The Real Story Behind Making Money Online as a Freelancer
Everything you have learned – in school, on the job, during that afternoon course you used to take, on your own – everything adds up to your skills.
And you probably have skills that others do not have because they do not have your unique perspective or singular approach to getting work done. You can combine the information, abilities and knowledge you have to create a service that others are looking to buy.
And you can do it without being tied to a single employer, schedule or pay scale.
That’s called freelancing.
Freelancing has always been around as an opportunity for people to offer their skills to the highest bidder. The most successful freelancers are those who can build a reputation for delivering value on each and every project they deliver for individual buyers.
And with the Internet, online freelancers have the opportunity to deliver products and services to a worldwide audience of buyers.
If you can identify your transferable skills for online delivery, you can have a career as an online freelancer.
Yes, you can earn an income as an online freelancer.
You have to be able to deliver your services over the Internet. That means delivering digital products, consulting, coding, marketing, or even administrative work which can be outsourced to freelancers, anywhere in the world.
Your own how you charge for services – by project, by the hour, by content – and you deliver on your own schedule.
But you have to be responsible, reliable and communicate well.
And you must consistently complete projects that satisfy your buyers requirements, and lead to excellent reviews.
If that sounds good to you? Read on for the details…
While starting an online business is an extraordinary opportunity for you to establish a foundation for your own professional satisfaction, financial security, and lifestyle freedom, to get started you have to select an online platform that fits your interests, skills and budget.
Starting as an online freelancer allows you to earn income on a per project basis, build a reputation for delivering quality, and maintain your skills.
As freelancer, you are creating for someone else’s business. Either you are creating for an idea they have, or you are asked to come up with a new idea that they will use. Either way, it’s their business, not yours. So as a freelancer, you have to be able to quickly understand the business needs, and quickly move on when the work is done.
An online freelance project may take you less than an hour or could run for several months. You may receive a lot of feedback from the buyer, or none at all. Sometimes the short project can turn into a full-time job offer. You decide how much or how little you want to take on.
With a well-written profile and examples of your work, you can begin to attract business without advertising or promotions. And you can keep growing as long as there are buyers who are looking for what you have to offer.
If your online platform of choice is freelancing, you need to be prepared for the opportunity and challenges.
In this article, I explain the real story behind becoming a freelancer to make money online.
Freelancing Requires Real Online Skills
To earn an online income through freelancing, you must be able to deliver completed products or services over the Internet. And you must actually be able to do the work.
There are several freelancer sites that allow you to post a profile and examples of your work. In exchange for a percentage of your fee, they give you access to thousands of buyers who are looking for skilled help.
Who Should Start as an Online Freelancer?
Probably you.
You might be surprised by the range of products or services that can be offered online. If you are prepared to put time aside to work on projects whenever they’re available, and put other work aside to finish on deadline, you can be working as a freelancer.
Pick a Skill
What types of products or services can be delivered online? Take your pick.
All forms of graphic design, illustrations from book covers to advertisements; computer coding and programming; social media management; editing; consulting; coaching, mentoring, data analysis, videos, podcasts, games, music, writing, research…it’s a long list of opportunity.
Although having knowledge and experience in the work you want to deliver is a plus, you can also just be starting out. But be honest with buyers. Create examples of the work you can do so buyers can make a fair assessment of your capabilities.
If you are not sure where you believe you can add value, go to a freelancer site like Fiverr, look at the listings, especially titles and example work, and see where your knowledge and experience fits.
Select Your Platform
Online freelancer platforms like Fiverr, Upwork or Freelancer, all offer the opportunity to sign-up for free, post your skills, and begin to find work. The value of these sites is that they are magnets for buyers who are looking for specific skills. You give up a portion of your project revenue for access to their buyer’s market and the other functionality they provide on the platform.
Comparing Platforms
Every platform allows you to set up a profile and communicate in the app with potential buyers. They also take a percentage of your price – 10% to 20% depending on the scale.
You might cringe at that fee, and it’s not universally accepted, but just remember it’s a cost of doing business. The platforms are giving you a place to find buyers from all over the world who may be interested in your services, as well as security protections, communication tools, training and community.
The fee does often feel like a burden, but like everything it’s a trade-off.
D-I-Y
As a freelancer, you can also set up your own virtual shingle. You can create a landing page or website that displays your skills, and use social media to drive people to your services.
If you have a specific niche, you can also be an influencer in your field, and leverage your posts and other content to encourage people to hire you for work.
Create Your Profile and Examples
You win business by having an excellent profile and examples of your work that a buyer can use to make a decision.
When a buyer is randomly searching through profiles to find someone to work for them, you want to stand out.
Take the time to write a profile that clearly states your background, the work you are able to deliver, and why you are the best choice for a potential buyer.
And create examples of your work for buyers to view. The more information you can offer, the better your chance at being selected.
Start Cheap
On a freelancer website, you will be trying to grow your reputation by receiving 5-star reviews. Once you have a lot of great reviews, the work will come easier.
