Today’s entrepreneur will inevitably be asked at some point where you like to connect on social.
Are you on Facebook? Insta? Do you tweet? Pin? Prefer Linked?
If you are not in to social media, or you prefer not to have your business on social media, you will miss out on potentially thousands, maybe millions, of customers who use social to find all the information they seek.
But you have many options for choosing a preferred social media platform. Some will say follow your audience, others will stay stick with favorite site. Some believe in only being on the biggest. Others like the niches. Some insist you should be everywhere, others believe you must specialize on one.
In all cases, consistent and valuable content helps build a lasting audience that always knows where to find you.
But what is the best path for choosing a social media platform?
And how do you know which social media platform is right for your business?
Whether you love or hate social media, you are going to have to have a position on the platforms for your business. Potential customers will look for you on social, and they will want to engage with you there. You will also have the opportunity to market, promote and share value every day, all day.
So how do you choose?
Understand the platforms
You need to understand what each of the social media platforms are, and what they do. You should also understand the demographics for the dominate audience on each platform.
The basic idea of a social platform is that you establish a profile, post your text or pictures, and people engage with that profile, leaving comments and feedback that other people can see.
Find Your Audience
When marketers say you need to know where your audience is hanging out, you can use either formal or informal approaches to finding this information.
The informal approach is to check out the sites and see who is there. Make sure you set-up a profile and see if you can engage with other participants.
Search topics relevant to your business, and look at the people who are posting and commenting on the subject. Narrow your search as much as possible. If you search #entrepreneur on Instagram, you see tens of millions of posts.
But if you search #womenentrepreneursofsaskatchewan, there are fewer than 100 posts.
As you look at the public profiles or pages of your potential customers, you will be able to learn about their preferences and interests.
The formal search approach involves using paid analysis services.
When you are looking to analyze where the audience is located, you can look at sources like Hootsuite. Every year there are multiple organizations that analyze social media trends and usage. You could spend some time reading these documents, or you could just go to each site and see what’s there.
Although these are great services for information, they present the information in generalities. While the general profile of the audience may be valid, you will not have the specifics about your potential customers who could be anywhere.
Be careful about dismissing a potential audience thread because you read the audience is more likely to be somewhere else. Look at the content on the platform and see for yourself if you think the audience appeals to you.
Go through the platform as a user, search for topics that interest you and see what comes up, and whether it’s easy or difficult to find what you are looking for.
Do you get bored after a few minutes or end up being sucked in for hours? That’s the real test of whether or not the platform works for you – now ask does it work for your ideal customer?
Overview of Each Platform in Alphabetical Order
Despite its increasingly eroding reputation, Facebook is still the social media behemoth. With a couple billion users a day, Facebook is impossible to ignore. But ironically it’s one of the more difficult platforms for building an audience.
You must bring friends to your Facebook page, and hope they will like or follow you, or preferably both. Facebook is the most demanding platform when it comes to proving interaction.
Your potential customer must friend, follow and like you to count in your numbers. That’s three clicks just to be recognizes as operating in your world.
But you have the benefit of using Facebook for long text messages, short messenger messages, images, videos, and links. That kind of complete functionality does not exist on the other sites.
If your business is prepared to spend Facebook also has a robust advertising program that allows you to directly target people who have expressed an interest subjects you define. The scope of their customer analytics is extraordinary, but the frequently changing rules is a challenge for all sides.
Goodreads
Goodreads is included as an example of a subject specific social site. The site is for readers, which means it’s used by authors who have profiles, to answer questions, post reviews and engage in groups.
If you are a writer or writing a book that is linked to your business or other non-fiction in your genre you can engage with readers on the platform. But be careful, Goodreads is a readers site meaning authors are not welcome to promote their books, only to offer value.
You can search for subject social sites and forums discussing issues around your product or service.
The occasionally-defined, and often-repeated rule is to add value first, avoid promoting your product or service unless permitted, and respect the site for its declared purpose, not as a place only for you to find more customers.
For all the photography buffs, Insta is for you. The site is defined by its visual presentation of images and videos. The emphasis on images leaves you with a limited profile and no place to put links inside posts.
Insta is perfect for businesses that use images in promotion like travel and cooking. It has fewer opportunities to direct people off the platform, unless you have a business account, which does have additional features.
In the past, Instagram has been one of the best sites for growing an audience organically because you could use hashtags to connect your content to various topics and ideas, and people would discover you.
