So this is where the fun stuff starts – how do you set up a home business?
When you’ve been an employee for such a long time, it’s kind of hard to break out of that mindset. You know, turning up at 9, dawdling through the morning, taking a 1 hour (and a bit if you can get away with it) lunch break and then wasting the afternoon in the hope that you’ll get out of their before peak hour hits.
Running your own business is SO much tougher!
I was chatting with my mate Scott who set up software development company in Sydney called Terem Technologies a few months ago and he’s been telling me all about it. Trying to manage your own time, being responsible only to yourself, working LONG days with not much return (at the start anyway…).
Part of me is thinking that I’ve made a mistake.
Maybe it would’ve been easier and safer to just stick out the 9-5 and work my way up the corporate ladder in the hope that I got promoted enough to be comfortable after a while…
And then all I have to do is think back to the funeral and that ‘lucky’ stiff lying in the ground and the motivation comes FLOODING back.
I don’t want to be that guy and if I’m going to avoid it, I’m going to have to bust my arse.
Right. It’s time to start the day. Just after I get my coffee… 🙂
Keep in mind that there is no better alternative right now. Yes, its tough, and yeah, it probably feels like every waking hour of every day is spent working, but imagine how unsuccessful your business would need to be to make running it easy and less time consuming than a 9 to 5.
This is how success begins, most people think it’s all good, but its only good once you get past the part that sucks :).
I know a few people who have successfully quit their job, supported themselves and their family with a business they started, and all of them went through these same stages you are.
First, is regret. It hits you that you’re working so much harder and all the time, and you start to fear you’ve made a terrible mistake. There was good money at that 9 to 5, and long for a predictable schedule and something where you can just go home and stop spending time on it. That’s normal – and it means things are going well. If your business has any future, has stuff that needs to get done, a lot of stuff, then when you’re at the start of it, things are always like this.
Building a business *is always tougher* than a 9 to 5. And after years working on a clock with a start and end of the work day, its not easy to adjust. Even if you fully expected the business to completely consume your life while it is being built (which it will if it hasn’t already), you can’t really prepare for that.
But, its worth it. You haven’t made a mistake. This isn’t the first day of the rest of your life. Starting a business is like caring for a newborn kitten. Newborn kittens can’t produce enough body heat to keep themselves warm, so they will die of hypothermia even if its 30° inside if they spend even a few minutes not being kept warm by your body heat and constant care. You have to feed them every time they are hungry, which will be 30 times a day, all day, and night.
It will take time, but that business will grow and open its eyes and be an older, more independent kitten. It still completely reliant on you and a lot of work, but now you can sleep and things are starting to *ahem* purr along without being as painstakingly labour intensive as a few weeks to months ago.
Kittens are kittens and helpless and totally dependent on you then boom, it’s not even been a year and that kitten has grown into an adult cat and you are reaping all the rewards of cat ownership and all you have to do is feed it and toss its poop out. It even poops in box, thanks to your skilled training and management and care when it was young. It couldn’t be easier.
I’m going to drop this kitten analogy before I start making to many cat puns, but its hard now but it will get a lot better and you’ll laugh at yourself worrying about it being a mistake around the same time you posted it, only next year, 2016. It will eventually require much less work out of you, though you may find you put in more but by choice, simply because its that much more engaging and exciting than 9 to 5 rat races. But you’ll have financial security and a lot more freedom in how you spend your time, and can devote a lot more of it to your family.
Just make sure both you AND them understand that it won’t always be like this, and that one of the main end goals is so spend more time with them, and how it will take some time, but not that much time in the grand scheme of things.
Keep going – the destination is worth it, even if it the hike to get there is a lot harder than you thought it’d be.
Truth is, people are successful when they go into something not totally blind. Like a military leader, going against other armies, you need information, experience, knowledge of the environment. Any military general will tell you going into a fight blindly, will get you killed. You need a serious business plan etc… Not only that man, theirs alot of information of understanding what type of Company to even start? attorney fees, accounting fees? Raising $$$? Legalities if from the public? Well you cant just start! lol… Their is LAW around this, that is very serious. You really need an understanding of where your about to go swim, if theirs a big shark in their eating everyone who jumps in?? C’mon lets not be stupid. All I can say is, I don’t want to sound negative, but your have to get DETAILED, in order to be anywhere near successful. BOTTOM LINE.
I had a few discussions with my colleagues who wanted to create their own companies. “What do you have that others don’t?”, I asked every time. Either they can’t answer, or they answer something like “I’ll ask for a lower price”, but they are unable to explain how would they do the cost savings.
Completely agree. A company needs to have a unique or defendable value proposition that creates a strong narrative for the prospects and clients to understand.