Starting out as an entrepreneur

Contrary to what you have or have not been told, starting life as an entrepreneur is not and has never been a bed of roses.

There are challenges that you must overcome to become one. Many people have tried and so many people who couldn't cope had to give way and settle for something much less difficult.

So in this piece, I am going to make an effort in informing you on the basic lessons that you must know and always bear in mind when you finally decide to become an entrepreneur because I believe that with such knowledge, you can only but excel and whenever trouble steers you in the face, you will know how not to quit!

But before we begin, I think it will be in our best interest to remind us of the importance of why we need to become entrepreneurs - why we need to become our own boss!

Why you should be your own boss?

Would you like to become your own boss? Why not?

I know that becoming one's own boss sounds so interesting but have you wondered why many people still don't think along that line or even want to do something about it?

I have a feeling this is primarily because it is not as easy as you think. Many people find it much easier to wake up in the morning every weekday, prepare and go to work, come back in the evening, chat about the day's work, wait at the end of the month to collect their salary or pay checks and then repeat the whole process all over again.

This sounds easier, do't you think so?

Yes it is so easy but I wonder when we will finally come to realize that the one biggest problem with that easy way out is that we can never become rich or wealthy in that way.

Granted, some people might be able to do that quite alright but then there is the problem of time. It will surely take such a long time. But if you decide to work for yourself, you can be assured that it is just one way of creating wealth for yourself (and possibly for many others) faster than you can imagine.

You can easily create some passive income for yourself when you become your own boss and the beauty of creating passive income is that it is not limited or fixed like your usual salary.

So that is it! That is my first lesson to you. Listen, if you want to create wealth faster, you just have to own your business! And the earlier you do that, the better for you and everyone else involved.

Let's progress to the next lesson which is...

Never sell time

This is the most important lesson you must learn as an entrepreneur. Never sell your time. Never engage in any business that is not time-leveraged.

Look at your favorite barber or even hairdresser. Think about it, do you think he or she is rich? You see, chances are you will agree with me that such people, even with all their talents in making us look wonderfully presentable still are not rich. Some of them have even engaged in such business for such a longer time that you could even remember.

What is the problem with that type of business?

Of course, they are selling time! Their business is not time-leveraged. If your favorite barber can only barb 100 people within the time his shop is open for the day, he can only barb 100 people. The only way he could increase his income from such business is by increasing his charges or fees which might even work against him in the long run when his customers start complaining that he's charging them so much!

I am not saying that he could not increase his income in any other way. Of course, he can even higher more barbers to help him. But that will also mean that he will have to pay those people he is hiring. But that is not even the worst part.

The biggest problem and the ugliest part of selling time in business is that any day this barber does not open his shop, he will not earn a dime! Did you get that?

OK. Now let us take a look at your favorite musician. He or she only sings once. His producers pay him off. His music starts to sell which brings him royalty with each sale. If the music becomes a big hit, the royalty pay he is receiving also increases. The passive residual income thus created will always continue to pay.

Bottom line: businesses that are not time-leveraged are not proper business model. If you want to engage in such businesses, then I advise you rather start seeing them more or less as a hobby or something like that rather than the main source of your juice!

Back to your favorite musician who is not selling time in his business. Do you know the best part of it all? His music will continue to earn income for him for a very long time to come. He will never have to do that same music again. Once it is done, it's done. He can now use his free time to concentrate on even doing bigger hits.

Now, that's my type of business model!

That is what I am advising you as a person who is starting out as an entrepreneur to start thinking about right now. Think along the lines of starting an online business like blogging for example, because it satisfies our time-leveraged business model.

It is better you start now to think and model your business along the line of being time-leveraged such that you don't necessarily need to be present before you earn anything from your hard labor. Is that okay?

Get ready to learn

Often time, people don't like the idea of learning new things. I understand. The old way of doing things is always easier and who doesn't like getting it easy? Most people would rather stick to doing only one thing even though that one thing may not be working out as much as they would have loved or even as in most cases, that very thing may not be working.

But if you are able to get yourself into the serious task of learning new ways and methods of doing things, there is every possibility that you are going to be recording observable progress in all aspects of your business.

So?

Learn. Learn. Learn.