So start by offering your work at the lower end of the price scale. Some people are only looking for inexpensive assistance and will hire someone to do normally expensive work on the cheap.
Starting out, you may feel cheated if you spend two hours on a project and only get paid $10 (minus the 20% fee), but if you do 5 projects at that price and get 5 5-star reviews, you can raise your prices to attract the buyers who are looking for well-reviewed freelancers.
You can also offer different types of work at different prices. You can keep a $10 basic package to attract interested buyers, but upsell them to more expensive offerings after they make contact with you.
Building a sustainable freelance income takes time, effort, and a lot of patience.
At first, you might find yourself struggling to land clients. Without a solid portfolio or established reputation, convincing clients to take a chance on you can be challenging. This is why many freelancers offer lower rates or even work for free to build up their portfolio.
While this can help you gain experience and testimonials, it’s important to recognize that it might take a while before you can start charging what you’re truly worth.
Like Waiting in the Farmer’s Market
Being an online freelancer is like being a vendor at the Farmers’ Market. You stand behind your table waiting for the buyers to come to you.
Once you have created your profile and defined the work you can do, you are now waiting for interested buyers to find you. This may take days or weeks depending on the information in your profile.
If you offer unique services or have a really eye-catching profile or examples of your work, you may find the buyers coming to you faster than you thought possible. But you do have to be patient.
When you think about freelancing, the first thing that comes to mind is likely the freedom it offers. No more commutes, no more office politics, and no more rigid schedules. As a freelancer, you have the flexibility to choose your projects, set your rates, and work from wherever you want. Whether you’re sitting on a beach in Bali or in your cozy home office, the choice is yours.
But while the freedom and flexibility of freelancing are undoubtedly appealing, they are only one side of the coin. To succeed as a freelancer, you need to balance these perks with the realities of running your own business.
Or Hustling for Attention
Once you’ve landed your first few clients, the next challenge is consistency. Unlike a traditional job where you receive a regular paycheck, freelancing income can be unpredictable. One month, you might have more work than you can handle, while the next month, your inbox could be eerily quiet.
So you can also take a proactive approach to finding clients and projects. This means constantly marketing yourself, networking, and staying active on freelance platforms.
If you really want to make your online freelance income to replace your regular paycheck, it’s not enough to sit back and wait for clients to come to you—you need to go out and find them.
You can use social media, reach out to physical world buyers, attend networking events, send cold e-mails, become an influencer in your skill area, or ask friends or colleagues for referrals.
Whether waiting online at the market or hustling in public spaces, building a steady stream of clients takes time and effort, but if you can transform some of those new clients into regular buyers, you’ll start to see more consistency in your income.
Completing Projects
When the buyer comes to you, make sure you ask as many questions as you need to get the project completed the way the buyer expects. Some buyers do not know exactly what they need and could be relying on you to provide them with tips and guidance.
When setting up your service, set the parameters. Will you allow revisions? Do you want to speak to the buyer first to clarify questions? What format do they want to have delivered? What is the turnaround time for the work requested?
Look at how other freelancers have set-up their offers and select the best examples that fit your skills.
And always deliver on time. Sometimes things happen, but in the freelancer world, you want to be known as someone who delivers quality work, on time.
If you have to deliver late, tell your buyer and provide a new time frame.
But remember, without the structure of a traditional job, it can be easy to overwork yourself or, conversely, to fall into the trap of procrastination. Successful freelancers know the importance of setting boundaries and sticking to a schedule. This might mean setting specific work hours and taking regular breaks.
Communicate
The best way to work successfully with buyers is to communicate. Before, during and after the project, keep asking clarifying questions as necessary.
Let them know about any expected delays.
Over deliver if appropriate. If you created test examples for your work that may be helpful to them, go ahead and deliver those also. You don’t have to do more than defined in the requirements you agreed to, but a little extra goes a long way to building your reputation for excellence.
Ask for Reviews
The freelancer platforms generally encourage buyers to leave a review, and you can do the same. Be polite and respectful about the ask.
For example: “I’m thrilled you are happy with my work and I hope you would consider leaving me a positive review.”
Remember in a world of random selection, reviews are the name of the game.
Making Money as an Online Freelancer
Earning income online as a freelancer is direct and simple. You do the work, you get paid.
If you are on one of the freelancer platforms, the money is collected at the beginning, and held for a period of time – usually two weeks – after the work is done. Disputes are managed through the application, and there are plenty of rules and ethical practices to support you.
If you are on your own, you can still collect the money upfront, but there is no ‘middleman’ to arbitrate disputes or deal with refunds. When working on your own, make sure you build up a good rapport with your clients, be transparent about your prices and policies, and deliver excellent work on time.
In the digital world, you actually have a record of all your conversations and deliveries, and even your production for the project. This is when you’re happy that everything can be traced. Keep up-to-date quality records and avoid conflicts by documenting everything you do.
