want to maintain contact with humans in professions where human thought and interaction are required, the robots will be one step behind.
The Technology Risk to Entrepreneurs
Now obviously there are no guarantees. Science and technology can accelerate at any moment and place your business at a disadvantage. But that has been the prediction throughout history. Sometimes when technology replaces an entrenched product or service, the product makes a comeback, or evolves to fulfill a new need.
Vinyl records now sell for 5 or 10 times the price people used to pay for them because the once ubiquitous item has become a novelty people purchase as a gift or collector’s item.
Other items like the 8-track tape player are not expected to return, ever.
But as an aspiring entrepreneur with one eye on the global marketplace and the other on your niche audience’s demands, you can hedge your own bets about what may or may not work by focusing on fulfilling the need your audience has right now.
The path to controlling your professional life runs through entrepreneurship. By turning yourself into a person who recognizes a gap in the market, you can deliver value to more people who are searching for the same thing.
Because you have to find a product or service that your audience wants or needs, by definition, that product or service does not already exist. And therefore the chance that robots or A.I. can deliver the product or service also does not yet exist.
If you are fulfilling someone else’s vision or working at a company where someone has a specific idea about how the product or service is delivered, you likely have limited flexibility within your job, and perhaps in the not to distant future, no job at all.
Any product or service that exists today is vulnerable to replacement by technology. Robots or A.I. can do many of the activities that humans have always done.
Which job is next for replacement?
At Singapore’s state-of-the-art Changi International Airport, one of the best airports in the world, passengers with time to spare can leave their luggage in traditional baggage storage, or self check-in the baggage at the same time as themselves.
The process involves no humans, only sensors, cameras and prompts provided to you by a screen. An airline ticket counter agent was a position that required training. But the functions were easily automated. The checks and controls gate agents used to provide were covered by cameras. And the rest of the task was left up to the passenger.
As you consider today’s employment field, focus on the positions that have repetitive and mechanical steps. Those are the jobs that can be replaced.
As an aspiring entrepreneur, you create the job for yourself and your team. You are not, at least not immediately, facing the same vulnerability to replacement as existing controlled positions. As long as you maintain your unique approach to the product or service you are delivering, you maintain your distinct advantage over the robots.
The job you create for yourself by becoming an entrepreneur puts you in charge of a future you create.
Cherish the Value of Humans
Your vision is singular. Can robots see the world as we do? Not yet, and probably not ever. Because it’s the essential humanness of ourselves that we put into our business that makes it valuable to other humans.
As long as humans value humans. We will value what humans do. And your opportunity to be your own boss and be part of the global marketplace comes from your ability to put something new and differentiated in to it.
You stay one step ahead of the robots by identifying the value you add to the marketplace, and making that value available to those who want and need your product.
If you are still trying to think of an idea, or you are working on building your business, either way, you are already ahead of the airline counter agents, and those like them whose tasks can be performed by technology.
And if you continue to build on your idea and make your business successful. You are also one step ahead of those who are missing out on the life they really want because they work on someone else’s dreams.
You get to your life dream through globalization and technology. Even if you have been negatively affected by the twin forces of 21st century change, you can use the setback to your advantage, by leveraging the exact same forces that upended you, to make a better world for yourself.
In summary:
Stay One Step Ahead of the Robots:
- Globalization and technology are the twin forces of change that are here to stay
- Many jobs from airline ticket counter agents and beyond will be replaced by technology solutions
- You can hedge your bets against being replaced by robots or A.I., by developing your business idea
- Your business idea is designed by you to bring value to the global marketplace based on gaps and opportunities that you can see need to be filled.
- You develop your idea based on your individual uniqueness and qualities that appeal to your audience
- You create a product or service that is valued for its innovation, production or distribution – and therefore is unique to the vision you have seen
- You stay one step ahead of the robots by creating your own business, providing a product or service that is valued in the global marketplace, and continuing to deliver results for your audience
How Do You Force Yourself to Do What You Really Want to Do
by Case Lane
Aspiring entrepreneurs can learn about entrepreneurship by reading about or listening to successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates or Martha Stewart or Oprah.
