Before going ahead and starting an online business there are 5 things that are super important to consider. I’m gonna cover exactly what those things are in the video above, and the article below.
1. GET CRYSTAL CLEAR ON THE REASONS YOU’RE DOING IT
The reason this is crucial is because so many of us will start a business and we’ll work on it for maybe a couple of weeks then things will get tough and a little uncertain. Without that crystal clear reason why we’re doing what we’re doing, without having that pull motivation that’s bigger than us to enable us to overcome our feelings and our reasons to keep going we will give up, and we will quit.
So we have to know why we’re doing it. Is it because we’re sick of our career and we can’t bear the prospect for commiting the next 20-30 years of our lives to that. Maybe it’s to spend time with our families, watching our kids grow up. Maybe its to travel the world, to see what we want to see before we’re too old, before we settle down and it isn’t an option anymore. Whatever your reason for starting an online business you have to get crystal clear about it.
If you’re reason is simply I just wanna make some money online, I don’t really know why I just want some more money. If that’s the only motivation, it’s not gonna cut it. Things will get hard, and we will quit when they get hard. So get clear about your reasons why.
A follow up tip on this point is if you can find mentors, people who have already achieved the result and are already living the life that you want to live, model those people, look at what they’ve done and that will give you a road map of how you can do it too.
2. ARE YOU FOCUSED ON GIVING VALUE?
Again off the back of point number 1 if the only reason you’re doing this is to make some money and thats it. Then we’re not gonna be building a business or creating anything that adds value to the world and if it doesn’t add value to the world the chances of getting success are almost 0. The key in business is giving value, helping people solve their pains and problems, helping people find solutions. The better you are at doing that the more effective you’ll be in business. Revenue is a by-product of value. If we’re starting with the intention of just making money and we don’t really care what we do.
We just want to find the most profitable thing online we’re not gonna be giving value. We won’t be helping people, therefore revenue will not maintain over a long time. We may get a flash in the pan of profit but we’re not gonna be able to create a long term platform that will enable our best life and out success. You’ve got to start with value, this doesn’t mean you necessarily mean you need to know exactly what niche or product you intent to go ahead with. You just need to be clear on what your intentions are. Are you here to help people? Or just make some money?
3. ALIGN YOUR INTERESTS WITH MARKET DEMAND
It’s all very well having a specific interest, but if no one online is searching for solutions in that area, if no body has any interest in that area whatsoever then it’s not gonna be very wise to build a business behind it. On one hand you don’t wanna build a business to just make money and not provide value. But on the other hand you don’t wanna build a business that’s around your passions if there isn’t a market for it, if no one has any interest you won’t have anyone to do business with.
So a really powerful tool to align your interests to market demand is a tool called keywords everywhere. Just google search for keywords everywhere chrome extension. What this does is when you’re on google or on YouTube it will show you the number of people who are typing the search term that you just typed into google or YouTube.
So the way that you would use this is, once you have a business idea or an interest area, think about the types of pain or problems that people may experience in that area.
Then think about the sort of things they would type into google or YouTube to potentially find an answer to solve that pain or problem, what would they be searching for online?
Pretend you’re your potential customer, go through google as them and look for the sort of thing they would click on, go on the journey that they would go on to try and solve that pain or problem. Pay close attention to the search volumes of the keywords that you’re using. That will give you a good idea of the demand that is in that area. Once you can find a correlation between something that you;’re interested in, something you have a passion about and something that the market needs, that’s gonna give you an idea of where to focus your attention when building your business.
4. BE WILLING TO TAKE ACTION IN THE FACE OF UNCERTAINTY
What I mean by this is that as we’re learning completely new skills, we’re going into completely uncharted territory. There will be many times that you’ll have literally none of the answers except a very vague idea of where you might wanna go. For example, let’s say you’ve uncovered a bit of an area that you wanna focus your intention in, you may have found one of your passions has a bit of market demand.
You may have decided to go down the e-commerce route based on some Youtube videos you’ve watched, maybe you have a couple of mentors you’ve found online who may even be focusing on the same area you’re interested in.
So you have a vague road map and idea of what you want to do. So you know nothing more than you wanna build a website on Shopify but you have no real idea how to do that. Once you’ve done that you have no idea how you’re going to market it or where you’re gonna get traffic from. For a lot of people in that situation they would be completely paralysed, they would want to know all the answers, to see every step they’re gonna take before they take any action.
That is absolutely the wrong way to be stepping into the world of online business, you’ve gotta be willing to say ‘you know what, I have no idea what I’m gonna do when I get there, all I know right now is I’m gonna build a Shopify store. So I’m literally just gonna start learning to build a Shopify store’. As you do that you’re gonna take more steps forward, you’re gonna learn more about what you need to do and the path will begin to open up before you.
To summarise you absolutely have to trust in yourself that you’ll figure it out each time you take steps forwards. They key is constant, consistent action. The second we paralyse ourselves because we can’t see the path ahead, we’re done. Be willing to take action in the face of uncertainty.
5. YOU HAVE TO BE IN THE MINDSET OF WHATEVER IT TAKES
You’re not going to quit, you will not give up and you will keep going until you succeed. If any part of you is starting this journey with any sort of mindset around ‘if this hasn’t worked in 30 days, or 3 months then I’m probably not gonna be interested, I wanna start seeing results quickly and if I don’t I’m gonna give up.’ If that dialogue is going on in the background then don’t even bother starting, think of the gym analogy. If someone says ‘If I don’t have a six pack in 30 days I’m probably gonna stop going and I’ll stop trying.’ How likely is it that person is going to succeed? It’s not gonna happen.
It’s the people who show up with the intention of ‘I don’t care how long this takes, I don’t care what I have to do, I will literally keep going until I make it happen, this is me now, this is my new way of life, this is the path I’m going down. It’s do or die, I’ll do whatever it takes and I will never quit, I could fail a thousand times but eventually I will succeed or I will die trying.’ That’s the mindset someone needs to be in, whatever it takes, this is my path now, this is my future. For someone who’s in that mindset, when it gets hard, when it gets challenging, when they don’t see the results they will fight through those challenges and they will make it happen. But someone who’s not in that mindset is gonna give up as soon as things get hard.
Before you start this journey, make sure you are willing, you are committed, and you know that whatever happens this is the path you wanna go down.