Dare To Act

If you want to succeed in an online business. If you want to create an extra income stream and test yourself in the marketplace. If you want to build something wonderful, something of value which will grow and grow. You must act. You need to stop procrastinating and move into the battle zone. You need to pick up your rusty sword and jump into the pit. You need to advance.

Yes, you need to research your target market to see if your idea has legs. You need a little plan to drive forward. I say a little plan because I am not in favour of drawing up elaborate plans with three-year income forecasts. This may be ok once you have established yourself in the market but for a start up, three-year projections based on nothing are a waste of time.

You can get bogged down in planning, using it as an excuse to start. Constant planning is a way to stay safe. To stay comfortable in the headquarters behind a desk; to avoid the risk. If you don’t act, you won’t accomplish anything. Once you’ve got a basic plan then put it into operation. Get your battle gear on, leave the headquarters and go into the field. Enter the battle.

The feedback you will get from the market once you start will need to alter your plans anyway. The market will give you back live data, this is better than any projections, you can act on this. Once you act your confidence will grow and you will wonder why you waited for so long. You can’t wait until everything is just right because everything will never be just right. Once you commit to action your determination and inner strength will come into play. You will take advantage of bad circumstances and move with them.

A good way to get over the fear is not to look too far ahead. The plan I have for my business is simple, I want to build a successful business over the course of the next ten years. I have a vision of where I want it to be in ten years. To achieve it I have to accomplish many small goals, each goal will drive me further forward towards the grand vision. The goals are broken down into months and days. I know what I need to do today. Small things like altering a few items on my website, bringing my accounts up-to-date and sourcing a designer for my newsletter.

If you have a plan but are reluctant to start then break down your goals into small steps. Just decide to do one thing and do it. Once you start to move forward you will be committed to achieving the first goal you have set yourself. Before you know it your business will spring to life and you will wonder why you delayed so long. Once you are in the field, new opportunities will show themselves, things you never could have expected will come into play bringing with them new ideas . So roll up the map, put the battle plan into your pocket, strap on your tin hat and move to the front.

Taking Action

As I look back over the year at how far I’ve progressed with my business it strikes me that I’ve reached this point now because of a single reason. That reason is taking action. Ignoring most of the advice given by government agencies and banks about meticulously planning every move you make. Advice about researching your market and laying out a business plan, a marketing plan, a buying plan and any other plan you can think of.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not devaluing the importance of planning and research but I do think that we can get bogged down in planning. I mean what is the point of producing a three-year forecast profits spreadsheet based on guesswork. If you haven’t started your business you can’t predict profit potential. You need some hard data to work with.

When I first decided to start a business I read all the usual blurbs and instructions on the business sites and provided by the banks, and to be honest there was so much information I was starting to get depressed. It looked like you couldn’t start a business unless you had an MBA in business studies.

I wasted too much time trying to create some fancy business plan to please who? Why was I listening to advice from the banks about business plans, I mean if you were taking business advice would you want to listen to organizations which have bankrupt themselves and taken the country with them. Who are the banks to offer advice. I think they are now completely discredited.

Eventually I asked myself why I was labouring over a business plan that meant nothing to me. I wasn’t after any money from the banks so what was I doing wasting my time following their instructions? And wasting my time was exactly what I was doing.

What’s the point of spending months writing some fancy plan that no one was going to see. I finally woke up and ditched the business plan and the marketing plan. My plan was simple; I wanted to set up an extra income stream. I wanted to do this by starting a business part-time. I didn’t need to write that down. I didn’t need to make pointless profit projections. I needed to take action and just do it.

So I jumped in. I bought some stock and started selling it. I invested in a website, I established relationships with suppliers and I was in business. As I got feedback from the marketplace I made adjustments to my business based on hard feedback. Things happened which I could never have expected and I came up with solutions then moved on.

Before I knew it I was in business, solving problems daily. Coming up with new strategies. Buying new stock and up to my eyes in everyday business activity. I learned more in a month of being in the marketplace than I would have by reading all the tons of books out there about how to start a business.

So if you’re thinking of starting your own business. Forget about reading all the opinions from people who have probably never run a business and just dive straight into it. Take action! Taking action is the most important thing. You can deliberate forever, plan for perfection that you’ll never achieve or just jump in. I recommend the jumping in. Once you commit yourself you will start receiving hard data back from the marketplace, from these facts you can base future decisions.