The Reward: A Lifestyle of Your Own Design
Despite the challenges, the rewards of freelancing are undeniable. As an online freelancer, you have the power to design a lifestyle that works for you. Whether you’re a night owl who prefers to work late into the evening or a parent who wants to be home with your kids during the day, freelancing allows you to create a work-life balance that suits your needs.
With time, experience, and persistence, online freelancing can become a lucrative and fulfilling career. Some freelancers find themselves earning more than they did in traditional jobs, with the added benefit of flexibility and independence.
Is Online Freelancing Right for You?
But freelancing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s a legitimate career path that requires finding buyers, understanding their requirements, delivering quality work on time, and repeating the same often enough to replace your current income.
So are you prepared to handle the uncertainty of inconsistent income?
Are you disciplined enough to manage your own schedule and workload?
Do you have the patience to build a reputation and client base from scratch?
If you can answer “yes” to these questions, then online freelancing may be your platform for earning money online.
You just have to get started.
How to Keep Your Entrepreneurial Dreams Alive
Some of us come from cultures where being a businessperson or entrepreneur may be frowned upon. You might hear phrases like: “Get a Real Job,” “You can’t dream your way to paying the bills,” “Your ideas are just dirty business not helpful.”
Have you heard those types of phrases? In some cultures, if you do not become a doctor or a lawyer, you are a failure. You have responsibilities to ‘do the right thing,’ and you cannot take any risks.
People may go after you about becoming a businessperson because they either fear for you and want to keep you safe from risk OR they are afraid you will surpass them in life and be lost to them forever. Both of these reactions are primal responses to our basic human instinct for survival.
If you become a successful entrepreneur you may become be the richest, and therefore most powerful person among your family and friends. Someone else currently holds this title, and if that person is insulting your entrepreneurial dreams it’s could be because they do not want to give up the crown.
If you are an entrepreneur running your own business, you may also be the only person in your circle with lifestyle freedom. For some around you, your ability to do what you want may be worse than your ability to make more money. When they go off to work every day, fighting traffic and colleagues they cannot stand, you will go into your own domain, maybe a comfortable home office, a coffee shop or the beach. If you have an online business, you may even wear your PJs all day or at least comfortable sweats. You will have no commute, no gasoline expenses, no office gossip, no internal fighting.
Is this your office?
Although no commute and no time wasted at the office water cooler may mean you also work at least four hours a day longer than those who are envying your freedom, but they will not see that. They will only see that you can arrange your own schedule, attend the events your really want to see, and get work done on your terms.
If negative emotions arise, like jealously, anger and conflict, you could be facing someone who simply does not know how to compete with you.
For humans, survival is at the heart of all their reactions. It’s that classic concept: if you and your friend come upon a bear in the woods, you do not have to outrun the bear, you only have to outrun your friend.
It’s a rare person, maybe Mother Theresa type nuns, who is not in some kind of competition with the people around them. Look at social media. The number of “likes” and “followers” you have is your way of showing people your value in the world. People love to tell you how many people are following, implying behind, them. If their number is higher than yours, you are subtly reminded the bear will stop to devour you.
But if you are running your own business, focused on your value and the product or service idea you plan to deliver to the world, you can ignore social media and all the other distractions designed to make you feel like you should put your dreams in check.
“Likes” and “follows,” are not the most important metric when you are your own CEO. You are going to be looking at growing an audience, earning revenue, and investing for your own benefit.
You will be operating on a stage those around you cannot even see. You will be out there, hustling, with like-minded people in your own separate world. And you’ll be loving it because you have business ideas in your head and have always wanted to be an independent operator.
You will put in the time every day knowing every drop of sweat is coming right back to you in direct compensation you control. Those around you may be facing struggles at work, you will not have those concerns. If the business is facing hard times, you will know about it. If it’s thriving, you’ll be planning how to reinvest your money. Your entire picture defining entrepreneurial success will be written on your terms.
Keep your entrepreneurial dreams alive by remembering these factors:
- Those around you who are against your plans are activating their own survival mechanism, which essentially says they need to hang on to you to keep you at their level. Understand where they are coming from, but do not let them win. For the ones who say they do not want you to get hurt in the entrepreneurial arena, tell them that will be impossible. Everything that happens as you are working on setting up your business will be part of your learning. If the first business does not work out, you take the lessons learned and move on to the next one.
- Do not linger on your decision and give naysayers a chance to say “I told you so.” Keep moving forward. People will tell you most businesses fail – but what about most entrepreneurs. Do you know the term “serial entrepreneur?” Those are the people who keep setting up businesses until they find one that works.
- For the people who say you should not move forward with your entrepreneurial dreams because they are afraid of losing their own place in your world, you can say good-bye. There is not enough time in life to fight with people who do not support your hopes, dreams and plans for your life.
You could be an entrepreneurial success if you keep pursuing your goals.
Everything you are doing as an entrepreneur is to have a better life. Whether to gain control of your work schedule so you can spend more time with your friends or family, or to earn more money so you can build financial security. All of these activities are about improvement.
