(I somehow lost my longer post, so this be a little shorter than intended)
Its been a while since I've posted, and for that I apologize. After 5 months of working on my business (in addition to my 9-5 and full time grad school) I have completed my first order (from someone across the country that I have never met before no less)! From building up the structure, building the website, getting products sourced, advertising, building traffic, converting traffic, processing payment, shipping the product, and confirming delivery, the process has been an amazing education and a lot of fun!
I wanted to thank you guys for all the advice, both direct and indirect, and for helping me change my mindset and believe that owning businesses and getting out of the rat race was something that was actually achievable. I thought I would share a few of the lessons I learned along the way -
1. There is a difference between taking action and building momentum
One of the central themes of the advice given on this forum is to "take action." While I completely agree, you have to be careful that your actions are in support of an overall goal. When I first started thinking about creating a business, I would come up with what I thought would be a good business, "take action" by buying a domain name, maybe put some stuff on a website template, and then kinda just sit there and move onto the next idea. It felt good "taking action", but eventually I learned that it wasn't the action itself, but how the action was moving me toward my overall goals which was important. I also realized that without really doing the research and coming up with a business that could be both profitable and something I could be passionate about, taking random action was both a time and money waster. Plus, if you take action without a goal and without thinking it through, you will make a lot of needless and potentially costly mistakes, such as starting a website and collecting payment without a business license in the interest of "skipping steps" and getting customers. I didn't do that, but I did see how easy it could be to do it.
2. In business, there is always more work to do
As I was building the underlying structure of my business, I would often become proud of myself for taking action and checking goals off the list. I would be so proud, in fact, that I wasted a lot of time patting myself on the back! For instance, when I filed the paperwork for the LLC, and got the certificate from the state back, all I could think about was "now I'm a business owner!" After a few weeks of being a "business owner" with no actual business, I kicked myself in the butt and told myself "that sheet of paper doesn't make you a business owner, selling stuff makes you a business owner!" I think it's important to celebrate success in life, but don't celebrate too long! Getting my head around that kind of thinking has allowed me to accomplish more goals in much less time. For instance, when I made my first sale, I whooped and hollered for about 10 seconds, and then thought "ok, what's next? What can I do with this sale - I can get her email, create HTML promotional emails, sign her up for a newsletter, give her a call and thank her for her order, etc."
3. Perfection is death!
You have to find a balance between being satified with your work, and realizing it isn't perfect. If you attempt to achieve perfection, you will never accomplish anything. Certainly, you want to meet minimum quality standards for whatever it is you are doing, but to don't set those standards so high that you never move onto the next task and accomplish you overall goals. You have to realize that you can always go back and edit, tweak, change, improve, etc. For instance, I know that in the descriptions for my 400+ products, there are typos and the descriptions arn't the best. I had to tell myself "you know what, this stuff isn't perfect, but it's good enough. Move on." Had I not done that, I would have never gone live with the site. Now that I have some time, I can go back and edit those descriptions.
4. Fear of both failure and success will disguise itself
Sometimes you will think "I really need to analyze this more closely." Sometimes that might be true, but I'll bet if you are just starting out, it's likely your fear of either failure or sucess telling you "don't do it - I'm scared of the unknown!" Make sure that you are constantly evaluating whether you are afraid of something, or whether you really need to step back and slow down.
5. With power comes responsibility
For those of you trying to escape the 9-5, this is really a hard thing to adjust to. Being in complete control of a business means that while you are certainly in charge and making decisions, all the responsibility for success comes down to you and your motivation. Unlike most regular jobs where if you quit the company will go on without you, if you decide to stop working on your business, it will just sit there like a lazy dog, not doing anything. There is nothing stopping me from just walking away and not putting one more minute into my business, well nothing except for my motivation for success! However, you must balance this responsibilty with the needs of the rest of your life. Don't sacrifice everything, like your health or your realtionships, in an effort to devote all of your time to business-building. Balance motivation to succeed with taking a break, and you will probably accomplish more in a shorter amount of time.
