What Traits Do You Need to Start Your Own Small Business ?

Jeff Burnham is a freelancer and business owner who writes about careers, personal finance,
and tips for making money on the side.

For the longest time, I thought that the best path to career and financial success was to get in with a company and slowly but surely climb the corporate ladder. I did that in several industries, and although I did achieve some successes, I never was in a position that I truly enjoyed. Then it occurred to me that I’ll never get rich by working for someone else. Although I don’t consider myself to be wealthy financially, I have launched several small businesses and earn a comfortable living with a lot of flexibility.

When it comes to starting your own venture, there are certain character traits that are essential. Here are five traits you need to successfully start your own small business:

1. Work Ethic

You’re going to need a solid work ethic for two reasons: First, if you’re smart, you’ll begin your small business while still working at your current career. That takes a ton of pressure off you in the beginning regarding revenue generation. Many businesses take some time to turn a profit, so it helps to keep cash flow coming in from another source until that happens. And second, starting a small business requires a ton of hard work – regardless of any overnight Internet sensation success stories you may have read about.

2. Time Management

Again, if you start your biz while at your current job, you’ll need to maximize each and every minute of your working day. Create a to-do list, cut off all Internet distractions such as social media or fantasy sports leagues, and take care of personal errands like grocery shopping or dry cleaning on your daily trek to and from work. Proper time management is crucial, as every minute you can free up is one more minute you can devote to your small business.

3. Passion

If you don’t truly believe in what you’re doing, your chances of success are minimized. My passion is helping others with personal finance issues (among other things), but if you’re not supporting a cause you truly feel enthusiastic about, you’ll have a hard time staying motivated. Often, the joy it brings you is the only thing you’ll have to fall back on when times get hard.

4. Ingenuity and Flexibility

Being creative and ingenious are also parts of small business success. You might think about starting a landscaping business, but later find that organic gardening is more popular than landscaping with ornamentals. If you thought your ticket to success was social media marketing, but that hasn’t worked out, you might have to branch out into other advertising options. Being willing and able to change is a key asset in small business success.

5. Perseverance

Unless you’re extremely lucky and find success rather early on, you’ll need to be patient. I wrote a book about personal finance and paid for it to be published myself, yet never generated much revenue. However, about six months following publication, I was recognized and eventually hired by a more popular personal finance website – and that’s where I draw the majority of my income today. Realize that patience is a virtue when it comes to launching your small business idea.

If you’ve thought about launching your own small business, but have neither the funds nor the time to devote to it, consider using Fiverr^® to get yourself out of the starting blocks. It’s a stellar strategy if you want to get into small business ownership while still working at a traditional career, and you never know what might come of it. Although there are certainly other methods to small business success, don’t discount Fiverr as a way to break into the world of entrepreneurship.

http://blog.fiverr.com/traits-need-start-small-business/

Entrepreneurial Holiday Guilt For Creative Professionals ...

Guilt, guilt, guilt. Guilt is a terrible feeling and is often self-inflicted by creative entrepreneurs, especially during the holidays. 

Most people who work for themselves say they chose to do so because they wanted to “control their time.” People who value time over money, recognize that time is a precious commodity that cannot be created, bought, or borrowed. You have to use it wisely or else it is gone.

Having the luxury to control how, with whom, and where you spend your time is one of the bonuses of working for yourself. So, why is it that an overwhelming number of entrepreneurs also say they feel guilty when they are not working on their businesses or with a client between the hours of 9 to 5 ? 

To be truly happy and successful as an entrepreneur, you must break the corporate-created walls of time and learn how to set your day according to your needs and the needs of your clients. There is no law chaining you to your desk eight hours a day between 9am and 5pm. 

Here’s my advice: stop feeling guilty about when you are working and when you are not, and ditch the idea of playing by rules set up by other organizations. Make sure you benefit from the freedom of entrepreneurship and maximize your time by performing regular activities such as food shopping at off times like 10am on a Tuesday or having your teeth cleaned at 2pm on a Monday ! You will spend less time waiting in line, you will be less stressed, and actually have more time to devote to your clients and other activities, then if you did those things at the weekend or during a busier time.

And be sure to take a day or two off during the holidays to go gift shopping, ice-skating, or to decorate your home! Give yourself permission to enjoy your life and do something for yourself, even if it is on a week day between nine and five. You deserve it.

http://plrplr.com/5342/entrepreneurial-holiday-guilt-for-creative-professionals/

What To Do When You Have Too Many Ideas, And Not Enough Time

Image credit: Shutterstock

What do you do when you have too many ideas and not enough time? Or similarly, what about when you have too many tasks and not enough energy?

As an entrepreneur, I feel like I’ve been battling this issue for a while. There is always another opportunity to chase or a new product idea that sounds exciting. For a long time, I felt guilty about ignoring good ideas that came my way and so I kept adding more to my to-do list.

However, during a recent conversation with Travis Dommert, I learned about a new strategy for dealing with the issue of having too many ideas and projects.

It all comes down to treating your life like a rose bush.

Let me explain what Travis taught me…

Ideas are Like Rose Buds

As a rose bush grows it creates more buds than it can sustain. If you talk to an experienced gardener, they will tell you that rose bushes need to be pruned to bring out the best in both their appearance and their performance.

You see, a rose bush isn’t like a tree. It can’t grow wider and taller each year. And that means if you never trim away some of the buds, then the bush will eventually exhaust itself and die. There are only so many resources to go around. And if you really want a rose bush to flourish, then it needs to be trimmed down not just once, but each year. 

Ideas are like rose bushes: they need to be consistently pruned and trimmed down. And just like a rose bush, pruning away ideas — even if they have potential — allows the remaining ideas to fully blossom.

Just like the rose bush, we face constraints in our lives. We have a limited amount of energy and willpower to apply each day. It’s natural for new ideas and projects to come into our life — just like it’s natural for a rose bush to add new buds — but we have to prune things away before we exhaust ourselves.

In other words: new growth is natural and it’s normal for tasks and ideas to creep into your life, but full growth and optimal living requires pruning.

We All Need to Cut Good Branches

I like the rose bush analogy because it brings up something that is often lost in most conversations about productivity and simplicity: if you want to reach your full potential, you have to cut out ideas and tasks that are good, but not great.

In my experience, this is really hard to do.

If you’re building a business, maybe you have 3 product lines that are profitable. Your business might grow by 5x if you focus on all three, but which product line will grow by 500x if you put all of your energy into it?

If you’re training in the gym, there are all sorts of exercises that could make you stronger. But which two or three exercises will build a foundation of strength better than anything else?

If you’re thinking about the relationships in your life, there are dozens of people that you are connected to in some way. But which people bring energy into your life and which ones suck energy out of it?

Most rose buds could grow if they are given the chance. In other words, most buds are like a good idea: they have potential. But in order for the entire bush to flourish and live a healthy life, you have to choose the ones with the most potential and cut the rest.

The Bottom Line

Gardener and writer Elizabeth Roth says, “Roses that are left unpruned can become a tangled mess of old and new canes all competing for air and light.” 

We can say the same thing about our lives. A life left unpruned can become a twisted knot of ideas, tasks, and projects competing for your limited time and resources. If you don’t prune some of the branches from your life, the important ones will never flourish.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/234140