One Stop Web Support Newsletter #73
September 14, 2008
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One Stop Web Support Newsletter #73
Jeff Baas - One Stop Web Support
http://www.OneStopWebSupport.com/
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If your plan for your business involves something beyond just bringing in a little side income, you'll eventually have to plan for it to grow beyond what you can handle yourself. That is a reality, though, that many new business owners never recognize. And it can have dire results.
So this week we'll conclude our four-part series on the realities of starting an online business and what to expect. This fourth installment is about preparing your business to grow beyond what you alone can handle.
The Reality of Starting a Business Online -- Part IV -- expect to grow
Not everyone starts an online business for the same reason.
Some people start one just because they love the subject and want to expand that pastime into one that will bring them a little money.
Others start one because they want to make a little side income to pay for a few extras that their paycheck won't provide, but they aren't interested in making their business their livelihood.
Still others start a business because they want to be in charge of their work life. They want their business to become their chief source of income.
Others yet dream of a business that will bring them great wealth.
While it should come as no surprise that each of those business goals requires a different approach, many new business owners assume that they can approach their business like a hobby, yet have it bring them great wealth. That doesn't happen.
What it takes to go beyond a side income
This article doesn't have space to go into the different approaches needed for the four different goals I described. It will touch, though, on one, essential feature of building your business beyond a mere hobby or side income.
It will focus on the need to multiply your efforts by getting others to do the less strategic, more repetitive tasks that otherwise rob you of the ability to grow your business.
The multiplier principle
In any process for developing wealth, some multiplier principle is at the center. In your job, YOU are part of the business' multiplier principle. The fortysomething hours that you work each week produces results beyond what the owners could do on their own.
Look at it this way. If your boss supervises ten workers, that boss effectively is able to accomplish 440 hours of work each week instead of just 40. He multiplies what he can accomplish times 11.
How much could you accomplish if you multiplied your efforts times 11?
Being realistic
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you should impulsively hire ten people.
If you truly want to build a business that supports you, though, you eventually need to hand tasks off to others. If you keep handling all the basic, repetitive tasks yourself, you will never have time to exploit the opportunities to expand your business.
But what if I don't want to deal with people?
Granted, some new business owners start their business because they're sick of dealing with bosses, co-workers, and anybody else their job causes them to deal with. The last thing a prospective business owner with this attitude wants is to have someone working for them.
I'll be blunt. If you don't want to interact with people, you have no business being in business. True, the Internet offers the illusion of being able to do business anonymously, without any actual contact between business owner and customers.
Business owners who make a point of withdrawing from their potential customers, though, invariably fail. Business is all about providing solutions to other people. If you make it a practice to avoid contact with your customers, you'll never fully grasp what they seek.
Do I really need to hire employees?
Not right away. Maybe never, depending on how big you want to grow your business.
You do need to find the basic tasks that someone else could easily do and find ways to hand them off to someone else.
The hours you spend doing repetitive work that anybody could do are hours you could use to multiply your efforts. Hand off that work to a Virtual Assistant (VA) and put the time you otherwise would have spent on those tasks by doing some other task that builds your business.
Similarly, you can outsource the time-intensive promotional activities that you haven't otherwise been able to do to a responsible high school or college student or a contract worker on Elance or Guru.com on a per-project basis.
With a couple of hours of planning, you can outsource projects that otherwise would have eaten up dozens of hours of your time -- or not gotten done at all. You can benefit from the same multiplier principle that led your present employer to hire you.
But where do I get the money to pay for outsourced labor?
As I mentioned in last week's installment, if you want to grow your business beyond just a source of a little extra cash, it becomes essential for you reinvest a healthy amount of your initial profits back into your business.
I know the temptation is to take the money that comes in and pay bills or use it on something extra for yourself. Doing that, though, will keep your business trapped in making only a pittance.
Reinvesting your profits into outsourced labor multiplies your efforts and enables you to multiply your profits.
