Entrepreneur
There are many very good reasons to become an entrepreneur and creating your own wealth and income source from systems or businesses that you set up and run.
Starting and running your own business, being the boss of your own life, must surely be one of the most common daydreams of many that are stuck in a boring or dead-end job they hate.
It's a rare employee who has nothing bad to say about their day job. At the root of many employees' complaints is a sense of powerlessness.learn
Ultimately, when you are an employee, your livelihood is at the mercy of somebody else. It's not you that gets to have the final word on important decisions.
Why Being an Entrepreneur is Attractive
So why do so many people aspire to become their own boss and start a venture but fail to follow through?
The hard truth is simply this: being an employee means that you will always be at the mercy of someone or other regardless of your desire to take control of your own destiny.
However, when you are able to break free of the easy choice of allowing someone else to dictate your destiny in life and become your own boss and run your own business, a vast network of opportunities present themselves to you.
You literally get to take the reins and steer your own course through life and dictate your own changing fortunes, in most cases by your own rules and your own choices.
There is much envy among employees directed at anyone that has the courage to leave the apparent security and herd mentality of employment to be successful at running their own business. To be honest, that envy is well placed, since it means that certain someone is no longer controlled by a boss and has their income potential capped by what that boss is prepared to pay them, but instead is free to earn whatever their abilities will allow them to with no ceiling.
What's more, the entrepreneur when enjoying growing success gets to work fewer and fewer hours because they can delegate much of the work to someone else, who is of course an employee of their own. This represents greater time freedom as well as financial freedom, both of which are extremely valuable assets that the vast majority of employees can never experience.
Why Entrepreneurship is Scary
Take the simple example of the man or woman who plans to open a very small seasonal store selling just, for example, flip flops for the summer crowd who descend each year on their local coastal town. Surely a simple business plan that's easy to execute with a guaranteed clientele year on year?
However, there are some vital questions you will need to ask and have answered before you should get started and invest your time and money in such a venture.
For instance, do you have any experience buying wholesale flip flops?
No?
Get ready to not only learn and discover a whole new set of business skills but also come to terms with the fact that these suppliers just became your new boss. Their terms and conditions, and the price at which they're willing to sell, will now dictate the success of your business.
Furthermore you had better choose a reliable firm who delivers on time or your seasonal business could fail before it's begun.
And what about your customers, they're your new boss too. Shoppers have no loyalty to your little store, many of them will only ever visit your store once and if you're not stocking the latest brand of flip flop that they're specifically looking for, they're off and away.
They will probably wander around the corner to your competitor who will no doubt under cut you and drive you crazier than any ordinary boss ever did. I haven't even broached the subject of the rules and regulations that the government will impose on your business.
Understand this before you take your first steps in entrepreneurship, there's always somebody telling you what to do or imposing their will on your dreams. Of course running your own business can be incredibly liberating if you are going to crazy in some dead end nine to five job, but don't imagine for a moment that it's an easy option.
What I Love About Being an Entrepreneur
I have been an entrepreneur since childhood. One of the things that I love the most about being an entrepreneur is the ability to solve people's problems and answer people's questions.
Being able to provide someone with a solution to their problem brings me great satisfaction and is one of the best parts of my "job." I use the term "job" loosely, because you know how the saying goes:
"If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life."
One of my current entrepreneurial focuses is creating websites in a variety of niches. I don't create junk websites that exist only for making money.
I make real, usable websites that help people solve problems and answer questions. Some of the questions I have been able to solve with my websites include:
- How can I save money on my grocery bill?
- What's the best strategy when day trading gold?
- What career options do I have a social worker?
As you can see, I have been able to help people find answers to a variety of questions. It's something I wasn't able to do when I was working a regular day job, and I feel grateful every day that I have had this opportunity to work for myself.
The Attractiveness of Entrepreneurship
The barriers for digital marketing are much, much lower than a traditional physical business. There are some costs, but the investments don't really compare with the costs of setting up shops or premises.
You will need to invest in advertising in your target market, perhaps develop a custom site/or language variant of your website. You'll be well advised to do some research on competition and opportunities.
Many marketers invest in proxies or VPNs in the specific market. So for instance if you wanted to promote your European product in the US, one of the first steps would be to invest in a subscription to an American proxy server. This sounds like a luxury but it is an essential first step, it allows you to surf like a user in your target market and also allows you access to specific local advertising portals.
Investment in Your Business
But that's hardly a huge investment at least in monetary terms, although it can take a lot of time to properly research a market. But of course one of the advantages with a digital business with minimal expansion costs is that to some extent you can "just give it a go."
Often the best market related knowledge will be found by experience. Try sending those first PPC ads and see how it works.
Tailor your product to the specific market, give it a unique selling point and reach out to those new customers.
For example a company I know sell a security product online, but target their product very specifically to each area. Take one of their products which sells in Montreal well, which basically does it what it says in the literature.
Yet it targets a very specific requirement, the market may not be huge but the need is very specific and people will buy.
Further Study Material
So now you know something of how being an entrepreneur works. Feel free to read through the supporting articles for the topic of entrepreneurship that are listed below: