Last Thursday my family and I went to Legoland in New York. It opened this past spring, and we’ve been looking forward to visiting for months. We didn’t want to have to deal with crowds (or the heat) so we figured late October would be the perfect day.
It turns out that we chose right, as while it was a little bit cool it was not crowded at all! We didn’t have to wait in line for a single ride. Or anything really. If we wanted to do something, we did it. It was wonderful, and unlike most theme park experiences that we’ve had.
It was a really fun day all around. The only surprise we had was that it turns out that my daughter isn’t really into rides at the moment. She’s young though, so I completely understand. She only wanted to go on a few rides. She liked a (really) little kids train ride, so her father and I took turns going on that with her (five times!) We all went on a spinning ride that she liked too (three times), but those and a carousel were all of the rides that were her speed. She did go on a ride where she got to drive a car, but as she said herself…she kept getting into accidents and did NOT want to go on it again.
But that’s OK! As we told her, it’s your day, so you can decide what we do. We wanted her to have fun at the park…and while she wanted to do isn’t what we would have chosen, she was happy and that’s what mattered!
I really feel that your online business should be like that too. You decide what it is that YOU enjoy, and that’s what you should do. If you don’t like Facebook? Then don’t use it as part of your business. If you love trying out and promoting other people’s products? You should do that! If you like talking? Start a podcast. If you want to work a half of an hour a day, or 3 hours, or just on weekends…well then you should do that. That’s how you’ll be successful. If you’re doing things that you hate, you’ll definitely be a lot slower and drag your feet. But if you’re doing things you love, it really won’t feel like work and you’ll want to do it, even in your free time.
I know that may sound silly, or oversimplified. But I really mean it and strongly feel that way. My daughter was able to do the parts of the park that made her happy, and didn’t bother with the rest. She had an awesome day, and while it might not have been for everyone, she was happy. You can totally do the same thing with your business. Now let me just throw this in now and say that obviously you can’t do whatever you want and make money online…you have to be doing reasonable things…but you can definitely pick and choose the things you want (and don’t want) to do within your business and still make money online.
Here’s a great example: I am one of those people that just doesn’t like Facebook. I know, how horrible. I can’t help it. I’m an introvert and I just can’t get into it.
So I don’t use it in my business (or personal life for that matter.) I’ve been told by people that I NEED to use Facebook to have a successful business, but obviously they’re wrong. Now, if I ignored all ways of having conversations with my audience, that might be a problem. But I’m on Twitter, and I’ll happily answer any emails that I get. That’s my choice. You might love Facebook and want to use it within your business, and that’s great for you.
Some people have 8+ hours a day to spend on their business. And that’s wonderful for them. But not everyone does. What if you can only put an hour a day in? There’s nothing wrong with that! You just need to tailor what you’re doing to fit the time. So it probably wouldn’t be the best use of your time to create a product from scratch, since at an hour a day, you’d probably have to wait a long time until the product was completed.
But if you wanted to build a list and do email marketing? That’s totally doable in an hour a day. If you wanted to create and grow a blog? Again, not an issue. Affiliate marketing is something else that’s perfect in an hour or less a day. If you really wanted to create and sell your own products, you could totally do it in an hour a day if you used PLR (private label rights) so that you weren’t starting from scratch.
So again, you can still do what you want…what makes you happy. And I guarantee that if you’re doing things that make you happy, you’ll want to put more time and effort into it, and you’ll do better much sooner than if you’re doing things you don’t like and don’t want to do.
Enjoy,
