As an entrepreneur, you have to recognize exactly what “your business” really is!
This is what your business is not….. It is not “Internet Marketing”, it is not “Email Marketing” , it is not “Ebay Marketing”, nor is it “Affiliate Marketing” or “Day Trading Forex” or “MLM”…. or whatever else you’ve chosen.
No, I haven’t gone loony (some may say I can’t go loony, because I’m already there, but back to the topic…)
As an entrepreneur, to find your business, first look in a mirror….
You, your dreams and desires and all you do to realize them make up “your business“.
All of those other things are just “vehicles” that you use in your business to get you from where you are to where you want to be! You may have many different vehicles, and when you need to, you change from one to the other!
Something that I never really thought of until I started Alex Jeffreys’ coaching was some very important things that should be included in a business plan but are usually left out.
When you work for someone else, they dictate the hours you work, what happens if you are sick, what annual leave you will get, etc, as part of your job, industrial award, employment contract or whatever is the norm where you live (it varies from country to country), but if you are an entrepreneur, you are self employed, and so that means that you are both the employer and the employee. You can end up in a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde situation here!
If you try to “separate business and pleasure” or “business and personal”, you will run the risk of having all work and no room to enjoy the life you want!
I remember a bloke, actually one of my students back when I was teaching in a local college, who told me that he having difficulty making classes because he had to work so hard as his boss was the “meanest, most demanding bastard that there ever was”. I said, “That’s not good, mate! Who’s your boss?”. He grinned and said “Me!”. He was self employed! I laughed it off as a joke at the time. Years later it came back to sting me and hard!
As an entrepreneur, you are self employed, and if you do not factor your personal life and everything that goes with it into your business plan, you can very easily end up with “no life”. It is very easy to get wrapped up in “the business” and actually miss out on those things you wanted when you started out!
I know this first hand, because I made that very same mistake a few years ago! I remember desparately trying to wrangle things on the fly to “squeeze in” important parts of my life, such as my family. I remembered Harry Chapin’s “Cats in The Cradle”, and how I’d vowed I’d never do that to my kids, but now had those lyrics haunting my thoughts!
I’d ended up living to work and not working to live, and because I’d failed to plan for them, the most important things in my life were having to be “squeezed in” as an afterthought!
Never leave yourself out of your business plan because you are your business!
When I realized this, I thought about it and had a spark of inspiration… This was a different way of looking at it, and I came up with the ideas of “Wholistic Business” or “Holistic Business”, however you want to spell it (it can be spelled both ways!). Then I Googled it and found out that it was about as original as last week’s bread… drats!
It doesn’t hurt to extend this further…. For example, your customers are part of your business, so this means that you have got to remain ethical, because if you rip off your customers, you are ripping off your business!
Think about it…. will a customer stick around and buy stuff of someone who has sold them garbage disguised as gold before? There is also the old adage that a happy customer will tell probably a few people about you, but an unhappy customer will tell everyone! You are not anonymous on the Internet, especially with the rise of social networking and Web 2.0!
Next post will be about the first step in developing your business plan…. Cya then!
Remember to add any feedback and ask any questions below!
Regards,
Mark.