However, it seems to be getting harder to be discovered on Insta which limits the options for those who do not have community coming from somewhere else.
Linked In
The site for professionals is all about profiles, networking and adding value.
Linked In is probably the most serious of the sites, with people who have high expectations for the type of contact that should be available. You can add links, videos, and pics, but all should be of the highest quality and interest.
This is probably the hardest site for growing a business and attracting people to developing ideas, but one of the strongest for more established ideas and information people can use in their existing professional lives.
Many are surprised to realize that Pinterest is more of a search engine, than a social site. This is a place where people are looking for specific topics and ideas.
The user’s approach appears to make Pinterest more serious than a typical social site. Pins often lead to blogs, that provide detailed resources, keeping users off the social site. But the functionality also makes Pinterest the most mysterious of the social sites.
You are pinning your ideas, which require extra work to find and create an appealing pin graphic, and then writing the post in the description area. The organization and categorization of your pin is not intuitive. If you decide to become serious about using the site, you should do some research into keyword selection and writing for pins.
But if you are putting together interesting collections on your pin boards, you may be surprised about how you begin to attract new followers.
Snapchat
The site most associated with a younger crowd appears to have lost its original lustre. But it’s all about creativity – pictures and captions – decorated and enhanced for appeal and attraction.
This site is mostly ‘fast,’ and in the moment so if that’s how your business rolls it could be your preference.
Tik Tok
This is one big party. You could have room for your business here, but only if it’s a party.
Whether you are inflamed or not by the messages, you know Twitter is where people make statements sometimes short, sometimes threads, and all range of controversy.
If you want to be quoted, leave your comments on Twitter. You can also just use the site to post announcements about your business.
If you are using Twitter for business, you may not want want to be doing anything that will effect your revenue or turn off your ideal customers. The temptation is there to fill in those 280 characters with a shocking statement. But it’s not always the most ideal way to move forward.
YouTube
If you set up a channel for your videos, you can use the description section in YouTube to provide more detail, and help people find you.
Although YouTube not set up as a social site, it can still be used as one. Viewers can engage with you in comments and you can reply – allowing others to see the discussion.
Next to Facebook, YouTube is the biggest social site. It’s hard to ignore the appeal of video. Even if you are not comfortable on camera, you may still want to consider how the platform may be useful for you.
Summary of Social Media Platform Differences
Here’s a quick glance guide to each platform:
Facebook – short or long posts, images, videos, and links, but you have to get the audience to come to you. There’s an invitation step for friends, and a commitment from followers
Goodreads – readers, readers and more readers and all things books – look for similar sites in your niche
Instagram – images, videos, stories, people can find you through hashtags – but no links and not many long involved posts
Linked In – serious, professional, more thoughtful posts, but also more engaged and possibly more connected
Pinterest – images, text in the descriptions, links, more of a search network, no comments, but people can find you and follow you
Snap Chat – all social all the time, great if you want to be communicating with your audience all the time
TikTok – all performance all the time, if you have creative videos this is where you should be
Twitter – short phrases, witty posts, your quotes and brief comments hashtags, but not much room for serious engagement
You Tube – video with text explanations, a search engine, links in the description, social in the comments
How to Adapt Model Solutions to Your Business
A successful entrepreneur takes the stage, and the crowd sits on the edge of their seat listening intently to their story.
Usually the person has an extraordinary story of rising up from the bottom, hitting hard times, and recovering to go on to earn millions.
As the crowd rises to its collective feet to give a standing ovation, you decide right then and there that the success story you have just heard is also the model you want to follow.
After all, why reinvent the wheel if a successful entrepreneur has already carved a path you can follow.
Image by Thomas Hendele from Pixabay
But when you try and emulate the success, you suddenly realize the idea may not have been as straightforward as it sounded on stage. Many aspiring entrepreneurs sometimes hear the greatest advice they have ever heard, and then ask:
How do you adapt success advice to your own business?
The Plan to Follow a Model
The stories of successful entrepreneurs who created a business from their own idea are often model entrepreneurial journeys. Entrepreneurs are driving forces in the economy, and their perseverance and determination is inspiring.
Following a model someone else has set can be an excellent way to get your business up and running. Several courses offer ‘complete blueprints’ on how to repeat the work already done, and hopefully to achieve the same success. You can also find detailed blogs with guidelines and advice around an established model.
