Do you work a grueling 9 to 5 job that you hate, waking up daily thinking, “this is not meant to be my life”? Do you dread going to work, hate your manager or boss, hate working under anyone in general, and can’t wait to clock out and go home every day? Are you struggling to get by on your wages and feel underpaid and under-appreciated? Do you long for freedom over your hours, your schedule, your vacations, and your income? Autonomy over your life?
If you’re saying “YES!”, read on. If you have already started a business, sit tight. Do you feel like the black sheep in a flock of robots astoundingly content with working a dead-end job? Do you feel like you’re driving 100mph in the wrong direction the longer you keep working this painful j-o-b and aren’t taking your career into your own hands? Yes? Have you ever thought about running your own business? Have you ever tried it?
Now answer these questions. Were you doing things as a child-like, like selling items to your family members and neighbors or creating a “store” in your room or on the street? Were you dreaming up business ideas and thinking about making money from a young age?
Are you a self-starter, and do you have the drive to accomplish things independently without the need for structure and direction? When you want to achieve something and are left to your own devices to do it, are you motivated, determined, and thrive in total freedom? Do you have a fire that is hellbent on achieving success, living your dreams, and breaking the mold?
Congratulations. You were born to be an entrepreneur.
This is your destiny, your true calling, and how you will manifest your goals and dreams. By building and successfully running, your own business.
Imagine waking up every day excited; you love what you do, have total freedom, choose when you want to work, and decide whether to work 40 or 4 hours a week. You make more money than you have ever dreamed, and your income is constantly increasing. You are your boss, call the shots, and run the joint. Powerful, right? If your mind was running wild with excitement while reading this paragraph, it’s 100% official–you, my friend, have landed on this page for a religious reason.
Whether you haven’t even come up with a business idea yet or have already started a business (and maybe it’s not making enough money or you don’t love the industry you’re in), the answer that is written for you is the same. You were destined for entrepreneurship, and you are on the right path. And reading this article is propelling you forward down that path.
Now let’s play the devil’s advocate.
Say you don’t thrive when left to your own devices; you feel like you need structure and direction and someone to hold you accountable to get tasks done. You don’t enjoy a lot of challenges and would rather be comfortable and stay safe from risk, failure, and rejection.
You don’t think you would have enough determination, and energy, to run your own business, pursue self-education where you need the knowledge, and run with everything on your own as a leader and not a follower. If any of this rings true for you, that’s okay! Not everyone is meant to be an entrepreneur, and many would not find success and wealth down this path.
80% of businesses fail. One might say it was because they didn’t have enough funds, the right business plan, or the right resources. And that may very well have been true, but none of these were the underlying cause. The cause, most of the time, is the person and their mindset. You not only need to be determined, persistent, diligent, resourceful, and committed, but you need to have drive…passion.
And, you need to be creative, a great thinker, and an even better doer. It would be best if you wanted this so much you could feel it in the very fiber of your being. And once you figure out which type of person you are, and you go against what you’re meant to do, your life feels wrong, like you’re on the wrong airplane holding someone else’s boarding pass.
Now that you know what you’re meant to do, how do you do it?
1. The first step is the idea.
If you’re beginning your entrepreneurial journey today, your first step is developing your business idea. All you need to do is pull out a pen and paper and write down all your current thoughts. Next, draw two columns; list your passions, hobbies, and things you love doing in one column. In the second column, write down a list of things you are good at, and the more excellent you are at it, the better. Think of this list in terms of services or products you could sell.
This list may have your business idea staring right at you – if it doesn’t excite you, however, we’ve got a problem. If you start with very little passion for your business, your motivation will die after you start having to work. Compare these two columns and try to find any correlations.
Say you are excellent at cooking, which is one of your hobbies too. Perfect, the online cooking/baking industry is enormous. Consider starting a food blog with a corresponding Youtube channel. Think up a unique angle, something original and specific.
Next, write down ways you could make money with this business. With a website or a blog/vlog, you can monetize it, and the more traffic and fans you gather, the more you can charge for advertising space. Think services you could sell, like online cooking classes/courses, and products, like recipe books and ebooks, etc. Let your inner Entrepreneur run wild!
To stand out, come up with a unique twist or angle on a product or service. I found great examples of this: hotel babysitting services for traveling parents, extreme health-conscious feminine care, and thinking big and outside the box like Airbnb and Uber did.
Are you still struggling to decide what industry you want to be in and what you would find the most success doing? Take the Entrepreneur Quiz, and find out what type of Entrepreneur you should be based on your personality, traits, hobbies, and skills.
2. The second step is the hardest part.
It would help if you took action—a massive, determined effort. And it would help if you did it NOW. Not later, now. Otherwise, you will lose the motivation and the momentum you just started to get going, and it will fizzle out. You’ll tell yourself that you’ll just put it on the back burner for now and revisit it later, maybe when you’re making more money or things are less crazy and less busy…yeah, things are way too busy right now; it’s not a good time, too much going on.
Guess what – your mind is lying to you! These are 100% made-up excuses your mind is generating to keep you in your comfort zone, to avoid risk and potential failure. Your limiting beliefs and self-doubt are trying to trick you into achieving your goals and living your destiny. But if you don’t leap, you will never fly. And if you don’t do it now, you will never do it.
So next, you will need to write up your business plan. And it would help if you built your sales funnel.
3. Build your online presence.
You will need a business name, and you need to get incorporated, build your website, set up your social accounts, etc. And SEO (search engine optimization) is mandatory for every online business to get found online, rank in Google, drive traffic to your site, build an online presence, and increase your sales. This must be one of your top priorities in any online business.
I have 11 years of experience in SEO, and I want you to walk away from this article with some actionable tips, so I’ll share with you the most important on-page factor in your SEO – optimizing your title tags. This one task alone can have a massive impact on your Google rankings.
What are you waiting for?
Get out there and take action. Once you have got momentum, there is no stopping you. You were born for this. It has been written in the stars, and it is your destiny – creating and building a life for yourself, run by YOU and only you. They are doing what you love and sharing it with the world. Basking in personal and financial freedom, independence, and most importantly, walking the path you were meant to walk.
