I remember how excited I was when I purchased my first online business in a box. It was going to set me free so that I could live the laptop lifestyle. It was going to let me have more free time to spend with my family and friends, and more money so that I could do what I wanted, when I wanted. I was finally going to be free of the Rat Race.
I watched the webinar highlighting the promises of being able to set this up easily, at home part-time, and grow a business to replace my income. In order for me to have this dream, I had to pay some money up front, and then a monthly fee.
It was called, “Simple Money Machines”. I wasn’t supposed to worry because it was going to be easy and simple to set up. It came with instructions and videos on how to do it. All I had to do was follow the instructions and POOF, all of a sudden simple money would start rolling in.
I remember the introductory offer had this wonderful “Try it out for $1 for 2 weeks” and you could have a business working for you bringing in hundreds and thousands of dollars each month if you just set up one of the simple money machines. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. God was finally answering my prayers. I’d been looking for the answer as to how to make money online.
I was so excited when I purchased the product that I dove right into it that night. I’m no stranger to business development. I had already built four other successful businesses. I was ready to conquer the world. What I found that night, as I began exploring my new business, was there was nothing simple about setting up those money machines.
The support behind them was marginal. There was nobody to talk to, and you never got help at all. Sometimes I had to wait for two days to get an answer to one simple question.
But they had me hook, line and sinker with their marketing that said I could make 7 figures per year and build an online business that would set me free, so I could have the lifestyle and live the life of my dreams.
Who doesn’t want that?
The truth is, if you have zero experience with an online business, it’s not going to be easy to have a business online. Is it worth it? Yes! However, nothing about it is going to be 30, 60, 90 or even 120 days before you begin to make any money online. You make money when you build a business.
If you want to know the truth about having a business online, then here are the real statistics:
*The average internet marketing specialist makes a salary of around $41,000 a year.
*There are many jobs that pay more than being a coach. The pay scale for the average online coach or consultant is *$30.42 per hour, or up to $103 per hour.
*The United States has the highest paid online coaches anywhere. The average yearly salary for a life coach is $60,000 in the U.S. only.
*Latin American and the Caribbean coaches make $27,000 a year.
*In Western Europe they make about $55,000 a year.
*In Eastern Europe it drops to $18,000 a year.
*The average range of a top coach goes from $27,000 a year to a maximum of $210,000 a year.
The allure is that everyone is going to make $1,000,000 having an online business being a coach, consultant or an internet marketer in their first year. This includes starting their online business part-time. Millions of people fall for this lie every month. Yet, if you’re savvy, then you know the SBA statistics show most businesses fail within the first year. In fact, I think it’s more than 90% of the businesses that fail, are not making $1,000,000 in the first year.
Yet, you always hear marketing headlines that shout at you something like, “How Did This 20-Something Make $1 Million Last Year?” Of course, we all want to know how they did it. If this 20-something did it, surely we can do it too. However, the headline doesn’t talk about how long it took that 20-something to get set up to make $1,000,000 a year. It certainly wasn’t 30, 60, or 90 days.
The truth is, setting up a million dollar venture doesn’t happen in the first quarter of one year. In fact, according to a Business Know-How survey, which tracked small business annual sales for 2018, less than 4% of all the businesses, both on and offline, made $1,000,000 last year.
It will be important for you to know the difference between being sold “How to make money online” and “How to start and build a business.” Then you have to get real with yourself!
If you just wanted to make some extra cash and you don’t want to learn to run a business or be a business owner, then learn how to create a side hustle. Don’t open a business. There is a big difference between wanting to make some extra cash and learning to run a profitable business. It doesn’t matter whether it’s online or offline, running a profitable business is work.
If you want quick cash, start a quick side business going to garage sales, buying stuff cheap, and selling it on eBay for profit. Just know, mastering eBay also has a learning curve. However, if you want to build a business, make a million dollars, and set yourself free, I’m going to tell you the truth. If you are a startup business, whether offline or online, the truth is, in addition to building a company, most people have side jobs. They work more than 100 hours a week in order to build their company and keep themselves fed.
Like any industry, there is an enormous learning curve to running a business vs. having a job. It takes considerable effort and endurance to master running a profitable business. If you want to make $1,000,000, you will benefit most by learning to run a business vs. learning to simply make money online.
