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