Thanks again for everyone's help - hopefully next time I post I'll be talking about my $1 mil in sales
Its been a while since I've posted, and for that I apologize. After 5 months of working on my business (in addition to my 9-5 and full time grad school) I have completed my first order (from someone across the country that I have never met before no less)! From building up the structure, building the website, getting products sourced, advertising, building traffic, converting traffic, processing payment, shipping the product, and confirming delivery, the process has been an amazing education and a lot of fun!
I wanted to thank you guys for all the advice, both direct and indirect, and for helping me change my mindset and believe that owning businesses and getting out of the rat race was something that was actually achievable. I thought I would share a few of the lessons I learned along the way -
1. There is a difference between taking action and building momentum
One of the central themes of the advice given on this forum is to "take action." While I completely agree, you have to be careful that your actions are in support of an overall goal. When I first started thinking about creating a business, I would come up with what I thought would be a good business, "take action" by buying a domain name, maybe put some stuff on a website template, and then kinda just sit there and move onto the next idea. It felt good "taking action", but eventually I learned that it wasn't the action itself, but how the action was moving me toward my overall goals which was important. I also realized that without really doing the research and coming up with a business that could be both profitable and something I could be passionate about, taking random action was both a time and money waster. Plus, if you take action without a goal and without thinking it through, you will make a lot of needless and potentially costly mistakes, such as starting a website and collecting payment without a business license in the interest of "skipping steps" and getting customers. I didn't do that, but I did see how easy it could be to do it.
2. In business, there is always more work to do
As I was building the underlying structure of my business, I would often become proud of myself for taking action and checking goals off the list. I would be so proud, in fact, that I wasted a lot of time patting myself on the back! For instance, when I filed the paperwork for the LLC, and got the certificate from the state back, all I could think about was "now I'm a business owner!" After a few weeks of being a "business owner" with no actual business, I kicked myself in the butt and told myself "that sheet of paper doesn't make you a business owner, selling stuff makes you a business owner!" I think it's important to celebrate success in life, but don't celebrate too long! Getting my head around that kind of thinking has allowed me to accomplish more goals in much less time. For instance, when I made my first sale, I whooped and hollered for about 10 seconds, and then thought "ok, what's next? What can I do with this sale - I can get her email, create HTML promotional emails, sign her up for a newsletter, give her a call and thank her for her order, etc."
3. Perfection is death!
You have to find a balance between being satified with your work, and realizing it isn't perfect. If you attempt to achieve perfection, you will never accomplish anything. Certainly, you want to meet minimum quality standards for whatever it is you are doing, but to don't set those standards so high that you never move onto the next task and accomplish you overall goals. You have to realize that you can always go back and edit, tweak, change, improve, etc. For instance, I know that in the descriptions for my 400+ products, there are typos and the descriptions arn't the best. I had to tell myself "you know what, this stuff isn't perfect, but it's good enough. Move on." Had I not done that, I would have never gone live with the site. Now that I have some time, I can go back and edit those descriptions.
4. Fear of both failure and success will disguise itself
Sometimes you will think "I really need to analyze this more closely." Sometimes that might be true, but I'll bet if you are just starting out, it's likely your fear of either failure or sucess telling you "don't do it - I'm scared of the unknown!" Make sure that you are constantly evaluating whether you are afraid of something, or whether you really need to step back and slow down.
5. With power comes responsibility
For those of you trying to escape the 9-5, this is really a hard thing to adjust to. Being in complete control of a business means that while you are certainly in charge and making decisions, all the responsibility for success comes down to you and your motivation. Unlike most regular jobs where if you quit the company will go on without you, if you decide to stop working on your business, it will just sit there like a lazy dog, not doing anything. There is nothing stopping me from just walking away and not putting one more minute into my business, well nothing except for my motivation for success! However, you must balance this responsibilty with the needs of the rest of your life. Don't sacrifice everything, like your health or your realtionships, in an effort to devote all of your time to business-building. Balance motivation to succeed with taking a break, and you will probably accomplish more in a shorter amount of time.
Thanks again for everyone's help - hopefully next time I post I'll be talking about my $1 mil in sales
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