People who do not support your plans to have a better life do not deserve to be in your life unless they are willing to grow with you. If they are afraid for their futures, you might want to encourage them to start a business too, and be part of the solution, not the problem.
In a world where everyone should lead, follow or get-out-of -the-way, those who choose neither and become obstructionists have cost society a fortune. They have slowed down progress that could have helped people, in the name only of protecting their own status quo. I’m not talking about governments and kings here, only your siblings, colleagues, friends, teachers, or the guy next door who can’t wait to tell you: “you will never make it in business.”
Those people are not your people.
You keep your entrepreneurial dream alive, by first recognizing why others are trying to slow you down. Separate the naysayers into two groups. Those who love you and want to protect you from risk can be educated about the value of entrepreneurship.
Those who are acting on their evolutionary instinct to be king of the jungle can be removed from your life.
This may be a tough call. But it’s a lot tougher to live a life you do not want to live, and die disappointed you did not even try to fulfill your dreams.
Be Born With Confidence
You know those people you see who speak freely to strangers, laugh without inhibition, and take on every room as if they own it – all those people have is more confidence than you. And their confidence, if they’re entrepreneurs, leads them to establish businesses, make connections, and reset their life to be the living vision of their dreams.
Were those people born with confidence or did they learn to develop their self-assurance?
Do you want to wake up every morning feeling exhilarated, excited and ready to work on your dreams and goals for the future?
How can you be born with confidence if you wake-up every morning feeling afraid?
What can you do to change the way you feel?
You can overlay the feelings you have on inadequacy or intimidation by creating the impression you were born with confidence by: understanding your personal value, knowing your goal, practicing excellence and thinking as a business leader.
These are activities you do on you own. You do not need anyone to validate your behavior or give you permission to be you. You begin immediately to implement the steps necessary to wake up as a confident person. As an aspiring entrepreneur, if you are thinking you cannot start a business only because you are feeling you do not have the ability or courage to go out on your own – quickly change your mindset.
This is a common feeling, but you have to overcome it if you want to use entrepreneurship to achieve your lifestyle dream.
You can be born with confidence if you evolve the way you think, act, and do to reflect confidence. Once you understand your personal value, know your goals, practice excellence and think like a CEO, you will transform your mental limitations into the boundless opportunity to move forward.
Understand Your Personal Value
Do you have the answer to the question: why do humans exist? As far as I know, there are no perfect answers to this question. Some say we are just existing, others say we are here to make a contribution. Others attribute their existence to the will of a religious deity, for some the reason lies in science. I agree with those who say, you are here for a reason. You do not have to know the reason right now, but you do have to recognize the reason exists.
You are valuable. Few people are taught to recognize and embrace their value. Maybe people told you, you were conceited or self-centered if you tried to define your unique gifts. But people like you who think about business ideas and doing more than the average person are the people who move all of society forward.
Since you have decided you want to be an entrepreneur, you know you want to contribute more. What is the business, product or service you want to establish in the global market? What is the problem you want to solve? Your ability to answer these questions goes a long way into helping you recognize your personal value.
Embrace this fact about yourself.
Know Your Goal
Right now, you may be at the beginning or end of another workday. What was it like? Were you able to be productive and valued in your work environment, or counting the hours until you could get home? Most of you were probably counting the hours.
If you were focused on starting your business, you could have been doing research or even thinking about your business opportunity. The time you have available may be directed towards activities that really interest you. Of course, you cannot use this approach if you work in a company where you have no downtime, but if you have a break, use the opportunity to work on your business idea.
You must know your goal – to leave the 9-to-5 grind and establish your own business. Formulate and embed your goal in your mind. Keep the goal in full view as you pass through your day.
Practice Excellence
There is a story about Apple founder Steve Jobs’ father teaching him to be just as careful when painting the back of the fence, as the front, even though people will not see it. By doing every job with a commitment to quality and excellence, you instill a life-long habit of making sure your work is always the best you can do. This applies to every activity you undertake from making a telephone sales request to writing another tedious report.
As you continue to do your own work with excellence, you will instill a success habit into your capabilities. The quality of your work will likely be noticed, and the compliments will help boost your self-esteem. Even if the quality is not noticed, you will be aware of your own improvements and capabilities. The more you feel good about what you can accomplish, the more the feelings will dominate your mind.
Think as a Business Leader
In any job you may have you could be critically looking at the operations and procedures within your current company and identifying the processes you could use in your own business. You can also think about the operations that do not work well and consider how you would change them to improve the situation.
Think like a CEO at all times. Even if you are not in a decision-making position at work, make decisions (even in your own mind) based on your own analysis and understanding of a situation. Always be thinking as the leader and operator of the business.
This practice will help boost your confidence because you will be able to see where ideas that you had been thinking about were considered and launched. You may miss out on the accolades but next time, you may have the confidence to speak up and implement the new idea first.
The ability to build your confidence comes from within you – not someone else.
