2. FEATURE: Busting Through Your Myth Ceiling – Part Two

Taken from my book ‘Get Paid For Who You Are‘

In our last newsletter we started looking at the most common limiting beliefs or myths of starting your own business. Here are a couple more myths to counteract.

Myth #3:  I don’t have time to start a business.

If you want to start a new business, you’ll need to invest time. At a minimum I suggest 7 hours a week, or one hour a night. That won’t threaten your day job or require you to quit.

If seven hours feels like too much for you, given your current schedule, scale back other activities. What are you willing to drop? If you say, “Nothing” ask yourself: Is a lifestyle of freedom important to me? If it is, get up early, stay up late, or say “No” to some activities that don’t fulfill you anyway. You can also consider:

• Take time off work, either paid or unpaid, to get your business rolling
• Negotiate with your boss to work four days a week, perhaps doing a trial period first and being open to taking a 20 percent cut in pay
• If your boss won’t entertain a reduction in your hours, find an employer who will
• Work weekends
• Partner with someone who has more time to devote to the business
• Give up T.V.

In other words, there are many solutions, if your desire for a lifestyle of freedom is strong enough.

If I was starting again, I would work each night of the week and take a day a week — Saturday or Sunday — called “Internet Day,” on which I turned off my phones, asked friends and family to respect the time I’m investing in the business, and then, when the day is up, showed my appreciation by taking them to dinner and celebrating the fact that I’m one step closer to achieving my dream.

Myth #4:  I need business or technical skills

Let’s tackle business skills first.

You may be asking yourself, “If I start a business, don’t I need to be naturally good at business?”

The answer is No. But it’s a really good question, and here’s why.

There are many people who go into business for themselves without help. They think they can do everything — including balancing the books, making sales calls and hiring employees — even if these were previously their weak spots. They may reach out for help by hiring cheap, inexperienced staff, but if the business owner doesn’t know what he or she is doing, training the staff creates whole new problems.

There are two ways to get around this. The first is to train yourself in business.  One quick way to do that is to read The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. It’s simply the bible of internet business, hands down, and it showed me what a business really is, in language that anyone can understand.

The second is to partner with someone who does know business. This tip is worth thousands of dollars and may save you years of pain, but it’s not really rocket science is it? If you’re short on business experience, get someone long on business experience to balance you out.

“But if they run the business, what am I doing?” you may ask.

Perhaps you’re the talent. You’re the person creating the solutions for people facing divorce, or bankruptcy, or having a child, or a thousand other possible life challenges. You’re the inspiration, the driving force, the person who remembers the vision when things get tough. Maybe you’re the people person who can get that new employee to stay, or the one who can land the alliance with a big mailing list because you just plain enjoy developing partnerships with people.  Or maybe you’re the one who’s good at massage, hairdressing, tennis, or raising children.

Now that I’ve laid all of that out on the table, let me take the pressure off a bit.  You’ll be relieved to know that an information/Internet driven business requires far less time, energy and knowledge to succeed than a traditional bricks-and-mortar business.

Now let’s talk about technical skills.

Just as with business skills and practices, many of us do not naturally gel with computers and other electronic tools. While some people find e-mail, Facebook and blogging easy to learn, others are more comfortable away from the computer.

Fortunately, as odd as it might seem, you don’t need to be web-savvy to run a successful Internet-based business. You have two options:

Partner with someone who is technical-minded, or

Invest the time to learn the important computer skills

I’ll bet that you already have at least 50 percent of the computer skills you’ll need to run a successful Internet business —- including the ability to start up and shut down a computer, send and receive e-mail and attachments and conduct searches using Google. There are many free and public resources that will help you beef up your computer expertise.

But aren’t there other skills I’ll need?

Sure. Again, you’ll learn them or outsource them. For example, one important skill is writing. If that doesn’t come naturally to you, draft a list of questions people often ask you and write down your answers. You’ll find that within a very short time, you’ll naturally come up with enough content to populate your website and newsletters. You will be amazed at what flows out of you and how good it feels to share it.

If you’re still skeptical or hesitant to write, you can hire someone to write for you, ask a friend to interview you and transcribe the interview, or borrow content from someone else’s website with a promise to provide attribution. Remember: “perfect” writing and speaking skills are not a prerequisite for sharing your gifts with the world.

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Take Action

1) What are you willing to do, to find more time for your business? Share at the blog.

2) How do you deal with skills that you don’t have? Share at the blog.

Love and gratitude,

P.S. If you have any comments on this newsletter, we’d love you to share them here.

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