But hearing about success sometimes leads to a limiting belief that what those people did is not possible for everyone. There is an idea that the successful are wired differently, and therefore have capabilities that do not apply to the average person. Aspiring entrepreneurs are left wondering, how the successful are able to actually do the work they do.
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Famously Bill Gates spent endless hours tinkering with computers; Martha Stewart obsesses over every tablecloth; Oprah chased the good stories. They all seem to have some sort of special trigger inside them that propels them forward to success down the entrepreneurial path. If that’s true, how does the average aspirant to entrepreneurial wealth and achievement become one of the them?
Is it possible to make yourself…force yourself to become the successful person you’ve always wanted to be?
The Success Words
The chapter headings from Lewis Howes’ book The School of Greatness, read like the step-by-step lines from any familiar success manual. The headings are: create a vision, turn adversity into advantage, cultivate a champion’s mindset, develop hustle, master your body, practice positive habits, build a winning team, live a life of service.
The book emphasizes greatness in general, in how you live your life.
But the challenge for so many is that those success lines and even the tips that come along with it are all great advice that so many people have difficulty implementing. These are the actions and ideas you need to develop if you want to reverse the struggles of your life, or any type of past backwards pace. But understanding that fundamental fact is often only the first step.
Understanding the intention of the advice helps you realize what you need to do. The next, and more complicated step is to determine ‘how’ you are going to fulfill those success goals. And the ‘how’ must be compatible with your personality, your lifestyle and your best efforts.
The step to learn next is to figure out how you do the activities that you know you want to do because you want to achieve greatness by building your entrepreneurial dream.
Here are 4 strategies to help you achieve the ‘how’ for making yourself that person you wish you were…
1. Think about Your Plan all the time
The best way to cultivate your entrepreneurial mindset is to think about your business idea and your plans 24/7/365. Immerse yourself in your own vision of being a successful entrepreneur with a business you own, and control of your lifestyle.
The most successful entrepreneurs think about their business – the opportunity, scope for improvement, operations, the team, all aspects of the enterprises – in all situations. You can do the same with your business idea, and the plan for your business.
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
You become an entrepreneur, by being an entrepreneur. Transforming to your dream life through entrepreneurship is about reinventing yourself, changing who you imagine yourself to be, and doing what you have always wanted to do.
You may feel that constantly thinking and talking about your business will alienate you from your friends or family. But you are on a mission to improve your life. If those around you do not support your actions, they have alienated themselves from you.
Create a vision in your mind of your future as an entrepreneur, and hold to that vision in your present. Think it, operate in it, push it all the time as your singular purpose. At a certain point, you are going to want to be living that vision. You are going to want it as your reality because you have made it possible.
2. Clear Your Space
With the minimalist movement gaining support and adherents the idea of working in a less-cluttered environment has become a trend. But the clean-up is also a proactive way to set yourself up in a success-promoting environment.
You want to operate in an environment without distractions. Sometimes our inability to do the activities we need to do to become successful are a reflection of being around too many things we do not want to do – like cleaning up – that all provide an excuse for not moving forward.
Begin your movement towards being your own champion by clearing away a piece of clutter each day. Pick up the piece of clutter you have been seen in the same place for more than six months and…throw it away.
Top performers work in an environment that focuses on their business. You need the tools and resources you will use to be close at hand, and all other diversions to be tucked away. You are trying to put yourself in the same shoes as the most successful entrepreneurs you know. People who focused on building their business. If you want to be one of those people, you have to focus too.
Any item that is truly meaningful or beneficial to you should be appropriately organized. You may already have shelves, boxes or envelopes where you can put items of value. Everything else can go.