Understand your value – be proud of yourself and the contribution you know you can make to the world
Know your goals – You want to be an entrepreneur. You want to start your own business. The activities you do each day should be supporting and defining those goals to help you achieve your dreams faster.
Practice Excellence – This may be difficult but you will start to feel better and better about your abilities and your prospects if you know the work you produce is consistently among the best you can do.
Think like a CEO – Regardless of your job, ask yourself what you would do if you were the boss. Think critically and strategically about the options available to you, and make decisions. Even if you are only making decisions for your own mind , the practice will help you develop the habit of being a leader and a decision-maker.
Being born a person of confidence now means erasing years of unfavorable comments and unsuccessful moments. But knowing your goal is to have confidence means embracing a future of active engagement with your own plans and goals with a positive, successful, winning attitude.
Ultimately the accomplishment of your objectives, starting your own business and achieving the lifestyle freedom you have always wanted will serve to validate your confidence practices and the decision you made to place yourself among those who can walk into any room.
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Ready to make the move to entrepreneurship? Download Life Dream: 7 Universal Steps to Get the Life You Want through Entrepreneurship and begin implementing the changes you need to transition to start your own business and transition to your dream lifestyle.
Disclosure: book links are affiliate links to Amazon.com which when used may result in compensation for Ready Entrepreneur and Case Lane.
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Why the World Wants You to Be an Entrepreneur
If you have always wanted to start your own business, but were afraid to because ‘no one you know is doing it,’ you may be surprised to learn that your instinct to be an entrepreneur is in line with global economic development programs.
Multi-lateral organizations, like the United Nations, that were founded to help create a world of peace and prosperity, include an emphasis on entrepreneurship in their agendas. When you consider that most of the world’s people live in countries that are struggling to create a strong economy, this commitment to entrepreneurship signals that people who want to start a business are on the right track.
Entrepreneurship is recognized as a ticket out of poverty and an opportunity for innovative, creative, hustling people to separate themselves from the pack and focus on self-reliance and personal economic development.
Even though many individual countries prefer to emphasize government control, community commitment and self-sacrifice.
Why does entrepreneurship hold a favored place?
According to the OECD’s report on Youth Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship can “foster job creation, economic growth, poverty alleviation and formalization of the economy. And has the potential to “spur innovation, increase competition and encourage social cohesion by acting as a mechanism for the disadvantaged and socially excluded.”
The United Nations calls for entrepreneurship to “create jobs, drive economic growth and innovation, improve social conditions and address environmental challenges.”
In other words, entrepreneurship has a huge role to play in getting the world in working order.
So where does that leave you? One person with an idea and a dream and maybe even a plan to bring a product or service to the global marketplace that you think will deliver value. The commitment to entrepreneurship leaves you at the absolute forefront of delivering on these great goals. As you begin to start your business, you can think about the broader global goals that you can contribute to just from your own enterprising efforts.
Here’s is an overview of some of the issues and what the policy items may mean to you as an entrepreneur:
Job creation
Entrepreneurship can create a job for, at least, you. Now you may already be in a job, so your ‘side hustle’ ends up creating a second job. If you outsource work to a virtual assistant or use an e-mail service provider or web hosting company, you are creating even more jobs. When you think about getting your business started, think about all the other people who stand to benefit from what you’ve created. You don’t have to create two million jobs like Wal-Mart, one is a great place to start.
Economic growth
When you provide a new product or service to the marketplace, you are adding to the economic pie, not subtracting from it. The economy grows and expands because each new product builds upon the last one. You may think adding something will replace something else so jobs will be lost and growth will stagnate. But that’s not how it works. When you bring in your new product or service, you are filling a gap in the marketplace. Which means you are increasing the value of the market. Sure some products are created that wipe away old ones, goodbye phone booths. But for the most part, new innovations are additive and we all want to keep the pie growing.
Social Conditions
Are you one of the people who is frustrated by your current job in the familiar economy? Do you find your time spent wasted commuting, or attending meetings that do not make any sense? How much would your life improve if you were in charge of your own business? When it comes to improving social conditions, global organizations might be thinking about alleviating poverty for millions, (and you can think about that too), but you are more likely hoping to improve your own lot in life. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You cannot help others to have a better life if you have not managed to create one of your own. So go ahead and focus on improving your world and your immediate world around you before you jump to fixing everyone else.
Innovation and competition
Take a look at all your favorite products. Are there any that were not first invented by entrepreneurs? I once tried to think of an every day popular product that was invented by government, I could not think of one. Maybe a weapon of war, but hardly a product used by all people to have a better life. If you are thinking about a product or service that can provide value to the marketplace, you should go ahead and bring it on. The world needs a variety of ideas and interests to keep moving forward. Our progress comes from people like you who are available to risk, sometimes everything, to make lasting change. Competition helps you get better and better. We should have open markets so you can continuously see all available products and improve your own production and practices. You would not want to watch the Olympics with just one country right? So why would you want to participate in the global economy all alone?
