Tag Archives: business

So You Want to Start a Business.

mother and daughter working on laptopDo you ever wish you could go back in time and tell yourself something important about the future? If I had the chance to go back about four years here’s what I’d tell myself about starting a business from home:

Dear Me,
This is the best opportunity of your life!

  1. Don’t worry about what others will think because they’re not! If they are and they think you’re nuts or making a fool of yourself know they are merely projecting their own fears. When you succeed (and you will) some of them will come around. Some will even tell you they wish they had the courage to do what you did. You’re doing this for you and your family, not for them.
  2. This is not going to be easy – simple, yes, easy, no. It is going to take work, effort, and you’ll be on a sharp learning curve. You have what it takes. What you don’t know you’ll learn. It’s much, much easier than dropping your kids off at daycare and going to a job. You won’t miss out on all the kids’ firsts.
  3. You don’t know what you don’t know but you’ll learn! There are resources and people with wisdom and expertise willing to help you succeed. Take advantage of as much of it as you can. Read books. Listen to training series. Read white papers. Join webinars and attend seminars. Put what you learn into practice.
  4. Your family will figure it out. There will be adjustments for everyone. As you carve out time away from home to build your business there will be pushback, but you’ll all figure it out. Your spouse and family just want to know that they are more important to you than your business. Keep them first on your priority list. Love on them. Reserve your best time for them and they’ll be more than willing to cheer you on.
  5. Your business is what you do. It’s not who you are! Yes it’s exciting and fulfilling, but you are not the company nor the product you represent. You are you: an individual with roles, responsibilities, dreams, skills, talents, abilities and a heart that beats intensely for the people and things that matter to you.  The business could disappear tomorrow, but you would still remain. Work in such a way that the relationships you build would also remain. Make sure to keep growing as a person.

So go build. Always keep the end in mind. There will be adjustments along the way. It’s not a straight line, but it is an amazing journey. You’ll get to where you want to go. Dream bigger. Start sooner. Enjoy the journey.

Signed,

Me, 4 years later

PS You can’t even begin to imagine how well it will turn out.

It’s the Journey.

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I haven’t blogged in a while (obviously). I felt I didn’t have anything to say. Well that’s not true, I’ve had lots to say I just wasn’t sure I should say it. I wasn’t sure what my voice should be. I know, it’s my blog so my voice is my voice, but what did that mean? I finally decided that I wasn’t going to wait any longer to figure it out. I was just going to figure it out in the process.

Process. Now there’s a word that seems straight forward enough and yet it holds so many challenges. In this day of instant access, instant gratification and instant everything I guess I expected that if I dream something, visualize it, believe it, start out toward it I should arrive at the destination in one or two simple and easy steps. Then I found out there is a process. “Lots of small actions over time create amazing results,” my coach told me today. I don’t know if this statement is originally yours, but it’s a good one Michelle.

Four years ago I became a word-from-home entrepreneur mom. I started because the other option was to put my kiddos in daycare and go back to a “real job” full-time. I would rather do just about anything than put my little ones in daycare so working from home seemed the reasonable choice.  My goal was simply to help make the family budget stretch a little further. No goals of conquering the world, becoming a celebrity or creating immeasurable wealth. Yet one of the gifts I discovered very quickly was that I could dream bigger, wider and a little audaciously if I was willing to work.

I was willing to work. Hard. Just because I was willing to work hard didn’t ensure success. I soon discovered that I didn’t know what I didn’t know and I needed to learn. I needed to figure out how to ride this roller-coaster of business. I needed to know how to break things down into small actions over time.

Thankfully accessing amazing minds in business, social media, sales and so much more is as simple as point and click! If ever there was an age where information was easily accessible it would be now. If ever there was amazing access to great thinkers, leaders and trailblazers it would be today. And yet, with all this access so few people choose to learn from those who know what it takes to succeed. Most choose to listen to their family, friends, coworkers and the guy at the doughnut shop who all say it can’t be done and have proven that they wholeheartedly believe that.

The first part of the process to success is to choose to listen to those who know how to succeed and have the track record to prove it.”What you believe you can achieve.” I don’t know who the quote belongs to (though I know its actual source). In order to believe you can succeed you need to start listening to the voices of those who know how. Once you listen to them you’ll need to do differently, but that’s another post…