I often run into first time business owners who are trying desperately to break out of their W-2 lifestyles.  In fact, they’re going to try EVERYTHING!  They start a service business (typically taking the skill they are employed for and turning it into something they can be self-employed at), dabble in real estate, set up a website, join a MLM and start selling on eBay.  Or at least, they do some kind of version of that.

If they’re lucky, one of the things will take off.  Otherwise, they’re just scampering around trying to keep too many plates twirling in the air while they’re reading 5 different training manuals.  

Start off with one thing.  Just one thing.  It doesn’t matter which one, but learn it well.  Learn how to create good trails of documentation and write systems.  Learn how to buy, sell, and create value for your customers.  Then duplicate it within the environment you know.  

After it’s on auto-pilot, it’s time to try something new.

I realize that I needed to take my own advice.  Some of my recent changes have been slam-dunks.  Starting a tax practice with Bill was so easy for both of us.  We’d both had and sold tax practices before.  There were some little nuances to work out on how we worked together, but we could short cut most of the conversations because we had experience in what we were doing and building.    

Starting this web challenge was HARD.  I really overcommitted and over estimated what I could do in the short term.  I spent the first 3 months just figuring out the “lingo”.  I found a fantastic outsourcing programmer from Argentina, Jorge Manzitti from BlogBusiness2Days.com and LatAmConnect .com.   And we built some landing pages.  They had some success, but it didn’t kick the cash that I thought it would.

The unexpected bonus was that I’m now meeting some real rock stars in the Internet world.  One gentleman went from zero to $50 million in 9 months.  (Makes my little ol’ plan look small)  Another gentleman showed me how he built a business that gives him $15K+ per month and only takes a few hours a week.  In fact, we’re working right now to systemize that process.  

So, I’m focussing on just two things with my B-I project right now:  affiliate marketing and a referral program that helps business owners build their business.  I’m doing a free teleseminar on the referral program on 8/9.