Eggs are $15 a dozen in some places, the stock market is burning as it plummets and economists are calling for another depression and I’m over here telling you to start a business.
What?!
Ok let’s back this baby up a little bit, I’m not telling EVERYONE to start a business, I’m telling people in these 2 situations to start a business.
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You have a stable income that already provides for your expenses
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You are unemployed but have a savings that will maintain your current expenses for at least a year
Do NOT start a business if you are unable to afford food, clothing or housing. If you are struggling to stay afloat, handle that first. Do not under any circumstances use your living expenses to pay for business expenses. Your stability is the most important thing right now. There are resources on my blog that will lead you to a paying job. Feel free to check them out.
Now, if you’re in one of the 2 camps mentioned, bear with me, there is a method to this madness.
Everyone is going broke, we are all going through this mess together. You’re not special because you can’t afford to or refuse to buy eggs. Maybe you are starting your own garden, or trying to be frugal to save money. So is everyone else. This is a necessary trend right now.
That doesn’t mean however that you should throw in the towel on starting your own thing. Remember first and foremost, building a business takes time and patience. “If you build it they will come” is a lie. You need to build it and market the hell out of it before anyone will come.
In the next post, we are going to go over actionable steps on how to build a business putting in 10 hours a week. But for now, we are going to focus on why starting now is going to help you down the road.
So, if you’re anything like me, you’re in your late 40’s to mid 50’s and you’re absolutely dreading the idea of retirement because the thought of how you’re going to eat and pay rent is keeping you up at night.
Personally, I look at my mother and where I do not want to be in 20 years. My mom is a good person, so no, not like that. But she had a heart attack and was forced to retire. Her partner, who was also forced to retire early, a few years after she was, for health reasons. Today, they are struggling. They don’t own anything. No car or house, they rent a small apartment and are broke before they even get their next social security checks. They can barely afford food. Looking at the state of things in America, it’s uncertain if they will have any of those benefits in the coming months.
And before anyone hands me this bs about being deserving of it, both of these people worked their entire adult lives, sometimes more than one job. Just because they aren’t financially set the rest of their lives doesn’t mean they are worthless. Just stop it with that stupid mentality, people are not commodities and if you’re judging them with dollar signs you are morally flawed.
Anyway,
This is not the future I want. That my friends, is really motivating for me to step out of my comfort zone. That’s why I’m working my ass off to build my business now. So when I can’t work anymore, I won’t be worried about choosing between morning coffee or toilet paper.
What is your motivation? What is your why? Keep this in the back of your head as we go through this list or better yet, write it down. Keep it with you at all times and look at it as often as you need to, until it sinks in.
Before we get into the meat, I want to remind you I am here as a guide. I’m not a guru nor am I the writer of your book. It is ultimately up to you how to live your life and anything I or anyone else says is just a suggestion. Take or leave it at your discretion.
As I mentioned earlier, times are tough. Consumer confidence is down
US Consumer Confidence Dropped Sharply in February people are spending less, saving more, and the fear is very real. It’s not the time to capitalize, but it is the time to strategize and start building.
If you’ve ever tried to start a business before, you know there is a massive amount of things to do before you even launch. Depending on the business, there may be more or less steps involved, but there are a few things you need to have in place right away.
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Business plan. This should be written out and fully thought through with plenty of research done to back up your ideas, including the w questions a Who, what, where, when, why, and how respectively. You should take time creating this and never skip this step. This should not be a one and done either. It should be flexible enough to change course depending on goals and facts but rigid enough that you have something to follow.
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SMART Goals. If you’re not familiar with SMART it stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. I plan on making a separate post on this, and will make sure to put a link in the description of the YouTube video if you’re reading this later down the road. But in a nutshell, it is marketing 101. The idea is that you set small goals that you can see results from in a short amount of time. I recommend a quarterly review or every 3 months so you can see what tactics are working and what are not. You want small achievable goals here, like for me it would say something like I will have 50 subscribers and throw a pizza party on live. How I will do that is by creating valuable content for my blog readers and viewers. How will I measure that? It would be to record my subscriber counts once per week to get an accurate measurement of my growth in the 3 months. This goal is relevant because I am dying to have a live stream pizza party!
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Website, Social Media, and other digital tools need to be set up. Depending on the business type and your skill levels in these areas, this can take some time and should definitely go on your SMART Goal chart. You may even consider outsourcing to someone who is able to do the jobs you don’t know how to or aren’t good at, or if you’re like me on a shoe-string budget, spend a lot of time learning new skills.
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Speaking of a budget, make one! Do not go into anything blindly. You are going to need a budget for outsourcing if you go that route, a budget for marketing, a budget for tools and supplies if you’re selling a physical product, and a budget for digital tools. While there are free resources, you are going to have to pay for some things. For instance, website hosting. It’s not free. Namecheap is super cheap, but remember you get what you pay for.
So we went over a bunch of things that you need to do to even prepare to launch. As you can imagine, if you’re going to build this right, its going to take time and patience.
I hear you saying, ok that’s all true but why now? Why not wait until things are stable or at least a little less volatile? Because you’re already suffering! Neizche believed that suffering leads to growth and transformation. In other words the struggles and obstacles you’re going to experience are going to change your life. And if you’re going to struggle anyway, why not give yourself something to focus on that is positive and productive?
Why not set yourself up so that when this is all over, however it’s going to play out, you’re not scrambling to figure it out like the other 99% of people. This is your chance to be ahead of the game.
I see a lot of videos titled make thousands in 30 days, that’s clickbait. A real scalable business takes 2-5 years to build up if you’re doing it slow and steady. Sure you can probably start seeing some early results in 6 months to a year, but you really want to think in terms of the long game as opposed to getting rich quick. First that’s always a scam, and second, that’s not how we roll here. We want to succeed, and we want to have a path to retirement.
Sure, it would be nice to be rich, but wouldn’t it be great if you knew you could retire from your job and live comfortably for the rest of your life? That’s my goal.
I hope you learned something today, As always, thank you for joining me, and if you have questions, please leave them in the comments, I do read every comment and reply to each and every one.
Peace!