But sometimes the advice is so inspiring you want to just follow what others have done step-by-step. But when you go to do implement as instructed, you realize your business idea and plan do not neatly fit into the model.
Copying verbatim may not work because your circumstances are not exactly the same. You have to figure out how you could do repeat the model’s success – with your own idea.
Where do you start?
Break down Details
Using an origin story you may or may not be familiar with – the creation of Facebook – you can begin to document the details you know, and identify the gaps that are missing.
In general, you probably know that Mark Zuckerberg and his partners built Facebook in their dorm room at Harvard, and released the site to Harvard students, before dropping out, going to Silicon Valley and formally creating the company.
If your business idea is to build a social-sharing website, and you want to follow this model, you would also intend to build on your own until you can attract venture capital funding.
Sketch the existing model
1. Gather all the Details from the Model You Can Find.
Often when a successful entrepreneur tells their story, they do not give you all the details. You might hear about the late nights coding, and the conflicts with partners, but you do not learn the specifics, especially about technical obstacles or marketing.
How did the site get built? How was it promoted? Who was the first person to sign on and why? Did the founder have 1,000 friends who clicked on links the first day?
When you try to emulate someone’s success, and are unsuccessful, you might think there’s something wrong with you – that you are unable to do what the most successful do.
But in fact you may not have all the facts. Before you even try to do what someone else has done, document exactly what you know, and what you don’t know. Make sure you fill in the gaps for information you have not yet heard.
If you do not have a step-by-step guide to how to finish the job, you will have to research other sources to try and figure out what’s missing.
Since you know what the final product looks like, you can spend some time to visualize and reverse engineer the complete process.
Ask questions about the pieces you do not understand.
2. Fill in the Gaps
Where do you find the missing information?
Keep doing research.
Do enough research to figure out what you have to do next. Do not drift in to analysis paralysis, and halt your entire business launch while trying to find out everything you need to know.
You will never know everything you need to know. You will only have enough to get started before you begin trial and error to see exactly what could happen with your business.
If you’re trying to build the next great social network, and you know nothing about technology, start by finding out the basics, like how user interfaces are created. Talk to programmers and coders who understand the process. And designers who can help you make the product user friendly.
If you are not doing something as complicated as building a social network, but you are building a website and want to copy the process of a successful ecommerce company, you will almost certainly need to get started to learn what the market is buying, and how you can deliver for your market niche.
3. Build your community
Often the biggest piece of the entrepreneurial success story that is often left out of the current record is the marketing and promotion that intrigued the first customers.
Understanding how this business reached its market is absolutely critical to your success as an entrepreneur. You could have the best product or service in the world, but if no one knows about it, you will not have a business.
Conversely you could have a decent, not spectacular, product or service, and be wildly successful because the customer base responds well to your offering.
In all cases, you must respond to your own results, not try and directly copy what someone else has done. If your marketing does not work, look at your product or service, market targets and the current environment.
Trying to make the same adjustments your model made may be futile if all other circumstances for your business are completely different.
To learn more about what it takes to match someone else’s model, see my upcoming podcast and blog series where I will break down my attempt to capture the magic of someone else’s 30-day plan.
Summary: How to Follow a Model
1. Make sure you know all the details you can learn about the business you want to model. You won’t find out everything the founders did, but document what you do know so you can decide what you have to do next.
2. Fill in the gaps for the missing information. Continue researching or talk to experts who may be able to give you insight into the actions that you need to take.
3. Build your own community. Focus on your own marketing and promotion. Everything changes, the world around you, the economy, society – what worked for a business at a certain point in time, may not work for you. Make make sure you are prepared to set up your own promotion plan before going forward.
When aspiring entrepreneurs begin investigating the options for starting an online business, the variety of options can be overwhelming. People appear to be making money as bloggers, podcasters, vloggers, teachers, and not to mention the all-encompassing ‘influencer.’
The open question is: How do people actually get set-up and become successful online?
Then there’s the terminology. The word website is ubiquitous, but what about landing page or squeeze page? Email, direct response, digital and targeted marketing? What’s the best approach and best tools for the type of business you want to create?
3 Key Online ‘Presence’ Tools
The most common tools, that you control, for establishing your online space are: your website, landing page and email management.
If you want to understand more about what the online tools look like, and how you can get set-up using them go to: guide.readyentrepreneur.com to get a step-by-step introduction to getting setup on your website, landing page and email management. And there are videos there too.
Reasons for Using a Specific Tool
You can decide which tool to use based on the depth of online presence you want to have.
