Creating a business with a level of success doesn’t happen overnight. There’s typically a sustained period of hard work where you question what you are doing and your desired results. But how do you get from a business idea to something which can support you financially and offer you a welcome alternative to your current working conditions?
Investing in yourself is imperative to any budding business owner (must resist the use of entrepreneur). Without a level of investment in yourself how do you expect to reach your business goals?
I always wanted to work independently; whether that was as a freelancer or running my own business. I’m fortunate to now do both. To achieve this I placed great emphasis on investment into myself. I had worked in a number of sectors and business environments and had confidence in my own ability.
To achieve my goals of working for myself and running a successful business I needed to invest in myself. I did this across three key pillars; financially, my time and education.
Financial:
Financial investment can be anything from spending money on web hosting right down to a financial investment in a business idea.
To cite my own example. I invested between £10,000 – 15,000 through a combination of savings & interest free credit cards on my educational business idea. Like any financial investment there was an element of risk but the potential reward far outweighed the risk.
My strategy was to buy websites with age, history, traffic and respect (links) from the web community. Day to day throughout my eight years in digital marketing this is what I preached to clients as trust signals for high rankings within search engines. If this strategy doesn’t work for me then how can I genuinely tell clients this is the right route?
The risk was ‘what if the websites drop’ in rankings? This is a plausible risk. It could always happen. At the time I had a stable, well paid job which could pay off the debt if the worst was to indeed happen. At the same time there were hundreds of potential enhancements which could see the websites grow. These are tried and tested strategies which I have implemented day to day for clients with huge success. So was it a risk really?
The websites made a return on my investment in under a year. They have now grown considerably and support my family. Debt free, no outside investment, no outstanding liabilities.
My point is not to apply for 3 credit cards tomorrow and start buying websites furiously (although you could do and it worked for me). More so to believe in yourself and your ability and invest accordingly. If a short term financial investment has the potential to yield you a long term gain then surely it makes sense to do that now. If you don’t believe in your ability to create something then who is going to believe in you?
From my own perspective the risk factor felt high purely due to the financial investment but at the same time most people wouldn’t blink twice about a car loan or extending their mortgage for home improvements. Neither of which are going to make you financially free or yield a short term, life changing return.
It’s incredibly hard to create a business without a significant investment. Whether that’s time, financial, or in most cases both. You and you alone should be looking to invest in yourself.
Education:
Creating a business involves ‘good enough’ knowledge on the nuts and bolts of online. Invoicing, email marketing software, wordpress, hosting are just some of the nuggets of wisdom you may need when starting a business. Investing in your education is super important and one of the best investments you can make.
It may not be a financial investment. You could challenge yourself to learn something business orientated every month. For example: my challenge this month is to take a back to basics ‘sales’ course to completely home in my knowledge on business sales terminology.
It may be that you endeavour to create a freelance consultancy business and take a paid course like the Creative Class by Paul Jarvis. How you define education is really dependant upon you and your overall goals.
Education is not listening to multiple ‘entrepreneur’ podcasts that you get so confused at what business direction to take you take absolutely no action and become a ‘consumer’ of information. Education is investing time on real areas which can improve your knowledge and skills set. Keep learning and prioritise learning. Understand what works and apply it. Education is worthless if there is no application.
I constantly read new blog posts, challenge myself to learn something new and invest time into things I both want to learn and also what could be incredibly important to the long term future of my business. Without education and awareness you become stagnant.
Time:
Perhaps the hardest investment of them all but the most crucial. To invest in yourself you need to invest in time. All businesses need time to flourish; time to get off the ground and become something. Perhaps the most challenging investment of all is allocating time for you to be able to feasibly grow an idea into something which can sustain you financially.
I’ve written before about just getting started and it’s quite commonly a stumbling block for many. They fail to invest the time into something or make throwaway comments like “I’d love to do that but just don’t have the time.”
When I started my business I had a full time job so time was sparse. Trying to battle a home life, social life, full time role, a commute from hell and a side project was tough but I set small targets and aimed to hit them. I would try and aim for at least an hour a day on my side business and grow slowly and have expectations which matched the time investment into the business.
An hour a day for over a year gave me enough growth to be in a position where from January 2016 I was able to take up a part time job which gave me two days a week to work on the business. At the same time I also utilised this time to grow a freelance business as a second business and alternative revenue stream.
The extra day a week (one for freelance) coupled with maintaining the hour a day average enabled me to grow quicker; reducing my part time job to two days a week. The time investment into growing my educational business and freelance business meant from September 2016 I was able to go full time self employed.
This approach is the EXACT opposite to the approach most ‘make money online’ guru’s provide. It’s the opposite to an approach provided by a guy on a beach with a laptop. This is a realistic, measured approach for the individual with a family, commitments, a mortgage, bills.
To build a successful business you need to invest time into what you are trying to create. I’m not talking Gary ‘I don’t see my family’ Vaynerchuk ‘hustle’ bullshit approach but more sustainable, measured time investment which works for you on the short, medium and long term.