Why Bother Starting Your Own Business? Get Clear on Your Motivation Before Taking the Leap

You’re a passionate person. You love what you do. You may have an itch to run a business, or the itch may only be telling you to leave the job you have because it doesn’t interest you any more. After illuminating your true passions, you could easily find a job working in an industry/business to support that passion. You could do what you love without the emotional and financial risks and potential headaches of running your own business.

Business owners must keep showing up everyday, sick or not, tired or not, irritated or not, and commit to learning more, trying new things to keep the business running. Setting up your own business, especially with employees, requires commitment, focus, attention, and constant motivation to keep learning and innovating.

So, what’s the point of opening your own store/launching your own practice/selling your own goods? Why bother taking on all of the risk and making the commitment?

Below is a short list of motivations, some of which only skim the surface of the true core motivation. In order to keep showing up day in and day out, you need to know your core motivation. It could be to:

contribute to the world in a specific way;

have control over results from sharing ideas;

reap all the rewards;

have a flexible schedule;

be your own boss;

make more money;

stay at home with the family;

feel emotionally healthier.

How do you find out what actually motivates you? As a three-year old child ceaselessly asks …

How to Reinvent Your Business to Stay Competitive in a Challenging Economy

The last couple of years were very challenging for entrepreneurs. One of the main issues, besides just staying in business, is how to maintain a competitive edge. Many small business owners had to lower their prices but other reinvented their businesses to still attract new clients. If you lower your price, you will need more clients to make the same amount of money were already making. Is that the best solution? There are ways to work smarter not harder!

How to attract more clients without losing money and staying competitive.

1. Repackage your services or products. For example, let’s say you sell your physical product for $299, you can now offer the digital version for half of the price. You won’t have to change anything on your marketing just redirect people to a different webpage and since it is less expensive, you may get more clients. You’re offering a new and abridged version of the product at a lower cost because you aren’t paying for the physical version. The most important part of this equation is to follow-up with the people who bought the digital version so you could sell them later the more complete physical version at your regular price. If people like your program, they will be more willing to buy again from you.

Another example, if you work one-on-one with clients, consider offering a group session at a reduced price. Your clients will each pay a little less but since you will be working with a group …