I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
BE REALISTIC:
1: Realize that until you fix your own financial problems, starting a legitimate business will be out of the question. This was a tough realization for me, but I’ve learned that you can have the best business concept in the history of the universe, but if you can’t fund it and do it right, it’ll never succeed.
2: Sell everything you can possibly sell. Especially liabilities that have monthly payments. If it wasn’t nailed down, I sold it. I lost money on most everything, but it was worth it in the long run.
3: Consolidate debt and cancel all unnecessary subscriptions. This allowed me to lower my monthly obligations, decrease interest rates on certain debts and pay bigger chunks towards the debt.
FOCUS ON THE MONEY:
1: Search for a higher paying job. Often, we underestimate ourselves and what we are capable of accomplishing. Put yourself out there and see what’s available. What's the worst a potential employer can say, no? This is actually how I ended up in Syria. I was able to more than double my salary by accepting a position that most people wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. I even grew to love the job, but initially, I was simply making a personal sacrifice to achieve a long-term goal. As an entrepreneur, if you are not willing to make sacrifices, you are in the wrong line of work.
2: Use a skill, learn a skill or try something new. Stop worrying about starting a business and focus on actually earning money. I was able to earn an additional $1,500 a month by writing content for people’s blogs, creating social media content and writing small informational eBooks. Here is a solid hint. If you want to make money, be willing to do the grunt work. Do the things that people don’t like to do themselves.
It wasn’t glamorous, but it accelerated my debt pay off. I was able to get most of my business by joining niche forums and Facebook groups. Here is a solid hint – niche forums and Facebook groups are two of the only places on the internet that you can get those eyeballs for free, but you have to be offering something they are actively seeking.
I actually hadn’t ever done any of the services that I started offering, but with a little practice and learning from people on YouTube, I was able to surpass customers’ expectations.
STARTING A BUSINESS AND SCALING:
Once you are out of debt or close to it and have at least $2,000 to invest, it’s time to start your online business.
Here’s the process I like to follow:
1: Don’t think major corporations. Rather, start small and build. Use the new skills you learned to earn extra money during your debt payoff phase and start something you know can be profitable. We all have our dream business, but at this point, it’s more important to start something low risk and stable. Learn to be passionate about the process and business in general rather than a specific idea or concept.
2: Once you have a steady flow of business, figure out how to outsource using freelancers. Implement processes to take yourself out of the equation to the point that you are simply managing the businesses and dealing with customers. This will allow you to continue earning from the business, but it’ll free you up to work towards your next business.
3: Take the earnings from the first business and invest them into your next business concept. Ideally, you will only be investing the profits from business number one into business number two. This will allow you to continue to build your personal savings from your day job while still allowing you to invest in online businesses.
4: Rinse and repeat.
DON'T RUSH THE PROCESS. ENJOY THE JOURNEY:
Personally, I like to have three to five businesses running at any given time. Two or three of them will be low-end grunt work type businesses that fund my ideal businesses.
The grunt work businesses are profitable because everyone hates to do their own grunt work. It’s the reason people pay to have their houses cleaned and their lawns mowed.
You can easily and successfully scale without having to invest money earned from your full-time job. This allows you to continue to save and grow financially while you are building something real.
Takeaways:
Starting a business can be difficult and is a process that shouldn’t be rushed.
In reality, it’s a fairly simple process if you are patient.
1: Fix yourself
2: Focus on the money
3: Start with something low risk
4: Outsource
5: Invest earnings into other business concepts
6: Repeat
In my opinion, this is the one process that gives the average person the best chance of being able to start a successful online business
