Living Life on the Edge
Posted On: 2007-09-06
Yesterday I mentioned that Steve had picked up a copy of Michael Gerber's E Myth Mastery and I talked about what newcomers to this industry should expect. So many come into this industry expecting that working for themselves will give them a lot more freedom than they had when they were working for someone else.
Sadly they all find that the idea of freedom when you're working for yourself is quite illusory and the reality is too much for many of them handle. So many of them crash and burn and leave to go back to the freedoms that they once had. Others stay on because they can make money here and they enjoy the challenge that comes from running their own business.
But again there is a point where every one of us has to decide whether we've just created a job for ourselves that we can work in or started something that can develop into more than just a job. As Gerber puts it, are you working in your business or are you working on your business.
If you're working in your business you're merely working at just another job. Admittedly you may have created that job for yourself but ultimately it's going to be even worse than working for someone else. You might find that hard to believe but if you're working in your business then you're working in a job that is even more restrictive and limiting than the job you had when you were working for someone else.
I mentioned some of those restrictions yesterday and, for some people, that's all they want. Creating a job for themselves is all they ever want to do and if they're happy with that then that's fine. If you're happy with that, then congratulations, you've arrived at the pinnacle of your small business, you've reached the point where you're happy. Just keep on plugging away at it day after day, year after year until it's time for you to retire.
However, some of us want more out of this whole deal. Some of us want to create a small business that can give us some freedoms instead of just a job that will keep us busy until retirement comes along. Some of us want the challenges of developing something that has some value at the end of the day that we can pass on to others or sell for cold hard cash.
For those of us who want to do that and have started on a shoestring - just as so many adult Webmasters have done - things are going to be very interesting. We're going to have to learn a whole new set of skills, we're going to have utilize the services of others instead of doing everything ourselves and we're going to have to be very objective - feel free to read that as the need to be ruthless - when it comes to what our business is doing and how it is developing.
Sometimes we might even have to burn our boats or bridges behind us so that there is no retreat and we either succeed or perish.
At the moment Steve and I are at one of those points in our journey where we have to decide whether we push on into some new areas that are challenging, scary and need new skills and a willingness to go on beyond what we're doing now ... and have something of value at the end of the day that we can pass on or sell ... or do nothing more than what we're doing right now and go on making nice chunks of money but have no residual.
It's something that we've been dancing around the edges of for some time now. We did think that we were happy doing what we're doing but now it's noticeable that perhaps we're not. We're both getting twitchy, we're looking into the future and seeing what might be and we have a unique selling proposition that really could work ... if we're brave enough to take up the challenge.
Perhaps we've already made the decision. I've been talking about employing people in-house to do the grunt work while Steve is currently downloading Fedora and our computer guy is setting up a server we can play with. Perhaps there's time to step back from this but somehow I think it's all about to start happening - and there never was a time when we could step back.
So where are you in your business? Are you going to be happy with just a self-created job for the rest of your working life or do you want something a whole lot more? You may not have even arrived at point where those are valid questions for you just yet. But the chances are that you will arrive at that point at some time in the future and when that time comes it's better to have already spent some time thinking about it than to be caught totally unprepared.
In case you haven't realized it just yet running your own business that's more than just a job is about living life on the edge. It's an adventure and it's not for the faint-hearted; once you start on the journey there really is no turning back and if you fail you only have yourself to blame.
Does that scare you? It should!