You’ve taken the leap and begun your journey into online entrepreneurship. You have an idea that you love, you’re serving your clients in a way that helps them, and slowly but surely you’re building up business.
There are moments when you’re mildly shocked that you’ve made this work! Who would have thunk it? You’re working steadily and realize that you’ve been in your sweatpants for the past 15 hours, there are crumbs on your couch from your last snack, and you haven’t been outside and spoken to humans other than your family members and friends in the past three days.
Something’s Got to Give
The first year of working for yourself you may find yourself lured into some interesting and unproductive habits:
- Not Getting Dressed-If you’re staying in your pajamas way past a time when you should be dressed. Fortunately, I didn’t fall into this habit but I have a lot of friends who have mentioned this issue.
- Working Like a Crazy Person-It’s really easy to work all day and all night, and all day and night, all day and all night-you get the picture!
- Doing Everything Online-Many online entrepreneurs end up working on their own from home or a co-working space because they are solopreneurs. The problem is you can’t be an island of one. That is how you will eventually kill your business.
For online entrepreneurs doing everything online is very tempting but this is a mistake and leads me to the heart of this posts and three important components to growing your virtually based business.
Socializing
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of socializing with people in real life. There are a lot of ways to do this and I’m going to break it down and touch on introverts and extroverts. For some people the idea of socializing with a whole bunch of random people can feel a bit intimidating. I am an extrovert and I’ve noticed that I am not as enthusiastic about socializing as I used to be. It doesn’t matter, human beings are social creatures and need to meet people. I think that it is very important to socialize outside of your business related endeavors.
- Family-Spend time with your family and friends. If you’re working from home build in a time during each week that’s specifically for socializing with them. They will appreciate it and you will enjoy the time you spend with them.
- Friends-Similar to your family, block a certain amount of time or one day a week that is for socializing with your friends. Each week can be different based on what projects you have to be done.
- MeetUps-I’ve shared my love of MeetUp.com before and I actually run a Meetup. They are great because the entire purpose is to get a group of people who are looking to meet other people and have fun. I would say that you should give a MeetUp two tries because the group changes each time.
- An Active Social League-There are: bowling, kickball, soccer, dodgeball, football, and volleyball leagues. In fact, there are a huge number of fun social leagues where you’re able to participate in an activity, meet new people, and have fun.
Regular socializing will open doors to you both personally and professionally. You need friends in this life and it’s important to nurture and grow your circle regardless if you’re working on your own.
Networking
Networking is a totally different beast done in a similar way to socializing . What is networking? Basically, you are meeting people affiliated with entities or businesses that will help grow your business related endeavors. That’s it in a nutshell.
I networked a ton last year and made some fantastic connections. Here are some examples of networking opportunities that you should look into:
- Conferences-I attended 3 different conferences in 2015 as a self-employed person. I was able to connect with organizations that I eventually worked with and rose my income going into the second half of the year.
- Business Related Meetups-I have learned a lot of skills at local business Meetups. I’ve also connected with people who can help me locally.
- Mastermind Groups-I joined a Mastermind group and this was one of the best decisions that I made last year. I collaborated with a small group of likeminded entrepreneurs every other week and used our collective knowledge to grow our businesses.
- Professional groups-There are networking groups related to whatever field/business you’re in. Join one!
- Fraternal Organizations-I actually belonged to a sorority in college and it was a fantastic experience. Check in with your local alumni chapter.
- Facebook Groups-Join a LOCAL Facebook group and connect with your Facebook peeps in person.
Business Coach
Every person who is super successful actively seeks the guidance and wisdom from other people who can help them move forward in their business endeavors. Currently I am deciding on who I would like to work with on business related coaching. I decided that I need to work with someone that I don’t know personally but is located in Denver. I went to a networking Meetup and actually met a person who I think will end up being my coach.
*Update-I am still looking for a business coach.
Anyway, a business coach is helpful in keeping a business person focused, on task, and big picture focused. It is very unusual for business people to not have a coach on their team. If you have any suggestions feel free to email me at shopmyclosetproject@gmail.com.
What Do You Think is Important to Consider
When Growing Your Business?
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It seems all the rage to get a business coach but they seem to be helping a lot of people! Oddly enough, working from home alone is one of the few things I miss about freelancing. lol! I love having no distractions and not having tempting food in the kitchen. 🙂 But I’m glad I do have beach volleyball and other fitness classes to balance out my desire to be alone. I don’t want to end up like Howard Hughes.
I really would like a business coach but the one I spoke with on Monday asked for $3000 which I thought was ridiculous. It was interesting though how she used a free 45 minute consultation to see if we would be a good fit (it was of course the pitch). There was always yummy food at my old job that I loved to eat all day long!
Having a business coach is what has really pushed me to the next level to grow my business. I hope you find one that does the same thing for you!
I would like to find one who is Denver based but not FinCon connected but is online business focused. Denver has a lot of tech start ups so I think that it’s possible.
I am absolutely agree with this post:D
Thanks Giulia!!