Clearing your space can reduce your sense of overwhelm by giving yourself room to function in the best environment you can create.
3. Look for allies
Setting out to build your own business can be lonely and difficult. You may not have any support among family or friends. You may be afraid to talk about entrepreneurship at work because you think people will think you’re out of your league. And you may be tolling away with trying to create your business idea without any help.
But you can find motivation and support by quietly, and confidently, asking around to find out if anyone is doing, or wants to do, what you want to be doing.
Unless you’re in Silicon Valley, finding people who support the idea of starting their own business may be a quick way to lose friends. But you can carefully begin looking for allies by speaking about your business whenever it’s appropriate. Learn who responds well and who quickly changes the subject. You may be surprised to learn who your allies are.
Say to your spouse, partner, sibling, colleague, friend a statement like: ‘hey, I’m doing some research about the business idea I’ve had for years, would you be interested in the things I learn?’
For every person who replies ‘no way,’ there may be one who says ‘yeah, I’ve always been interested in starting a business, tell me more.’ The idea is to find someone who aligns with you. If that person becomes your accountability buddy that’s even better.
To help you stay on track with your dream, and make your plan a reality, you can make a commitment to someone other than yourself. If you form an alliance with someone, you’re more likely to get things done.
However, if you come from a world where no one at all responds favorably to your low-key approach, you can still form alliances – with virtual mentors. Your virtual mentors are the people whose books, videos, speeches, interviews, courses and shows become part of your life when you are researching how to be successful with your business.
You can listen to hours of someone encouraging you to be strong, stay committed to your dream and so on. This provides you with effectively the background soundtrack to your aspirations. And a chance to be aligned with people who are on your side, even if you’ve never met them before in your life.
4. Plan to Work
Writing down goals you plan to complete is much easier than actually doing the work to see those goals finished. To make the exercise more tangible, write down goals, that are accompanied by specific action.
Step-by-step, hour-by-hour goals are designed to take you exactly where you want to be in an orderly and planned fashion. Instead of a lofty ‘I want to be a millionaire’ goal, write down exactly what you would have to do to become a millionaire. What would you have to do every day?
For example, in my book A Better Plan, I encourage financially challenged readers to calculate exactly how many hours they would have to work, at their current wage to earn one million dollars. If your current wage is $12 an hour, you would need to work eight hours a day for about 83,000 hours or 40 years. Once you have that baseline, you can figure which variables to change to reach your goal faster.
But at the same time, each hour that you’re working is still getting you towards your goal.
A detailed plan for building your business may take you months to write, but the goal is to get started. Think of the plan like the notes for your autobiography, how would you describe the detailed story for anyone who wanted to ask.
The plan becomes your blueprint for how you are going to create the business. Write the story in all its detail. For example if you get a loan for one million dollars, write out how you would go about procuring that loan. Who would help you and why? Write out every word. And take all the time you need on doing it.
You can write a line or two in the morning, or at work. Buy a planner or desk calendar and write on each of the days of the week. Lay out your plan in all its glorious detail.
The point is to give your a roadmap, a point of reference, a vision that you can use to lead yourself exactly where you want to go. And to help you to move forward on achieving your life dream.
These four strategies can help you think clearly about yourself as an entrepreneur. You can force yourself to do what you really want to do – which in our case is transition to lifestyle freedom by becoming an entrepreneur – by making strategic moves towards your goal.
Even if you’re still saying – but how? – think of these four strategies as the activities that help you identify the ‘how.’
If you want to know how to literally force your fingers to start writing, or how to open your mouth to ask a friend if they’re interested in business, you may not be committed to the goal of achieving the life you want through entrepreneurship.
If you are sit on the couch and do not move in any form or direction because you believe your dream will materialize without effort, then neither these strategies or any others will help you.
But if you’re ready to move forward, to take the initial steps, then you are on your way. Improve your life for yourself and take action to achieve your dreams.