Final thoughts
If you want to replace your current job with your new business, or if you hope to build your income beyond what your current job can provide, you need to accept the fact that you will have to grow your business beyond being a one-person show.
Trying to do everything yourself limits you and what you can accomplish. Make sure you work into your plans the need to reinvest some of the money you make into multiplying your efforts.
Doing this may seem like a sacrifice. But it's the same "sacrifice" farmers make each spring when they plant seed in the ground. The amount of seed planted has potential to return a harvest worth many times the value of the seed.
Look ahead with your business. Look for ways you can grow it beyond yourself, using the profits it brings in to multiply your efforts so it can take you where you want it to go.
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This concludes our series on what to expect when you start a business online. Next week we'll start a new, five-part series on one of my favorite ways to get visitors to a website: article marketing.
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Q and A with Jeff
In this section, Jeff answers your questions about starting a business online. Here's this week's question.
What's the best thing for me to sell?
What to sell is often the first question that new business owners ask when they decide to start a business. Unfortunately, though, that question usually comes out of a faulty assumption.
The expectation many prospective business owners have is that all that a business needs is the "right" product and that product will sell itself.
It doesn't work that way.
Highly popular products
For example, technical gadgets are hot sellers, so you might think that all you need to do is find a source for them, set up a site, and the money will roll in. Yet, BECAUSE they are such hot sellers, competition among sellers is brutal.
It's not uncommon to see deep-pockets mega sites sell some of the hottest products at below what they pay to buy them. They do this because they have a solid enough sales process that they can recoup their loss by enticing buyers to add on more products at the time of sale or get future sales through their followup process.
Having big, well-known competitors selling at a loss, though, makes it almost impossible for a small, new business to step in and sell any of the product, no matter how hot a seller it is.
Selling what you know
When you start your first business, your best bet is to focus on something you already know and are passionate about. You have enough to learn about running a business. You can't afford to add to it the effort it would take to learn the ins and outs of some product line or business niche with which you are unfamiliar as well.
Start by making an extensive list of things you know a lot about or have accomplished:
- Skills you've learned from the jobs or volunteer work you've done
- Sports, hobbies, and special interests you enjoy
- Special knowledge or skills you've developed because of your job, volunteer work, or life situation
- Things for which you've won an award or received special recognition
- Things for which others have complimented you for doing them particularly well
- Things you would do if you have unlimited money and a whole week free to do them
- Subjects you like to learn about in your spare time
- Challenges you've faced and overcome
- Accomplishments you're proud of
- Things you've learned from raising children or having pets
- Things you've always wanted to learn more about, but haven't had the time
Dig deep. Don't think that just because something comes naturally to you that no one would need your expertise. We usually assume that our strengths are simply baseline skills that everyone has in equal measure to us. We usually assume that special skills we've developed are unique to us and no one else can benefit from them.
Whatever we've learned, whatever we have to offer, whatever our strengths, though, people are out there who desperately would love to find the solutions we can provide.
Once you have your list, look at what problems you've solved with those skills. Identify the information or items you've found that helped you grow to where you are right now in your knowledge and experience in those things.
That should give you a list of problems that other people are looking to solve and solutions you've found to solve them.
That should give you a start on figuring out a business niche in which you have a better potential for success. Hang on to your list. Next week we'll look closer at how to use your list to narrow down your choices and find a way to monetize your business.
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HOTTEST OFFERS
Each issue, I feature what I consider the best offers available each week on worthwhile business-building tools. Check here to see what's hot this week.
http://www.OneStopWebSupport.com/hot-offers.htm
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Free Ebooks:
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Free Training tools:
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Success quote
'You must have a STRONG DESIRE to GROW. You must be HUNGRY for it. Nothing good comes to those who are 'casually interested.' Greatness comes to those who DARE to be great and want it so badly that they’ll overcome any obstacle, bear any burden, and DO WHATEVER is necessary in the attainment of a worthy goal.'
Jim Edwards
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