A friend of ours is still working a job, but he’s thinking about starting an online business. He’s not crazy about his job, but he’s not exactly motivated to leave it, either. It’s that ‘leading a life of quiet desperation’ thing.
He asked me how long I thought it would take him to start making a profit.
His question caught me a little off-guard. While the Ninja and I make a nice living, I don’t always think in such black and white terms, like how long it takes to see a profit from doing ‘x’ activity. If money were my prime motivator, I’d have stayed in L.A. and kept working in the film industry, which is what I was doing in my early 20s.
Clearly, our buddy isn’t prepared to go whole hog, quit his day job completely, or take a part time one, which would allow for the time it takes to build a business online. His job pays well enough, he says, and he’s kind of happy, in an existentially miserable sort of way. There’s nothing wrong with that. Good people stay at lousy jobs for worse reasons.
I told him that in truth, it would take longer than he’d probably like.
Quick-talking gurus and self-proclaimed experts of all stripes are online, claiming to have made millions in their first few months. And they’ll gladly sell you their secret ingredients.
I hated to tell my friend that he’d probably wind up disappointed, but he lacks the number one ’secret sauce’ that everyone who successfully builds a business online has got to have: Commitment.
Other secret sauce must-haves are persistence and patience.
The three virtues.
Andrew Rondeau posted about this too, recently. Check it out. His main point, which I agree with whole-heartedly, is that coming up with the idea is the easy part. What’s more difficult is putting the systems into place that will make your internet business profitable.
