In most people’s minds, the hardest part about being an entrepreneur is starting. That’s actually not true. Starting is the easiest part and it just requires you to get off your butt and start doing things. You only think it’s the hardest part because that’s the part YOU are stuck on.
For that reason, here’s a little guide to help you get over that “but I don’t know how to start!” hurdle, so you will have no excuse not knowing how to start your company.
Days 1-5: Decide to be an Entrepreneur and learn as much as you can about it
This is the day that you finally decide to take that leap of faith and begin a real life. Some people start this day by being laid off, but hopefully you came to this conclusion on your own terms.
Living the life of an entrepreneur is tough. You work your butt off and get paid almost nothing for years, and the chances are you will fail at the end. Living the entrepreneurial life is definitely not the “easy” life.
However, in my opinion, it is the most fulfilling one.
I believe that being an entrepreneur is the best way to make sure you live a life of passion and adventure – a life that leaves you a legacy and stories to tell your grand kids.
The corporate life story
Lets look at a regular corporate life person. This person graduates from college, finds a job, gets married, possibly gets an advanced degree, has kids, advances in her job, gets old, and then there’s goodbye. That just sounds very unfulfilling to me, especially when you are working at a job you hate like most people are.
Sure, some people love their jobs, and I’m all for that, but most people settle for a job that they don’t like just because they are afraid of change and and slowly wait for their midlife crisis.
That’s when they buy their fast car.
Even for those of you who say you love your jobs, if you suddenly had $10M in your bank account, how many of you will choose to quit your job this week?
Yes, you might say that this question is unfair as you could say that about anything. However, I can tell you as a sure fact that lots of successful entrepreneurs who HAVE over $10 Million in their bank accounts keep going back to the torturous startup life because it is just too exciting and addicting to stay away from!
How To Maintain Your Online Privacy In A Gamified World
One of the few unwanted side effects of gamification is the fact that it often involves putting a lot of personal information out there. Even if you choose to keep your name anonymous, by logging your activity, you are giving potential identity thieves some very useful data.
Of course, this is true of everything in today’s online world. We’re so used to our data being all out there that we often don’t think twice about it. We agree to all T&C’s; we give every retailer our credit card details; we confess important personal information all the time.
Much of the reason we’re so willing to give up our personal information is that it no longer seems like we have a choice. Sooner or later, Apple, Google, Facebook, and all their affiliated advertisers will know everything there is to know about us. And sooner or later, there’ll be a big breach that gives criminals access to the identities of everyone online.
But that does not have to be the case. It is still possible to keep a handle on our identities, but to do this we have to take the necessary steps.
Be sparing with your personal details
It may feel like everything’s out there already, but it doesn’t have to be so easy to access. We’re not advocating that you live like a survivalist, expecting the end of the world just around the corner. But make sure that when you sign up for something, the service is reputable and trustworthy.
Even with reputable services, be careful. Do not reuse passwords – if you do, hackers will be able to access all your accounts with what they glean from just one attack. Ideally, have a billing address that is not your home address, and don’t share your home address with anyone unless absolutely necessary.
Use a VPN
A virtual private network (VPN) is touted by many as a solution to everything, from FBI surveillance to the gaze of your neighborhood hacker. Well, it’s definitely not a panacea, but it does do a lot to keep you safer than most.
The best VPN service will hide your location and encrypt your data without keeping any logs of their own. This last point is important. If they keep user logs, stay away from them. They may have innocent reasons behind it, but if they get hacked then you’re back at square one again.
Also, remember that you’re going to have to pay for a VPN actually worth its salt. While there are free versions available, you usually get what you pay for. Most of the free ones expire and you end up needing to pay anyway.
Still be Vigilant – don’t be the sucker
A VPN will not solve everything, and is no help if you are willfully handing out your information to everyone that asks. It goes hand in hand with secure web practices. It may be considered irresponsible, however, to use the internet without one. These days, our data can put us at risk of identity theft. Don’t make it any easier.
Last week I went to Los Angeles and did a pitch at the TWiST – LA event. I won first place out of 10 Startups and got the chance to chat with Jason Calacanis, who is very influential in the startup world and blogosphere, on his live show about Viralogy. Pretty awesome.
Well, just wanted to do a quick update on my life. For more details about the actual pitch, you can check out the post on the Viralogy eCommerce Blog
A lot of websites out there just measure traffic. Traffic is a quantitative number that is easy to measure and helps you see important trends and how successful campaigns are. However, especially for sites that need some kind of conversion like signing up or buying a product, undifferentiated traffic can be misleading.
A visitor is a real person
Traffic is the amount of visitors on your site. When you say “visitors”, these are actually real people, and everyone has their own personalities, their motives, and their own wants. Yes, sometimes it’s just a numbers game where a small % of your traffic will convert. However, wouldn’t you actually want 100 people on your site that are looking to really buy things than have 1000 people who are just surfing?
Stumbleupon gives high quantitative but low qualitative traffic
This misconception in traffic-success is most obviously seen with StumbleUpon. When you get “Stumbled”, your traffic that day will increase gigantically. However, chances are your average time on site will decrease dramatically. That is because Stumble can get you a lot of traffic, but not a lot of quality traffic. Even if people did read your post or article, they’re in a pure surfing mode and will likely not signup or buy your services.
In that sense, I came up with three qualitative metrics that is important to consider when driving visitors to your site. These metrics are: Relevancy, Timing, and Trust.
1. Relevancy
Relevancy is whether this person is actually part of your target market. If you own a sports site that is looking to get subscription and merchandise purchases, but the visitor on your site is not really that interested in sports and never buys anything online, this person is not relevant. It doesn’t matter if you have 10,000 people like that on your site. You won’t convert anything.
Everyone wants to be successful in some sense. Unless you are sick and perverted, you do not like failure. However, in order to grow and learn, we must not only be tolerant of failure, but we must welcome it.
And when you do fail, you must learn to pick yourself up as fast as possible and carry on. The world only cares about what you have accomplished, not how hard you tried or how mopey you are. Every successful person in this world has one thing in common: none of them gave up.
Imagine if you gave up the first time you tried to walk as a baby. Where would you be today? Even though you fell again and again, and even though it hurts when everything else in the world is about cushions, food, comfort, and care, you chose to stand up and walk again.
And you fell again.
And today, you have the ability to walk great distances without even thinking about it. What happened to that persistence you had when you were a child? Did we all regress as we grew older?
