This is THE BEST TIME in history to be an entrepreneur!
Period.
If you want to start an online business – or any business for that matter – it has never been easier and more affordable to do so.
And to be clear, I’m not referring to starting the next Google or Amazon or any other venture requiring massive venture capital, but rather to the opportunity to start a business that is more drive by your desire to create something that feeds your passion, lifestyle and purpose.
Those are the kinds of businesses I love!
Why Is Now The Best Time Ever For Starting a Business?
I’m old enough to reminisce about the ‘good old days’ of trying to start an online business, how difficult it used to be to launch anything online just a handful of years ago, and how far this market has come.
I lived in Silicon Valley during the first .com boom, and I recall getting a proposal to build a relatively simple website (by today’s standards)…the best agency I found wanted $350,000 to start work and wasn’t willing to give me any clear range on what they expected the final number to look like!
High-speed Internet access came in the form of what was called a T1 Connection (most reading this will have never heard of that), and those started at about $2,500/month and were far slower than your typical cable connection.
Office space in Silicon Valley as CRAZY expensive, and we had to walk to work uphill in snow to our knees, both ways, every day…
Ok, I’m done.
But you’d have to be crazy not to realize that the advantages we have today to quickly build and launch news businesses is a game-changer for anyone that wants to build a business!
The Promise Of Technology For Entrepreneurs Is Now Real
Fifteen years ago, the promise of the Internet and automation technology was still just that for most people – a promise. We saw the potential, but it hadn’t really impacted our lives yet.
Clearly that’s changed.
And for entrepreneurs in particular, the promise of the Internet and automation technology has taken huge leaps forward, particularly in the last 12-24 months.
Think about it: you can launch a Facebook Ad Campaign in the next 15 minutes for just $5 and laser-target your ideal prospect anywhere in the world!
Your entrepreneurial great-grandfather would be doing back flips over the opportunities that creates!
A Very Few People Used To Have A Huge Advantage In The Marketplace
There’s a relatively limited number of us that have been marketing and selling online for years, and during that entire time period we had a competitive advantage if we understood the technology – how to do basic programming, how to set up a website, etc.
If you weren’t intimidated by the technical stuff, if you could get in there and understand the bits and bytes of how it worked, then you had this huge advantage in the marketplace over those who didn’t. Even if your products weren’t that great, even if your services weren’t that great, you had a little bit of an empty competitive landscape.
Technology acted as a barrier that kept pure sales, marketing, and product people out of the game, or at least forced them to spend a lot of money on people that did understand the technology.
The majority of businesses weren’t getting online and selling their products like they should because the technical limitations and the costs associated with those kept them out of the market.
Well guess what?
All of that is done or is coming to a end very, very quickly!
If you’ve been relying on any sort of technical advantage to have a leg up in the online business world, it’s just about gone.
And, more importantly for anyone likely reading this post, is that if you’ve been using your lack of technology knowledge as an excuse for not starting your online business…well, your excuses are running out of time, too!
It No Longer Requires Tech Skills To Launch An Online Business
There are a handful of things you need to be able to do to get a business up and running online:
- Build a ‘home’ for your business – typically a website
- Reach and communicate with your prospects and customers
- Process sales transactions
All of that used to be really expensive and complicated.
Now, none of it is.
Website builders and hosts, all-in-one CRM and Marketing Automation platforms, and ecommerce platforms are now so affordable and ‘point-and-click’ easy to use, that even a technology novice could be up and running with a fully functioning online business within a week.
The Tools We Use
Anytime I have this conversation, I always get asked ‘Which tools should I use?!’.
It’s a totally reasonable question because there are so many of them being developed every day, it’s hard to keep up if you are starting from scratch.
In in the interest of keeping this post relatively brief, head over to this post if you’d like to learn more about the tools we use and recommend.
Two Big Takeaways…Get Started NOW And Be REALLY GOOD At What You Do!
There are two big takeaways I’d like readers of this post to leave with:
-
NOW is the time to start your business.
There’s no excuse anymore. The playing field has been leveled. The costs are negligible. Give up your Netflix addiction and you have enough time to get it going.
You really don’t have any good excuse for not starting that business you’ve been wanting to start…even if you just have the nights and weekends to get going, it’s possible.
But it’s possible for everyone else, too. Which brings me to the second big takeaway:
2. Be REALLY GOOD at what you do!
As more and more entrepreneurs come online, the world gets more competitive.
That means that you better be damn good at what you do.
You better be damn good at delivering your services, developing great products, really connecting with your audience, and taking care of your customers – because if you don’t, there’s some hungry hustler out there that will.
There is some kid in Belarus or Ethiopa or Haiti that thinks that your American/English/German/Australian/Canadian/French/whatever ass is way too soft to beat them.
And they may be right.
If you are selling globally, you are competing globally…so you had better be prepared.
But if you’re ready and willing to put in the work, NOW is the time!
Let me know if I can help.
All the best,
Mike
