Part time business - Start something you love or follow the trend
This is an article that will answer the hot question from people – whether to start a business that you love or start a business on something that is profitable. If you confuse with this decision, I also suggest a proper way to solve the confusion in this article.
One of the hot question that most people ask when they want to start their own business is whether they should start something around what they love or something that is hot, trendy and profitable. Yes, I also think that this is a very important question to ask before you start any business. Your decision is going to be your main business theme in future.
Let’s discuss the pros and cons of each decision so you will have a clear idea on the options that you have.
Do What You Love, and the Money Will Follow You
In recent years, there are a lot of experts suggest that we should start a business around something that we love. Their advice will be “Do What You Love and the money will follow you”. This is a quite a interesting and attractive idea to start a business and it is no doubt that the book “Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow”, by Marsha Sinetar can be such as hot seller.
There are a few benefits to follow this advice:
- It may sound easier for you. I believe no people will complain if they are given a task that they love to do. I also believe that people will spend all their time on something that they love. I even believe that people will be happy if they spend time on their hobby every day and make money from it. So if you start your part time business around what you love, the chances that you will success are higher. You can spend most of your time on it without feeling any boring and weariness.
- You are the expert. If you are passionate on something, you can easily become an expert on it. Since you have spent so much time on it, your know-how, experiences and skills are higher than others. Well, people like to deal with those people they think is expert. So this is the way your part time business can grow.
Now, don’t you think it is great to start a part time business on your hobby? But please wait a minute and read on.
Yes, it may sound great that you can make money from your hobby. However, there is a myth on this – There are no guaranteed that you will succeed on this. This is because its risks!
Some of the risks are:
· The market is not big. You start a business around your passion. You passionate about it but not everyone in this world. So your market may be very niche until it is hard for you to really make money from it.
· Competition. If your hobby is too general, then chances that someone already start their business on it. If there are hundred thousands of people doing it, then the chances your business can survive will be low.
· The unexpected factors. Maybe you underestimate the cost to start your business around your hobby, or maybe you overestimate its potential, or it takes more energy and efforts to succeed. All this unexpected factors may ruin your business.
While pursuing your passion sounds great to everyone, however, there are more you have to think and plan. Maybe because of this, I found there are another group of business owners start their business in a totally different way.
Follow the Trend, the Money will Follow You Too
Generally, for this idea, you go out and find a trend which is hot or going to hot soon. Then you start building a part time business around it and make tremendous of money from it. There are many examples who have built their success using this simple theory: Jeff Bezos(Amazon), Ebay(Pierre Omidya), Michael Dell(DELL) and many others.
Some of the advantages to start a part time business are:
- It is Hot. You are starting a business on something that is hot and highly demanded by market. That’s mean your business can grow like a fire and spread out faster than you can imagine.
- Less Effort. Sometime you don’t really have to push your business that hard as you can leverage the trend and it will push your business to the next level.
- The potential of growing. I found that many businesses that start on this way can grow to a level that is hardly achieved if you start your business with the first idea.
Of course, there are also some disadvantages too:
- It is not easy to find the hot trend. What I mean is it is not easy to find a trend that can be remained for a long time. For example, Olympic Game is a hot trend but it is a short term trend and it is hard for you to start a stable long term business on it.
- You have to be fast. Trend is just like a current and sometimes you have to act fast to capture it. But in some cases, it is hard for us if we are new to everything about business.
- Competition. Just like your hobby, some trend maybe too general until the competition is quite high.
Well, my first impression about this business starting advice is it doesn’t sound easy at all. I just think that it is quite confusing for a newbie to start business by finding a trend. So what can we do?
What I have chosen – Combine Both Advices
I knew and understand that I can start a part time business in 2 ways. I also confuse for quite some time to make my decision. I have to decide how to start my online part time business. I really don’t know what to choose. So in order to overcome this confusion, I made my decision that I can combine the 2 advices together!
First, I start a business around my passion and something that I love. This will ensure I can spend most of my time on the business (doing something I like) and learn how to run or build a business. After that, I will keep searching the trend. As my experience increased, I can start finding the trend in my business field and analysis it. Once I find the correct trend, then I will start another business according to the trend. The skill of market research is important here and we can learn it from our first passionate business.