Environmental challenges
You may be thinking that tackling the grand problems of the global environment is outside the scope of an aspiring entrepreneur. Well not necessarily. You can do your small part simply by participating and ensuring your business is part of the solution to building a healthier and cleaner world.
Big, lofty pronouncements on strategic multilateral goals may sound foreign to you. But when you look closely at the ideas that are being expressed, you may find that your own thoughts and plans are in direct alignment with the global agenda.
Over the years, the mandate for organizations like the United Nations has grown (along with the bureaucracies) to deliver a more, universal message around activities countries can do to boost their economy, health and well-being of citizens. One of those initiatives that receives attention is entrepreneurship.
The reason this is interesting is because entrepreneurship is often about individual achievement and financial independence. Yet most countries do not support those specific concepts except when it comes to growing the economy and encouraging innovation, then entrepreneurship becomes a favored goal.
The fact is, most countries know that entrepreneurs are needed to support economic growth and development. Without people who are willing to take risks, come up with ideas for products or services or deliver new products or services, human beings would not progress.
From Edison and Tesla and the commercialization of electricity, to Bezos and the “everything” store, entrepreneurs have led development, not governments.
If you are one of the people ready now to pursue your entrepreneurial dream but lack the confidence to get started, you can find inspiration, assistance and guidance from global government agencies that actively promote the idea of entrepreneurship to build a better world.
Your entrepreneurial dreams are not a weakness or bad idea. The dreams are critical to making the world a better place and improving the economic well-being of all.
Struggling with how to get started: Download my book Life Dream: Seven Universal Moves to Get the Life You Want through Entrepreneurship. (Disclosure: this link is an affiliate link to Amazon.com meaning if you use the link to go to the Amazon website I may receive compensation.)
Jump-Start Yourself
Are you struggling with the idea of starting your own business because you’re afraid it’s too much work?
What kind of work do you think running a business involves? Many people say they want to achieve lifestyle freedom by becoming an entrepreneur running their own business. But fear the road to getting there is filled with endless days and nights of toil. So many believe they do not have the time to dedicate to that kind of work right now. People will say they are already overwhelmed with their job, personal responsibilities and every day life.
Are you one of those people? If you are you have the wrong idea about entrepreneurship.
The road to business success is not about hard work.
A ditch digger works hard, especially in hot temperatures. If you are required to dig a six foot deep, one mile long ditch with a hand-held shovel – that would be hard work. The work gets even harder if you have an overseer, or poor tools (a spoon not a shovel) or a bad attitude (constantly dropping your tool to complain about the job). Under those types of conditions, the work will not be accomplished. The ditch will not be dug. The project is over before it started.
As an entrepreneur who wants to achieve lifestyle freedom by starting your own business – you need to make the work efficient and consistent. Not hard. That is the difference.
Efficient
You can be efficient on your road to lifestyle freedom by: researching the activities you need to do to start your business; making a plan for completing the activities, and implementing the completion of the work with deadlines.
If you show up and you do activities that are actually related to your goals – you will achieve your business dreams. And the work is not hard, because you are finally doing work you love that provides real directly value to you. Even if the individual tasks are annoying, you know that every single ounce of effort you put in is returned directly to you. That fact transforms the work from laborious ditch-digging for someone else to reaching closer and closer to your personal lifestyle objectives.
The key to correctly being efficient is to map out the activities you need to do to start your business and systematically go through all the steps to get it done.
Do not do a traditional business plan. By that we mean the 100-page document about market analysis and management structure and financial planning that many people think is the first step to starting a business. If you find in the lifestory or any great and successful business person the line: ‘first I wrote a business plan,’ please let me know. The traditional business plan is a time-wasting distraction unless you require, absolutely require, the assistance of a third party who demands a business plan. The business plan is for other people.
Planning the business is for you.
That’s the alternative? Start your business. If a third party wants to know what the business is – start the business. The best evidence you can provide about the viability of your business idea is an active, functioning business. If you start the business you prove you can get it done. And you will be further ahead than the 99% of people who claim they want to start a business, but never do.
Consistent
If you took 15 minutes a day, every day, to complete a task you need to do to create your business, you will begin to see the business forming. You can do one task after another for as long as it takes to get your business launched.
You don’t have to do all the activities at once. You don’t have to do them all in a week. But you do have to do them all consistently. Systematically move through your list and let it lead you directly into creating your business. As your business grows, you can outsource activities to third parties to complete. But as a first step you can complete your activities every day until the business is ready to go.
But you have to do the work – efficiently and consistently:
You have to identify the activities
Map out the activities
Implement the activities
Doing the work is about willpower. That’s a tough word. Willpower means the “control exerted to do something.” Think about that – the control exerted.
What are you trying to control? Are you thinking the idea should be the opposite? Shouldn’t you be trying to unleash your inner entrepreneur?
Yes! But to do that you have to control the impulse to do nothing. You are trying to control the impulse to make up excuses, sit and watch videos, have another beer, go to a party (but it’s X’s birthday party…again).
Unfortunately, more often than not, nothing (or the thing you always do) wins.
