This post originally appeared on the ESatUoG blog and has been slightly adapted.
It took me about 6 months to finally decide to register a business (this blog), the registration itself was something I started to consider during the fall 2012 semester. The blog itself I had been working on since January 2012 on blogger but only using it as a non-commitment based blogging experience that would give me some added social media marketing experience.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but for some reason I couldn’t justify spending $10 to register a domain name but was willing to purchase a lunch out for the same value every Friday. An online business is relatively inexpensive compared to bricks and mortar businesses that used to spring up all the time in the past. You don’t have inventory, you don’t need staff or other employees and you can literally run your business from your house (well until you make it big). BUT of course there are always things that still prevent us from doing what we want, and here are a few things that I believe prevent young and old from really “taking the plunge”.
Fear of failure
Lack of support
Confidence
Now I know there are some people out there that are always terrified to take a big step, whether it is entrepreneurial or just an everyday task. One of the most important things is that these individuals need to seek to fix all 3 of the above in order to get themselves to where they want to be.
Fear of Failure
The general advice is that failure allows you to learn and it’s when people fail and continue to NOT learn that we have a serious problem. Don’t sweat the small stuff, if your first crack at a business doesn’t follow through you just need to pick yourself up and try again. But please, don’t make the same mistakes you made before.
Lack of Support
For students at the University of Guelph that are interested in starting a business, one of the things that can be easily checked off the list is lack of support. There are a variety of helpful resources available on and off campus that can help would-be entrepreneurs get the support they need to get started. I was able to take advantage of the resources in the city of Guelph to help learn, push me to actually register my business and give me some guidance when I had questions that needed to be answered.
After recently joining the Yakezi network I was able to join a community of like minded individuals, blogging about similar topics and who have gone through similar processes. I was given the push I also needed to finally put some money into my blog and get it over to WordPress (and join the real bloggers out there). I’m sad to say that I will be losing my Google PR of 3 but my Alexa rating was ridiculously high so I won’t be missing that. The support now and in the future that I will be able to receive through the Yakezi network will be invaluable so I am very happy to have found it.
Confidence
Once the other 2 pieces fall into place you will gain the confidence to move forward with your business idea.
Future entrepreneurs, good luck with the beginning of whatever venture you hope to pursue and I will leave you with this incredibly corny but true quote.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” -Wayne Gretzky
I will continue to update on my progress here through blog posts on occasion as well.