You do not have to have a website to have an online presence. You can use social media to build your online presence or start a YouTube channel. Or just have an online store through Etsy or WooCommerce. Establishing your content on a third party brand can act as your website, but that decision has its limitations.
Ask yourself: Do you want or need a specific place where you can send your community, or do you want to be hosted on a third party’s platform.
Important Considerations
If you do not have your own space – you are subject to the other platform’s control. You would end up being dependent on Facebook’s latest rules, or design limitations on a template store or similar constraints developed by others.
The consideration around the type of online presence you want is whether or not you want to have control.
You also have to consider how you want to scale. With your own space, you can scale on your own terms.
The question is: Are you a renter or an owner? You can imagine the preferred approach is to own so you can grow and have the flexibility you need.
Landing page or Website?
The terms landing page or squeeze page or lead page or lead magnet, all refer to the same thing. Your landing page is a one page website that provides information about your business, product or service, and usually prompts the viewer to do something like enter an email address to receive a product from you.
Entrepreneurs start with a landing page as a way to collect e-mail addresses or sign-people up for a webinar or another service. This is a great way to start if you want to build your community from the beginning, and manage e-mails from the beginning. It may also be less expensive to have only a landing page instead of a website, and starting with one page helps you get started quickly.
A website is much more in-depth because it has multiple pages, and you can target each page differently. On the Ready Entrepreneur sites there are pages that provide foundational information about finding your confidence, time, money, value, action and lifestyle – the 6 core factors in Ready Entrepreneur.
There are posts for the blog. If you plan to start a blog, you would start with a website, not a landing page.
You can have integrated pages from another site. If you select the courses page on the Ready Entrepreneur website, it takes you to the platform where my courses live, which is Teachable.
And you can collect e-mails and other information.
In general, you have more flexibility to present more ideas with a website. All the functionality of a landing page is with a website, but not vice versa.
Collecting E-Mail Addresses
Whether you start with a website or a landing page, you have to decide if you are going to collect e-mail addresses.
Why do businesses ask for your email?
The top reason is they want to own a record of interested customers for continued marketing. Over time, you want your own community – that you own – by having a list of emails of people who are interested in what you do, and why you do it.
Almost everyone looks at email every day. Even the people who use multiple email addresses to keep the marketing separate from personal or business correspond, still definitely look – because they want to see if there are any new deals or offerings that are interesting. And they know the businesses who have their emails are the businesses they have done business with, and might want to do it again.
An aspiring entrepreneur has to make a decision about collecting emails. Many people may believe it’s an obvious decision, but it’s not as obvious as it sounds. Once you collect a customer’s e-mail you have to protect it, and you should decide what to do with it.
If you decide to start communicating with the people on your list, you want to be able to provide them with continuously interesting information so that they will remember you, and be engaged with your e-mails. If you decide to neglect communicating, and then suddenly start up again, you may surprise people. If they’ve forgotten you, you may receive a quick unsubscribe.
Before you start collecting e-mails, think about what your plan will be for your email list.
Will you have an opening sequence, a series of emails that are scheduled to send you messages in a defined sequence?
If so then you are probably wanting to use an email management system, like ConvertKit, which is what I use (and for which I’m an affiliate). At ConvertKit, Mail Chimp and a few other providers, you can set up your account for free. You begin to pay as you attract more subscribers and scale.
If you are not planning to do elaborate communications, or you do not want to have any upfront costs, you can manage emails in a spreadsheet. However, you have to be careful that your system does not get out of control as your business grows. If you are planning to do a promotional push to get people to sign-up with you, you probably want to get a paid system, and automated, system.
There are many different email management systems that are differentiated on features and price. What you want is ease of us and flexibility. Think about your strategy for emails. Are you going to have different programs with different lists that need to be managed differently? Then you definitely want a system that can help you to do that efficiently.
The considerations are flexibility, growth management and cost.
Summary
When you are starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur, you will know doubt look at online resources and try to decide how to use them.
For each option, tactically think through each option to avoid being lost or wasting time trying to make a decision.
- Decide what kind of online presence you want – your own controlled or hosted on another platform
- Do you want to manage your own image and style without limitation and not be subject to someone else’s rules, or do you want to keep it simple
- If you pick your own space – between a landing page or a website do you want to start big or small
- If you are going to collect emails you have to decide if you want to manually or automatically manage the process
- Manually is potentially more difficult especially as you grow.
