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Devloping your own business.
Determine what your passion is and what
you enjoy doing even if you were not paid to do it!
"Nobody can be successful unless he
loves his work."
– David Sarnoff, TV pioneer
The first step in deciding what type of business to own
is to figure out what it is that you really love doing.
By doing this, you’ll be one step closer to discovering
the perfect business venture for you. If you skip this important step,
you will be missing out on a wonderful growth opportunity as it truly
influences how successful you’ll be in your business. You see, passion
is the single most important thing in helping you get over the hurdles
of disappointment. As a fledging business
owner, you will be required to learn new things. You’ll be forced to
enhance and develop certain skills and you will uncover many obstacles
along the way. This will not be easy and
as such, you may even be tempted to give up. But, if you have passion,
you will keep going. You will not slow down and will stay focused in
developing your business and being actively involved in it. In essence,
your passion will get you through the tough times and will encourage
you.
For instance, in my own business I learned early that my
passion was computers. I was good at programming them and always
enjoyed making them work. In fact, I enjoyed computers so much that I
would often get lost in my work. To me, it was not really work at all.
This was because I was more than happy to work for hours without pay if
I could just show my own creation to others knowing that someone would
benefit from it.
I received pleasure out of simply showing my creations to them. The
only thing that mattered is that I was doing what I loved and that I
was impacting the lives of others by utilizing my savvy technical
skills. Once I completed one project, I happily went to another.
Building computer solutions was the fuel that kept me going.
Another thing I noticed is that when I was fueled by
passion, my thirst for knowledge grew. When someone asked me a question
and I didn’t know it, I would do everything within my power to answer
them. I would spend hours conducting research so that I could learn the
answer. In the end, my primary goal was to help someone and to provide
them with a solution that worked. This gave me great satisfaction, even
if I wasn’t paid.
When I started my computer consulting business, I didn’t
know a single thing about marketing or advertising. But, this didn’t
stop me. In order to sell my skills and encourage clients to utilize my
solutions I learned how to effectively and creatively market myself.
Since my business was started on a shoestring, I could not afford much
paid advertising. Instead, I built an advertising system called
Adlandpro Classifieds and utilized my programming skills to benefit my
clients.
Then, I had to find people to use it. I worked diligently on my
classified site, learned creative and inexpensive ways to bring
visitors to it, and marketed it whenever I got the chance.
It was 1997 at the time and the Internet was relatively
new. Although there were a few clients who came to me despite my heavy
accent and no prior business experience, times were tough. But my
passion kept me going.
I vowed to keep going until I succeed. So, I kept my day
job as a computer programmer and in my spare time, I continued to
develop and market my free classified site which started to get some
traffic.
Well, one day my hard work started paying off. A customer
of my free classifieds asked if he could pay me to get more exposure.
According to him, my free classified site was bringing him good
results. He then sent me a check for $20.00. I still remember this
check today. It wasn’t a lot in terms of finance but it was a true
indicator that the site had potential and that I had stumbled on a
creative money making idea.
Soon other businesses took advantage of this remarkable
opportunity and purchased space on the site as well.
After a year, I was able to quit my day job and
concentrate on growing my fledging business.
As you see, my persistence and passion caused me to
literally stumble on an idea that generated over $5 million from my
basement. I repeat: 5 Million Dollars
from my Basement.
Bogdan Fiedur |