If you choose a business, know the transformation that you have to go through isn’t simply about how to run a business, but how you:
· Manage your mind
· Manage your day
· Manage your productivity
· Manage your learning curve
· Manage your needle movers
· Manage all these things consistently
For you to truly make a business run and work well, it takes time and practice. It’s not simple, and it’s not easy, no matter what they say to you. You will always have some sort of unexpected pivot, obstacle, or issue that you will need to solve as you’re building your company. You will have to keep your ego in check, and be able to get over yourself at a moment’s notice.
The fact is, most people just want to make a little more money. They don’t actually want to learn to run a business profitably. They’ve heard that you can become rich if you get a good business started and being rich sounds nice from the pictures in the ad. Your interest is in becoming rich. Your interest is not in learning how to run a business well.
Because of this, people get confused by the simple and easy marketing message from most online business offers. Learning how to run a business is about empowering yourself to create income over time. It helps if you understand the industry you’re going into. It will be a little easier. But if you are new to an industry, you’ve got to cut yourself some slack, and embrace the learning curve. This usually takes more than 90 to 120 days to get it right if you work at it full-time.
This takes time and patience along with repetitiveness. You’ve got to fail forward and figure it out along the way. If you’re experienced with your industry and have mastered an expertise, then this is good news. You simply need to learn how to run your business well. This happens over time, it doesn’t happen overnight.
The beauty of online business is that most online businesses are built for the bootstrapping entrepreneur. It means there is a sweat-equity component to the business where there is upfront work with back-end profits. Bootstrapping is when you start your online business without funding. When you bootstrap, you learn lean start-up principles such as: organic traffic and marketing that help your business grow long-term.
When you bootstrap a business, it is a slower but more powerful form of business building. If you’re going to have an online business, bootstrapping your business is the best way to start. It gives you a strong entrepreneurial foundation. If you’ve chosen to grow a business online, let’s uncover some of the truths about what it will take…
The over time, not overnight principle: Business success happens over time, not overnight. There are few overnight business sensations. Something can become popular quickly, but the overnight million dollar business is a myth. The truth is, you build success, over time. You get better, over time. You master business, over time. You become wealthy, over time. If you’re “in it to win it”, you are in it, over time.
No get rich quick schemes work: They are overnight sensation products and don’t work. If it sounds too good to be true… believe it.
The learning curve is constant: Whether you build a part-time or full-time business, the learning curve is always full-time, and you can expect to put in a business owner’s full-time hours while learning. You’re going to learn stuff that excites you, frightens you, that you don’t like to do, and the stuff you love to do.
You will have to challenge yourself to learn new things because technological advances are happening fast, and change is now a constant. Updates to the software you use will happen regularly and you will consistently have to learn something new. You will benefit most by becoming a lifelong learner.
You must find your sizzle: Every business owner creates success when they understand what they are passionate about inside their industry. Whether that’s helping people or creating new things. The more you uncover your passion and excitement about what you’re doing, the more you will attract people who want to buy from you or work with your company.
Your sizzle isn’t just your tagline or your brand. It’s inside your culture. It’s inside your leadership. It doesn’t mean you’re the perfect leader. It means you’re an excited leader and willing to improve daily.
Build your conversation and tribe first, and then your product: If I had one thing I would have done over, I would have built my tribe first, and got my message out in a conversation before I built my product. It would have made building my business easier. This would have given me a Smart Start on building my business.
Pay to play or organic traffic: There are two kinds of traffic and you’re going to have to master them both. There is paid traffic, and there is organic traffic. Building traffic is the ability to drive people to your online offer. This should be a huge part of your marketing plan and you should master both of them.
Have a team or a rolodex of go-to help: Another thing I would have done differently is I would have put together a team of partners for an online business first. A lot of online businesses are sold as a solopreneur business.
I have learned over many years that it is hard to start a business paying attention to performing the jobs of 5 people. It might not be fiscally feasible for you to start out hiring employees right off the bat and putting yourself in debt. If this is the case, who do you know that you can partner with to help?
The best way to start is with partners: Most successful businesses are partner-driven. However, this means the learning curve of being a good leader and finding excellent partners, is big. The truth is, most people do not know how to select partners for a business and power struggles ensue, along with a lot of fighting over profits and money.
Make sure you have agreements upfront, and select people who are emotionally adult and responsible. Make sure your partners know how to listen well. If they don’t, you will have misunderstandings that can turn into problems in the business.
If you made it this far down the article I want to say congratulations because it proves that you have an interest in learning how to run a business. Most people won’t make it halfway through this article. Instead, they will choose to do something else. If you’ve made it this far, it means you want to get a Smart Start on your business. Thank you for joining me and allowing me to share my experience with you.
Vickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.