Willpower is in your mind. You have to fight the thoughts in your mind that are telling you to do nothing. You can overcome these impulses by having a plan you know you can put into place every day to move your business idea forward.
Remind yourself the road you want to take to building your lifestyle dream is not the hard road. The hard road is a horrible life of drudgery doing a job you hate, and taking orders from people you do not like or respect. That’s the hard road.
You would think it would be easy to convince your brain to go along with your business building plans. After all you can envision your better future. That part is easy. You probably envision it all the time. The dream house. The luxury car. The vacations on the most exotic beaches in the world. You know exactly what the dream looks like. If that part is so quick to come to mind. Why is the road to get there a mirage?
You are probably thinking…because it takes work. How much work? Certainly not as much as digging a ditch to nowhere.
Create your business. Set aside the time to do the activities needed to start your business and do it. You do not need any kind of secret super-human powers to accomplish hard work. Don’t try to do everything at once. Identify the activities. Work on a bit each day. You will wake up one morning with your entrepreneurial dream firing on all cylinders as your life reality.
You need to jump-start yourself on the power of your unwavering desire to live your dream lifestyle.
That’s the road you should be walking on right now.
Additional Resources for Wantrepreneurs
Free Training for Rising Entrepreneurs
Get help to start your business plans. Check out this link: free video training series for wantrepreneurs. This training is for those of you who have always wanted to start a business but need to find the confidence, time and money to get started.
Financial Guidance E-book
Facing money challenges? Working and saving is still a real road to wealth. Download this straightforward financial guide: A Better Plan: Spend to Live, Save to Wealth: A Real Life Guide to Building Wealth from Nothing and Living a Life Without Financial Fear.
For Amazon (Kindle): click here
For iBooks (Apple products): click here
For Smashwords (all formats): click here
Want to discuss the content of this blog or other ideas? Send me an email to: contactcase(at)readyentrepreneur(dot)com
Ten Eclipse-Inspired Reminders to Use in Your Business
Just when you may have thought the eclipse was an excuse to have a few hours off, take a second look at how the event in its totality brought home some important reminders for anyone running a business.
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- Humans are curious
On August 21, 2017, millions of people stopped what they were doing to look at the sky. Way back in the day, humans had to experience the eclipse without receiving a weeks long primer from the 24-hour news cycle. This year everyone knew what to do. They purchased the correct solar viewing glasses, found a spot to relax and let their minds be overtaken by the cosmic spectacle.
When building and running your business, remember this curiosity factor. If you do something original, or even the same, create a unique edge to it that will drive interested people to your website or storefront. Looky-loos slowing down on the freeway to gawk at an accident may be annoying when you are trying to get home. But this aspect of human nature can propel you to the top of your industry if you use the behavior correctly.
Action: make the uniqueness of your product or service for your ideal customer
- Shared experiences are emboldening
In an era when the collective is fading fast, and niches are rising up to create riches for those who know how to serve them, a shared experience is a rare and valued moment. While the Super Bowl or World Cup can still drive millions of people to watch the same screen at the same time, few other events have that kind of drawing power. The eclipse pulled people out of their homes to go to parks, science museums, conservatories, and even news station parking lots to watch a rare event together.
Creating a community around your business is one of the fastest ways to increase interest and build your brand. People who enjoy your product or service may band together to discuss or share their experience with it. They may want to be connected to other users in an ongoing way. You can establish and facilitate these groups and effectively maintain your brands’ followers through social media. A few excited, rabid fans will be more valuable for a longer period of time than thousands of indifferent followers on a social media platform.
Action: create a niche community in social media or at your website that serves your customers’ interest in your product or service
- Image sharing is domination
People are becoming increasingly more focused on visual imagery. Photo and video sharing services are rising fast on social media. Everyone with mobile phones in their hands is also carrying a camera. The ability to show an experience to millions at a time provides people with their daily approbation, a sense of belonging and even superiority. While some may lament the ‘drive for likes’ that dominates the average social media user’s day, others can recognize how the activity is part of our human sense of survival of the fittest.
If your product or service can be incorporated into a person’s day, it will likely find its way into social media photos and videos. People will feel compelled to join the sharing if they see you or someone they know doing it first.
Action: if you use social media, incorporate the images of your product or service, preferably in use, into your photo and video feeds.
- Cheap products can be reused
One of the hottest products to purchase in the last few weeks was solar eclipse glasses. In a time where everything is digital and quality means expensive, these pieces of cardboard selling for less than $2 each were specifically designed to prevent retinal damage from the sun’s rays. For such a cheap product, the glasses sounded awfully official, with designations such as ISO and CE certified (whatever that means), and assorted numbers associated to the solar filters. The product sold out everywhere. How could the product be so inexpensive? My guess is overseas sourcing, that is the materials and labor to make them came from inexpensive labor markets.
Solar eclipse glasses were a reminder that physical products have a place and can be made to deliver on their promise. If you are creating a product for your business, imagine how you can source the right combination of materials and scientific and manufacturing guarantees to make it valuable to your average consumer.
