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Over the course of my life so far I’ve had many businesses. Some were winners and some were losers. I suppose that sums up in a small way what having your own business can mean. Having your own business means that you are comfortable knowing that on any given day your world can change upside down, that you business can fail and that you can lose it all. If you aren’t prepared for that, then maybe your own business isn’t for you.

So let’s be deadly honest and look at the downside of owning a business. You face:

  • Having an Employee Sue You - For what? You name it, the list is endless.
  • Losing All Your Money - Your idea does not work and you are financially committed to your investment.
  • Work For Less Than Minimum Wage - When you start a business you wind up spending so much time working the business for little money that you employees often make more than you do.
  • Being Sued for Patent or Trademark Infringement - Some idea you had infringes on the patent r trademark of another you did not know about.
  • You Have to Be An Expert - You have to understand customer service, marketing, advertising, be comfortable with selling, etc. Not everyone is.
  • Harming Others - if your product or service fails in some way.
  • Being Sued by Customers - Rather than bring a complaint about your product to you, out of the blue, they take you to court.
  • State, County or Federal Regulators Come Knocking - You run afoul of some regulation somewhere and you get a kind letter or a stern visit from some regulator.

And that’s just the start of the list. Trust me, more out of the way stuff you never expected can happen to you. Here’s an example.

The very first day I took over as the manager of a medical practice I got a visit by two guys with badges. Basically, employment police. It seems a previous employee had made claims of being underpaid or not paid for time off and had filed a complaint with the state. The investigators made a surprise visit, on my first day there, to look into the matter. As I remember, it was cheaper to settle the matter with the investigators than it was to go back and find old time records from storage from years before.

So what are the upsides to having your own business.

  • As much as you can be, you are your own boss. Hell, you always answer to someone else.
  • You get to try to make your ideas work and build what you think you see.
  • You get to be nimble and move on opportunities that others don’t see, yet.
  • You might make more than if you worked for someone else.
  • You get the chance to deliver a product or service that can make lives better.
  • You get to learn new things and be constantly exposed to new information and new opportunities to grow.
  • Like a carpenter you get to build new things out of other things by reshaping them for a new purpose.

What It Takes

To be honest and after observing many other businesses I’ve come to the conclusion that wanting to start your own business, the desire to be your own boss and the goal to be an entrepreneur is a combination of brilliance and stupidity.

  • You must be dumb enough to ignore the advice of others who tell you it won’t work.
  • You have to be crazy enough to risk what assets and money you might have to try.
  • You have to be stupid enough to launch into a business knowing that most fail within the first few years.
  • You have to be brave enough to face all of that uncertainty and still be willing to move ahead.
  • You have to be patient enough to wait for money to return to you. And above all else, you must be prepared to face and deal with the possibility of failure.

A Blog is a Business In Many Ways

Having your own blog is a business in many ways. You are either writing and doing it for yourself and don’t care about a return or you are writing it to seek some sort of reward. That reward might come in the form of money from ads or the sale of some product or service. It might come from the emotional reward of recognition by others. You might get paid with satisfaction of watching your readership grow.

Regardless, a blog is actually an excellent way to put your toes into the entrepreneurial river and test what it is like to have a business without massive financial risk.

Let’s look at the skills that a successful blog seems to have:

  • The ability to identify what the readers (customers) want and deliver it.
  • The ability to package the product right and use a look and feel that the customers like using.
  • The ability to match products and services to customer desires.
  • An innate sense of being able to find the missing niche or information that people seek.
  • The ability to open a storefront, have a presence, that customers can actually find.
  • The ability to practice customer service skills.
  • The ability to see what commitment to a business really means by constantly delivering what your readers want.
  • The ability to create, build and deliver content from smaller building blocks or ideas.
  • The ability to face failure and deal with it when people don’t follow you and our message does not resonate with people.

This Blog is Not Successful, Yet

By almost any commercial means this very blog you are reading is not successful. I don’t have a massive audience (subscribe now), people don’t click on the ads, and there is little interaction among readers in the form of comments (leave a comment). But that’s okay.

As an entrepreneur I am willing to make adjustments, wait for an audience and modify the products and services offered in ads till I can deliver the right combination of all the ingredients that deliver value and people are interested in.

All this blog takes is time, creativity and patience.

There are many excellent platforms out there where you can test your business skills if you are 9 or 90. Blogging tools and platforms are free and starting a blog can be an excellent experiment to see if you can actually deliver a product or service that people want.

And I’m not going to give you a list of those tools because if you are an entrepreneur you will already have the drive and desire to hunt down and find the tools you need to achieve your dream.

Will you get stuck in the paralysis of analysis or actually be able to invest the time and energy into creating a successful blog? Only time will tell.

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Steve

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