To help yourself do what you really want to do:
1. Think about what you want to do all the time
2. Clear the space around you of distractions and diversions
3. Find some allies, either real or virtual, who will support you
4. Plan the work you have to do in specific detail
When you lay out your vision, you find you are compelled to move forward and bring it all into fruition. And before you know it, you will be walking, talking and living as the entrepreneur you have always wanted to be.
Disclosure: links to Amazon.com are affiliate links. I participate in the Amazon Affiliates program and earn for eligible purchases
How to Successfully Take an Online Course
by Case Lane
When researching how to become an entrepreneur, many people watch and listen to the pitches for online courses made by a variety of ‘gurus’ who claim to be able to get you to a million dollars, in ten minutes, doing nothing – if you just pay for their multi-part program.
Course are offered for everything from how to make money on Instagram to how to launch a product. These courses often come from successful millionaires with plenty of testimonials and ideas around – their ‘proven’ system that anyone can emulate.
And there lies the catch. The course program often comes from the creator’s process that led to success.
But how do you know if it will work for you?
Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay
An online course is a shortcut. Instead of trial and error, you follow a step-by-step process that has a proven record of success. But people rarely finish the entire course, or they do finish, but are discouraged by the results. This disconnect can be avoided by understanding a few points about the process.
The Value of Online Courses
Online education in general is growing and critical to the way we function in the 21st century. Learning from successful people who have done the work you wish to do is highly valuable. But most people can only reach those great teachers through an online course.
The course price ranges from free to thousands of dollars, with access from one-time to lifetime, and the time commitment from fifteen minutes, to months. The results are just as varied and unyielding.
Some include plenty of additional materials, some provide access to a private Facebook group, some provide coaching, some keep trying to upsell you additional modules, some are subscription based – and everything in-between.
For an aspiring entrepreneur who wants to use an online program of study to learn how to start a business, the value for money offered by the program is important. This article covers this type of experience and intention, and covers how to evaluate a course, and use it to your advantage.
Courses provide aggregated information and save time in researching blog after blog or watching video after video about a specific subject. Many are set-up around processes you can follow to create and launch a business based on the topic you have chosen.
When it comes to online courses that make a promise for your business – like how to build an audience, sell more product, or grow X times – it is important to consider these four factors when deciding to whether or not to move forward with the course purchase:
1. Listen carefully – Do you understand the context for the promised success?
2. Do the work – Are you prepared to do the course work?
3. Hold the course creator to the promise of the course
4. Measure your ROI – How much will you need to earn to recover the cost of the course?
Audio fans! Prefer to ‘listen’ to the content of this blog. You can check out the podcast of the same name, Episode 48 of The Ready Entrepreneur Podcast is available at Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
Before you start…
Keeping those four points in mind, there are also common ‘technical’ factors you should consider.
Price
If you are taking the course to learn how to start a business, you will have no idea if the course will be worth the money. Until you have seen the course, gone through the work, and applied it to your business, you will not know the benefit.
If you are buying the course because you saw a webinar or online seminar from the course creator – and that material was solid – you can have some confidence that the whole course will be good. At that point, you can consider the money an investment in your education like the $100 grand you spent on college.
Testimonials
Course creator will inevitability use testimonials to encourage you to believe in the value of the course. Go beyond the course creator’s word for feedback on the course. Sometimes this is difficult to find because people with buyers’ remorse are reluctant to confess they spent thousands on a course that turned out to be useless for them. But sometimes you can find the information you’re looking for if you look at forums or Facebook groups where people are posting comments
Time
Once you make the dollar commitment, you must set aside the time to work on the material. If the buy offer is time sensitive, you have to decide quickly if you intend to keep the course. Often there are money-back guarantees, but only if you act within a certain timeframe. So make sure you are ready to work right from the day you buy. More on this below.