Action: when creating a product, look at sourcing for the long-term using the certified inexpensive materials that provide a valuable benefit.
- Destination travel is a party
To be in the direct path of ‘totality’ for the eclipse, millions traveled to a band of cities across the United States. They packed cars and RVs with beer, wine and snacks and set off with family and friends to pick a spot where they could sit for three hours and watch cosmic forces in action. This was a vacation with a purpose and everyone who made the trip needed an array of goods to support their viewing party.
If you have a business that supports travel, especially specific purpose destination travel, you have an opportunity to capitalize on the moment by tying your product or service to the travel reason. Think about how your product or service is essential to the travel reason, and how you can best serve customers who are looking for exactly the value you deliver to make their trip perfect.
Action: determine whether your product or service has a travel angle that can showcase your value to vacationers.
- People want explanations
Preparing to watch the eclipse generated thousands of questions from millions of people. Many still do not believe they received a solid response, especially in the partial eclipse areas where the sky did not go dark. Eclipse Day put organizations such as NASA and the American Astronomical society, as well as all of the new media at the forefront of providing information. Some delivered, many did not.
If you have a product or service built around delivering information to customers, you are in a field already providing value. People are constantly searching for more information about pretty much every thing they can think of. Search drives a huge portion of activity on the Internet, and the aggregation of information is a major factor in business success.
Action: think about the information your business can provide in your industry or field of interest. You may have a built in market of people who are looking for exactly the value you deliver.
- Scheduled events can work
In the on-demand, replay world, people are used to picking up on an event whenever they are ready to experience it. But when an event is scheduled for only a specific time, and there is no replay, people will flock to it for the chance to be a part of it. Despite a post-industrial, digital bent towards loose commitments, a scheduled event can take precedence, if it has the perceived value a person seeks (like a shared experience or a great photo opportunity).
In your business, you may be able to schedule exciting events that make customers drop all other activities to be part of the fun. Whether these are digital moments or ‘pop-ups’ in the physical world, the sense of timing tied to scheduled events is what makes it important in the first place.
Action: develop a must attend event for your customers that cannot be recorded or replayed.
- Lost productivity can strengthen teams
A few economists enjoyed predicting how much money businesses would lose during the eclipse hours. The number was of course in the millions. But what were employees doing while they stared out the window, probably chatting with their colleagues, maybe even introducing themselves to people they did not know. Fretting about losing may prompt you to miss out on what you are gaining, a whole new level of camaraderie in your team.
If your business needed a team boost, the eclipse viewing was an inexpensive (hand out glasses for all) way to leverage a global event for your own benefit. The viewing did not last all day, so anything that needed to be done could have happened at some point. But with those few free hours, you had a chance to change the dynamic of your team, possibly forever.
Action: the next time a collective event threatens to distract your employees, use the opportunity to encourage conversation and interaction with colleagues. A stealth team-building event may have a lot more lasting value than playing building games.
- Science is fun
Accepting the idea of an impending total eclipse of the sun meant you had to believe what the scientists were telling you. Few people have the equipment to measure the rotation of the earth, moon and sun. Most people rise every day expecting the sun to be able to send all its rays to the earth. For the few hours when it cannot, science has your attention.
If you have a business with a science connection, think about the need humans have to embrace science when it affects them directly. A total blackout of the sun hits home with every human and animal (and probably plant) on earth. Your business may not be as dramatic, but if you are selling a product or providing a service that helps people, consider how the science involved may spark additional interest in the value you are seeking to provide.
Action: use science facts to support the value your product or service purports to deliver.
- A reoccurring theme has reoccurring value (welcome back, Bonnie Tyler)
If you are a 80s music fan you probably enjoyed the resurrection of Bonnie Tyler on Eclipse Day. The 80s pop star’s hit song “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” enjoyed a YouTube surge, and she was all over the news seen still performing the song for the occasion. (The song was written by Jim Steinman). Besides the wonderful pop culture optics the news reports provided, the story was a reminder of how a product tied to a reoccurring theme can enjoy multiple rebirths.
If your business or service is not obviously tied to events or practices, like weddings, birthdays and eclipses, try and figure out if you have a theme. You have the ability to re-launch your product over and over again, if you can tie it to another ‘happening’ out in the world. The value of an ever-regenerating product cannot be measured. Each new launch brings new publicity, promotional opportunities and revenue.
Action: find the reoccurring nature of your product or service that can be used to re-launch, boost or promote your business again and again.
Remember…
A successful entrepreneur pays attention to how events in the world may affect a business enterprise. If you were one of the millions in the path of the total eclipse of the sun on Monday August 21, 2017, you may have been caught up in the spectacle and missed the business lessons magnified by the event. Hopefully these ten reminders will help you think about where to place your attention the next time a mass collective event takes place.
Want to discuss the content of this blog or other ideas? Send me an email to: contactcase(at)readyentrepreneur(dot)com