- Automatically will grow with you, and provide flexibility to do different approaches with different groups
- Think through your reasons for using a particular tool before you get started.
Disclaimer: Links to Bluehost, Convert Kit and LeadPages are affiliate links which earn for eligible purchases.
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 Entrepreneurial Wealth is Achieved
by Case Lane
Getting rich is part of the entrepreneurial story. Successful entrepreneurs start out focused on the product or service they will bring to the marketplace, but when their idea takes off, they become even more defined for having achieved wealth.
To learn how the wealth emerges, the biographies and autobiographies of successful entrepreneurs form a blueprint for an aspiring entrepreneur to understand the process.
But many people do not take the time to read the books, and remain curious about how an entrepreneur was able to become wealthy.
Image by DarkWorkX from Pixabay
We have a natural curiosity about how people became wealthy. There are many wealthy people who are not entrepreneurs and never were in their whole family line. You can get rich by winning the lottery or inheriting. You might even just buy an expensive piece of art for a bargain price at a flea market. Multiple roads to wealth exist.
But people primarily equate entrepreneurship with getting rich and living the life. People tend to forget about the work part, and only focus on the money and the life of leisure money can buy.
But if you dig deeper into the lives of entrepreneurs, the millionaires and billionaires who highlight all the stories, you might discover a reality about achieving wealth that people seem to be forgetting.
If you investigate a little further, you may realize, the secret to accumulating wealth is, as it has been for millennia: doing the work.
Part of the entrepreneur story is about money, the books and articles are written about the people who get rich. But for the wealth generated by entrepreneurs, the story is simple: Wealth is achieved through work – continuous, dedicated, unwavering work.
Build the Business Over Everything Else
On the road to wealth, you cannot have your cake and eat it too – meaning no birthday parties. When the most successful entrepreneurs tell their stories, they have nothing to say about going to parties, hanging out with friends, gossiping, surfing the Internet, playing video games, or binge-watching videos.
They talk about focusing day and night on their business idea, and bringing it into reality.
The willingness to be singular focused on business separates the wealth creators. You have to be obsessed with your business idea.
For some people, dropping all leisure pursuits sounds frightening, especially if you have already begun a regular life full of birthday parties. The most successful entrepreneurs never seem to have succumbed to the repetitive socializing routine, at least not once they were working on their business.
Change Your Life Routine
But for aspiring entrepreneurs who already have a ‘regular life’ full of social obligations and friendships, switching gears is a daily challenge.
If no one you know is doing what you are doing, and you want to focus on business 24/7, you have to make a choice.
The next time you receive an invitation for a general social function – not a wedding or funeral – but a theme party or drinks or dinner with friends – you have to decide what’s more important to you. Having yet another drink in yet another bar, or bringing your business idea into the global marketplace.
You are already someone who thinks differently from your circle. You are interested in delivering value into the world by helping people solve a problem using the product or service you create. Not everyone thinks like this. Most people do not think about big world problems at all – but you do.
And because you do – you have an opportunity to transform your life by bringing your business into the market. But you have to do the work. No one is going to know about your great idea if you do not develop it. No one is going to see or hear about it if you don’t market and promote it. The entire story is in your hands, and therefore it’s your responsibility.
Wealth is achieved by making the commitment to fulfill a need and then doing it. Once people become consumers, you can manage the market, and the reward that comes from helping them. But they know nothing about you until you’ve done the work to make yourself relevant to them.
The wealth that’s waiting for you is dependent on the effort you put in to obtain it. The question you have to ask yourself is – are you willing to do it?
Summary for How Entrepreneurial Wealth is Achieved
As a rising entrepreneur, you are curious about how wealth is achieved. You see many entrepreneurs who are rich, and you know their products or services, but how did they become the people who delivered those ideas to the market.
- They did the work. It’s that simple and that difficult.
- If you already have a regular life, and have not been tinkering in your garage since you were 10, you have to make an adjustment, which other people may not understand. You have to begin turning down social invitations, stop idle conversations and focus on your business
- Change your day, change how you behave and start operating like an entrepreneur by working on your business in every spare moment
- Change the conversation to business. If people in your life are not interested, you have to make a choice. You are not trying to convince other people that you can be an entrepreneur. You are trying to bring your great product or service to the people who need it.
- Make a commitment to yourself that you will work to success, just like every big-name entrepreneur has done in the past
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.