1. Listen carefully – Do you understand the context for the promised success?
Many how-to types of courses are based on the course creator’s own experience, which is great. But you have to decide if that experience applies to you. When the course creator is promising success, listen carefully for the context that the creator is telling you about especially when they give background material about how they created the process.
Is the creator an expert in the field based on work or experience?
Has the creator taught others offline, and therefore applied the process in the real world?
Did the creator have a once-in-a-lifetime event like a specific mentor who propelled the business along?
Listen for what they’re not telling you. What part of their background story has been left out? If they seem to have gone from 0 to $1 million overnight, ask about that. Many presentations have Q&A sessions where you can ask about the details.
Take advantage of this time, or send an immediate e-mail to the facilitator or directly to the presenter’s business e-mail. You may be told the the answer is in the course, but you have to decide if the story makes sense to you.
Does the proposed path to success fit the circumstances of your life?
2. Do the work – Are you prepared to do the course work?
Sometimes a course creator will guarantee a refund within a specific time if you can prove you did the work. That is valid. If you’re going to spend the money at least do the work before complaining that the process does not work. Start from the beginning, and work through every module and exercise.
Determine the ‘extras’ you have to do to make the process work. For example, if the course is about how to use Facebook ads that will grow your business – does it include how to write copy, select pictures and create clever headlines? Or will you have to learn that separately or figure out how to outsource the work?
As you’re watching the videos or reading the documents, pay close attention to every step that you have to do. Keep a step-by-step list of exactly which resources you will need, and estimate how long each step might take. If you’re not sure about a step, send them an e-mail and ask for clarification.
For example:
If their example has images – make a note that you will need to look for images related to your product (and that takes time).
If the recommendation is to create an e-mail list, an account will be required, so you will have to sign-up.
If they are showing you software or apps, you might want to take a separate day or two to review all your options before picking the one they show you in the video. Often the course has a discounted offer, but you may not like the features, or it may not be the best option for your business.
Keep track of all these extra steps. Believe me when they tell you it will only take 5 minutes to do a particular step – it never does.
One way to get a good overview is to review every video once just to understand the general intent, and go back and do the work in ‘real time’ with my own business.
If you took solid notes on the ‘extras’ you’ll be prepared, and not overwhelmed by surprises.
3. Hold the course creator to the promise of the content
A good course should absolutely provide you with a support email or process for contacting the creator or course organization. Make sure you follow-up on any questions you have. You can send e-mails every day about the course materials.
Some creators may try and prompt you to their ‘coaching’ offering. But if you are asking questions specifically about the course materials (not your business), you should be able to get direct answers.
Especially ask questions if you followed the process to the letter, and it still did not work for you. Maybe policies have changed, or an application became super expensive, or any other reason that separates their method from your success. Although courses can be upgraded, materials are all created in the past, and can become outdated.
These clarifications are helpful to course creators who should want to know if there are mistakes or outdated material. Also by taking advantage of their support process by pointing out a disconnect between the material and the current marketplace, you might get an extra bit of coaching or assistance included in the price.
4. Measure your ROI – How much will you need to earn to recover the cost of the course?
Make sure you keep track of exactly how much you spend on the course, including any ‘extras,’ and therefore how much you want to get back in the form of increased revenue to your business.
If you’re just starting out and trying to learn as much as possible, you probably won’t have an ROI, but you could be saving money in the future because you are learning shortcuts that will help you in the business.
Keep track of these ‘wins’ to decide if the course is really valuable.
If you have been doing a lot of individual research and decide to do a course – compare the process of reading blogs and watching YouTube videos to having everything in one compact place. There are some courses that provide hints and ideas that do not appear anywhere else.
Courses are a great way to get started, gather a lot of information related to your business, and learn a path for moving forward. But you do not need to believe the promises made by the course creator.
Instead, you can methodically approach the material, and make sure it delivers to your expectations.
If you would like to ‘listen’ to this information. Check out the podcast on this subject, Episode 48 of The Ready Entrepreneur Podcast is available at Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
