A new journey

Have you noticed that when you want to find some information about a particular thing, that you start noticing that thing all the time and you hadn’t noticed it previously?

For instance, you want to buy a car, you start researching and you narrow it down to a particular model. You’d never really noticed this type of car before but now you see it everywhere. You’d never realised there were so many of these cars around.

For me at the moment it’s not cars. Mine is ten years old this year but doing perfectly fine at the moment (hope I’m not jinxing things by saying that). For me at the moment it’s having my own business. I mentioned this a while ago on this blog and it was really only a thought then. It’s still pretty much a thought but if I don’t start doing something about it, all I’ll ever do is sit here and think about it and not much else.

So with this hypothetical (at the moment) business of mine I’ve kind of got an idea that that’s what I want to do. The thought of going to work at the same office every day for the next 20 years or so frightens me silly. Having said that I’ve been at my current workplace for 15 years and I’ve accrued a great amount of long service leave. As a friend in a similar position has said to me she doesn’t know whether it’s a blessing or a ball and chain. The ball and chain being the safety net of having this leave and not wanting to give it up. This is part of what’s been holding me back.

But, I figure, I work four days a week and I theoretically have one more business day each week to concentrate on something else. I also have other time I’m sure I could make if I put my mind to it.

So, back to this business idea. I haven’t got an exact plan so I thought I’d start researching things on the internet and I’ve found all sorts of things to read. Of course, I haven’t read them all yet. This heatwave is taking it’s toll – see – already I’ve got excuses.

This hypothetical (at the moment) business idea is of course internet/web based and that’s as far as I’ve got. My initial thought was that I could build websites for people but that’s not really want I want to do. My experience with people wanting websites thus far is that they usually want it for practically nothing and the value of building a good website is really undervalued, especially when it comes to the content.

So I’m conducting my research to see if I can come up with any other bright ideas. I’ve already got my business name decided and while I won’t say it yet because I haven’t registered it, it was so obvious in the end that I wonder why I didn’t think of it before.

There is a wealth of information freely available out there that I’m starting to delve into. Yaro Stark’s blog – Entrepeneur’s Journey is a good starting place. As he writes, being an entrepeneur is hard work but it’s doable if you really want to. Am I an entrepeneur? Don’t know really but I’d like to try.

Via Problogger, I’ve also downloaded the Teaching Sells report on how to grow your online business. I realise I haven’t even started an online business yet, but thought it might have something useful for me.

Last, but not least, I read a book review by Shai Coggins about a book called What Next – The Complete Guide to Taking Control of your Working Life.

My task for this week – because as I told someone recently, I work better with deadlines – is to read more of Yaro Stark’s website, read the Teaching Sells report and see if I can get hold of ‘What Next’. I’ll report back next week.