Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

By Herb Firestone from SEO for Smart People.

If you’ve owned your own business before and you’re on the diving board trying to decide whether to dive headfirst back into the entrepreneurial pool, you’re not alone. If this is your situation, or even if you’re considering entrepreneurship for the first time, let’s just say, Yaro absolutely hit the nail on the head when he said, “When you own your own business you may not make any real money until you sell it.”

Not only was I able to sell my business and see some real cash, but imagine my surprise and good fortune when the purchaser agreed to take me and two of my employees along in the deal.

The benefits of working for someone else are obvious. There’s definitely something to be said for the security of a regular paycheck, direct deposited I might add, health insurance reliably taken care of, and even one paid day off per month, which you can save up and take all at the same time.

The advantages look even better when you apply the “Jeff Foxworthy” test as follows:

You know you own your own business when you’re always on call and must be ready, willing and able to do whatever it takes at any time of the day or night – same as Superman.

You know you own your own business when you’re simply expected to wear all the hats and do a little of everything.

On the other hand, you know you work for someone else when there’s serious specialization of tasks. There’s one person, for example, to handle domain registration and hosting, another for email and tech support; still another for logo and web design, two for programming, even more for seo, a project manager to stay on top of it all, a sales department with sales assistants, and especially a book-keeper to make the past due collection calls and a receptionist to keep the telemarketers away.

• You know you own your own business when your first three calls of the day are, “may I speak to the person who handles your advertising;” would you be able to help the children of the world today; and we’re the people who handle the copier in your office, when you know you don’t even have one?
• You know you own your own business when it’s the last day of the quarter and your 941 tax form is due, not to mention your Texas Workforce Commission report, and to add insult to injury, it’s payday besides.
• You know you own your own business when the air conditioning stops working, the electricity goes off, and the bathroom is flooded.
• You know you own your own business when you’re waiting in the checkout line at the office supply store and one of your employees calls on your cell phone to inform you that she won’t be coming in today … and by the way, we’re out of paper clips.

So, why on earth would anyone even consider leaving all that behind to return to entrepreneurship?

Could it be the thrill of the hunt, the excitement of the chase, the willingness to try, the challenge to get it done and the sense of accomplishment when you do?

So, what’s the solution? Get off the board, walk back around to the shallow end, and slowly reenter entrepreneurship by getting your feet wet one small step at a time.

With the fourth of July upon us, we in America love England and all, but without that entrepreneurial spirit of independence back in 1775, we’d probably still be paying taxes to the Queen today.

So that’s the why. But what about the “how, when and where?”

It only takes one word to answer the question, “how,” and that word is blogging. Where else but the blogosphere could you start a business for less than a hundred dollars, write a seven hundred word article, have it posted on someone else’s blog, and never even mention once what you’re selling?

The when could be today! For the “where,” visit my new blog, SEO for Smart People, Herb Firestone’s SEO blog, to see for yourself why, “when it comes to seo, there are no dummies!”

Herb Firestone
www.seoforsmartpeople.com

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