My theory is quite simple and is easy to understand and follow. If you have any new ideas, you can share it here with us.
Part Time Business, Do you have What It Takes To Start One?
This is an article that discussed what it takes to start a part time business. If you want to start a part time business to earn extra income monthly, then you must read this article to find out the requirements to start one.
Nowadays, many people has a dream to start a part time business that can earn them some extra income monthly or even cover all their expenses and become their full time income other than a job.
If you think like this, you are not alone. Business is an attractive income source that many people dreams to own. In America, some reports estimated that there are 32 million in this country are in business, either part time or full time. Besides that, study also shows that there will be more housewives start their own part time business.
Actually starting a part time business is quite easy. Maybe you can get started by joining a MLM company or just start web site and make money from the internet business. However, the story will be different if you want to start a success and profitable part time business. It takes more than what you can imagine.
Do you have what it takes to start a part time business? This is what this article is talking about.
What It Really Takes?
Without further ado, let me share with you some of the requirements that I know and found from my experience to start my own part time business:
- Energy to run the business. You are going to run a business part time. You may have a job or something that you do as your full time income. So you need more energy so that you can run your part time business. Especially in the starting stage, you may have to work extra 5-6 hours per day to stabilize your business. So the first question you should ask is do you have this energy to do it? Anyway from my experience, I found that we can gain more energy by sleeping well, eating properly and exercising. By changing your life style, you can gain more energy to run your own business.
- The Strong Desire. How strong is your desire to start a business? I think this is the main motivation source that we have especially at early stage where we might not make any money Can you continue and persist with the hard works that may not bring any fast results to you? Can you wait patiently for the results and keep doing and trying? Well, the strong desire I mentioned here is WHYs that I mentioned in my articles. You must have a strong why for motivation and overcome all the obstacles that you may have. I have seen so much of people fail by giving up because they are lack of strong desire.
- Learn and Take Action. There is another reason why people will fail to start their business – too ego to learn and lazy to take actions. Majority of the people do not have any training and experience in business. So like everything else in our life, you must learn before you can build up a successful business. Taking action is also important. If you keep learning and never take any practical action, then what you have learnt is useless and wasting time only. I have seen a lot of people and even some of my friends are too ego to learn and lazy to take action. So I hope you can remember this and break the block of being success.
- Self Discipline. You are going to run a business part time, so you properly have a schedule that you must follow to get things done. Please ask yourself this question based on your pass experience: What is the level of your self-discipline? For example, I’m a great procrastinator. I can find any reasons to procrastinate my jobs (I know I must do it though). Therefore I was not going anywhere the time I tried to start my part time online business. Until one day, my mentor reminded me that I was lack of self discipline and I start to understand how importance of self discipline. You are the boss for your part time business. So without strong self discipline, its progress may stop and slow down as everything is depending on you. So if you are like me, then you must learn how to control yourself and increase your self-discipline power. Don’t worry, this can be trained up.
- Business Plan. There are a lot of ways to start a part time business. However, each of them has a common requirement – business plan. In your business plan, you must understand your market and where are your customers. You may also need to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Generally you business plan should leverage your strengths and cover your weaknesses. Besides that you may also choose the business that fit these 2 factors. Last but not least, you must understand and know the demand of your market and hence provide some kind of unique value to them. This will guaranteed your business success in the shortest time. Well this is not as easy as you think, but you can make it if you know you must.
- Family Support. We are human and we need supports from our love one to do anything. Their supports can be our biggest motivation to success. If you want to start a part time business, then the first thing you have to do is make your family members, your wife and your family to support it. Try your best to persuade them. I think that this is a must especially if you are married and you have commitment to your spouse, children and family. Just sit down and discuss.
Conclusion
The 6 requirements above are more about the internal factors that is under your control. Of course, there are also external factors such as capital problem, marketing results and other unexpected factors in business. However, I believe if you can manage those internal factors very well, then external factors can be solved easily. So just sit down, spend some time and fulfill all the 6 requirements above before you start your own part time business.
Are You Ready?
