Move You Business to the Home — First Secret
I decided that this week, or for perhaps the rest of this month, I was going to focus on articles of inspiration rather than ‘perspiration’, or the “how to do” type.
Many of you reading here share a common dream. I’d call it a goal, but “goal” denotes something you have defined and are doing something towards attaining.
photo credit: Bengt Nyman
Imagining swimming fast a few laps of the pool every day is a “thought”. Getting in the pool, actually swimming, and equally as important, keep track of your times regularly and perhaps comparing them to Mark Spitz’s times with the object of reaching 86% or 90% of Mark’s speed … that’s a goal.
Anyway, the “thought/goal” I am talking about is that of making a living for yourself in your home, with or without a regular “job” being part of the equation.
Many people know I work from home and often I get comments or emails along the lines of,”Why can’t I be like you, what’s the ‘secret”.
I recently had occasion to visit the web site of an old friend of mine, Robert Bruce Thompson. Many people might call Bob a ‘blogger’, but I doubt Bob himself would. His daily journals of his independent course through life and his success, and that of his wife, Barbara, in being completely independent and working from home, far predate most anyone’s ‘blog’. Bob has been writing his independent journal since the time I was living in Japan, back in the mid 1990’s. I just recently noticed that all his weekly journal entries, carefully organized by week, are still on like from the beginning of 1999 until today.
That, in itself is a big part of the puzzle so many of you have been trying to work out. Have you been doing anything, consistently, day in and day out since January 1999, and have you been keeping a daily record for the world to see? Yup, thought not.
Here are some excerpts from a message Bob wrote to one of his readers back in 1999. You can read the whole text of his “How to be like me” answer here. In this one short message, Bob basically spells out everything any one of us needs to know about independent, work at home success, on line or off.
Well, if you really want to do something like what I’m doing, there is a secret. Just do it. That’s all. It’s a simple secret, but one that most people never discover. …
I don’t necessarily mean you should write computer books, but if what you want is to be self-employed and working at home, the secret is just to get started on it. It’s easy to want to do it, to think about doing it, to plan to do it, etc. But that doesn’t count for anything. What counts is actually doing it. An old Chinese proverb says that the longest journey begins with a single step, but most people who dream about being out on their own never take that first step.
My wife just took the big step after working for the Forsyth County Library for twenty years. All her friends and co-workers had a going-away party for her, which I attended. Almost without exception, they told me that they really wanted to do the same thing, but didn’t have the nerve to do it. A typical comment was something like, "I have a good idea for a business that I could start, but I have two small kids and need the benefits this job provides, so now is not a good time."
Well, there is _never_ a good time to do anything. It’s easy to come up with reasons not to do things. If people waited for a good time to have children, the race would die out. As Kipling said, "the cowards never started, and the weaklings died along the way." When it comes to starting their own businesses, most people are cowards. They focus on the negatives, and never do end up getting started. …
. Many people start their own businesses on a part-time basis, working evenings and weekends to establish it while they continue to work their day jobs. For some, this process lasts a long time, and may even be permanent. Others are surprised to find just how quickly they can build up a business and go full-time with it. There’s a demand for competence in any field. If you do a good job, treat customers fairly, charge reasonable rates, and ask satisfied customers to tell other people about you, you may soon find you have more business than you can handle. The trick is to decide what you want to do and can do well, and then do it. ..
Things haven’t changed much, ladies and gentlemen, in the almost 10 years since Bob wrote those words. One of the major things that has changed is that getting started is infinitely easier. There are many services around today, many even free, that were not even yet a dream in a dot com mind when Bob penned those words.
What hasn’t changed in any measurable way is that Bob, and Barbara, and me, and thousands and thousands like us are still doing our thing. The opportunity for work at home business today is even greater than it was 10 years ago. I don’t have my crustal ball with me, but I’ll take an educated guess and say they will be even higher and better 10 more years from now. Just look at the explosion in iPhones and other connected devices in just the past two years. Thousand sand thousands of folks are now connected for business and pleasure who only considered the Internet ‘recreational’ just a couple years ago.
So will you continue thinking about it, or will you jump in an join the swim?
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