What if you stopped giving up so easily?
my first job was in grade school, babysitting kids while the church choir practiced once a week. it paid $5 an hour.
and then when I was 14, I started working at a children’s shoe store. I worked there on and off through college. I remember how excited I was to get a raise to $7.75.
I doubled up jobs starting at age 16. I worked at the grocery store with all of my friends from school, plus continued hours at the shoe store.
In college, I proctored in the nursing lab making $5.25 an hour. (on campus jobs paid minimum wage).
I also worked as a legal secretary for a little bit while in nursing school. I managed to get myself stuck in a stairwell with a bunch of chained up criminals at the city-county building... that was the end of thaT.
with every single job I’ve ever had, I didn’t choose a predetermined amount of time that it should “work for me” before I quit.
even as a teenager, I knew that’s not how it works.
you work the job with the best ethic until something happens down the road.
for me, it was graduating nursing school. that took four years. I worked several other jobs for four years while working toward my degree. FOUR YEARS.
so. this is where it gets weird.
in the current line of work I’m in, people choose a predetermined amount of time that they expect the job to “work for them,” and if it doesn’t, they’re out.
is four years too long to work your ass off if you know the end game is financial freedom, time freedom, no cap on earnings— ever? ever.
I’ve seen people peace out in four weeks. just four weeks! the same people who were on the five year college plan for a psychology degree.
you’re telling me that you can go to college and work minimum wage for five years for a degree you probably won’t even use, but working more than a month at this is just—impossible?
and we haven’t even talked about the reality of how long it takes most new small businesses to turn a profit. So let’s dive in to some small biz facts.
entrepreneur estimates that “businesses making a new product take at least three years on average to become profitable… Occasionally, a company makes a profit from a new product before three years. But these instances are rare.”
Forbes says that “according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, 75% of new businesses survive the first year, 69% survive the first two years, and 50% make it to five years.”
Whereas According to freshbooks, “a home-based online business may generate a profit immediately as it requires little money to start up. An online business only requires an internet connection and a computer—or even just a tablet or smartphone.”
ThE bottom line? Success in any field, with any small business, doesn’t happen over night because being a small business owner requires effort. and consistency. you know, for more than three weeks or however long you allotted for the business to take off.
So is it worth it? absolutely.
And are there certain business models that allow you to earn an income much more quickly than others? yup.
but like anything else worthwhile, it requires patience, grit and the understanding that you get out what you put in. the mindset and knowledge related to small business ownership and direct sales is changing.
adapt or be left behind.
