One Fire after another and 10 Helpful Tips…

• Written by Michael Bass

I was having a conversation yesterday with someone close to me and we got to talking about business. Now I have always been an entrepreneur at heart and have always wanted to own my own business. I mean I grew up around entrepreneurs. My father is an entrepreneur, My grandfather was an entrepreneur, and I have had many elderly friends who are entrepreneurs.
Then, one day I had an opportunity to have my own business. I purchased a pizza restaurant from an ex-boss who wanted out of it cause he didn’t really care about the restaurant business. I thought to myself, “Hey, I can do that. I worked in a pizza restaurant for years and already know the kitchen quite well.” Well needless to say it went down in flames because I didn’t have the knowledge needed to successfully run a resturant. I wasn’t fully prepared for that business and really had no idea of the inner workings. Any business that you own yourself can be tough and extremely challenging. Believe me when I say owning a restaurant is tough, I Really mean it is Tough and my hat is off to all those people who have owned one. That was one of the worst business experiences I have ever had. I tried everything I could think of to keep it going but it was steadily going under. I was steadily putting out one fire after the next and wound up working in the business and living in the business just to try and keep it above water. But of course I finally had to accept the inevitable and just put it to rest.

I was totally distraught and embarrassed that I failed so badly. But it wasn’t the end of the world for me cause I haven’t given up on finding a business of my own that will succeed. I refuse to give up. Building a business can be very difficult and take some time but if you’re persistent and you truly want the success that it can provide then don’t give in, keep pushing forward. I actually learned a lot about the entrepreneur world with that restaurant and even though I told myself that I would never own another restaurant, I still strive to have my own business. It took me a while to get back up after that failure. I blamed everything that I could for the business failing. The best thing about a failed business is what you learn from it. No business is perfect and every entrepreneur out there has made mistakes and have had businesses that failed. The biggest thing is to not give up. To keep pushing yourself to learn and grow from the experience.

Here are a some tips that can help someone who is looking into starting an online business:

1.) If You Don’t Blog, You Don’t Really Exist Online:

The old days of anonymous business presence on the Internet are over. You must have an identity. The easiest way to establish, maintain, and promote an identity is by having a blog. Blogging has become an important part of online business, much like a domain name: without it, you don’t really exist.

2.) Social Media Really Does Work:

It might be overrated lately but social media really does work. Much slower than it’s perceived or presented, there is a real shift from consuming information to interacting in larger communities. Social media is a place where you really want to be if you want to do business online.

3.) Always Praise Your Success:

I don’t see any reason whatsoever you shouldn’t be proud of what you’ve accomplished. If you’re successful, let the world know. Being shy will not help you here. You may not be the hottest thing to hit the internet, but you still deserve to brag a little bit. You’re acting on a field so crowded with information that even your own identity is difficult to persist, if you don’t actively work at it. Just because your clients know your name that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re perceived as an expert or guru in your niche.

4.) Don’t Be Afraid To Fail:

It’s definitely risky and nobody can guarantee total success. You may fail, so what, being afraid will only amplify those possibilities. Accept that you can fail or succeed and move on. The beauty of the journey will soon make those fears fade away like they never even existed.

5.) Trust Your Intuition:

There are no schools to teach this, so it cannot be learned. Intuition is that instant light shed on a subject only for a split second, just enough for you to think it was there. Things are different in that light. Whenever you see it, trust it.

6.) Build A Community First:

Your product will be useless without a backing community. It might be the next best thing since sliced bread, but if you don’t have a reasonable amount of people vouching for it by using it and promoting it every day, then that product is as good as dead. Building a community first is one of the most awkward things of an online business, when you have to build a positive reaction around your product even before launching it for real. If you have a product that already has a community then your off to a good start.

7.) Always Brand Yourself:

In the online field, more than in any other, personal branding is compulsory. And by that I mean absolutely unavoidable. Your online presence will work while you’re asleep, while you’re on holiday, while you’re working hard on a new secret feature. Maintaining a solid, persistent online presence is the key ingredient to a successful personal branding. Don’t assume people know everything about you, constantly reinforce what YOU want them to know about you.

8.) Always Be Curious About New Stuff:

Don’t assume you know everything. Allow yourself to be curious about stuff that looks interesting or intriguing. Creating good online products is often the result of an unstoppable curiosity about “why is this like this and not the other way around?”. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but that really has nothing to do with your online projects.

9.) Authority Is The New Currency:

I understand that you won’t always be able to monetize some of your projects, despite their obvious success. In this case, what you are getting back in exchange of the broadcasted value is called authority. It’s much more precious than money, because it’s much more solvable than money. You can only buy with money what money can buy, but with authority you can do so much more than buying things.

10.) Money Is A Resource, Not A Goal:

Too often money is seen as a goal. Everybody asks you: “how much money do you make?”. When seeing money as a goal, you have a hard time working with it. When you look at it like a resource for building more value, it becomes much more manageable. It’s a resource, like any other for example: time…, people…, and tools…

Has this article been helpful to you? I would love to hear what you think about it. Leave me a comment below and have a wonderful day. To your success.

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