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Would Yo Do It For Free? – Because You Will
September 2, 2009 | 1 Comment
One of the career and small business mantras I follow is that “Your business / career should be built around something you are willing to do for free“. Something so fun and rewarding to yourself that you would like to do it very often, most of your days. I can’t claim to be the creator of that idea: I have read multiple variations on it on many career and business books.
If you are going to spend eight, ten, or twelve hours a day on something it better be fun to do, at least most of the time. That is one of the reasons lifestyle small business start – those do not need this kind of advice: they are proof. In the case of equity/investor oriented business, it will not succeed if the people involved on it are not passionate about what they are trying to achieve and how they are doing it.
One of the most important reasons that you need to be doing something that you are willing to do for free is because in many situations it will be for done free. On a big company you get a paycheck regardless of the profitability of your work for the company. On your own independent business you run several risks that may end up in working for free:
- Customer refuses to pay. (Court action is possible, but sometimes less efficient when it is for less than couple thousand dollars).
- Pre-Sales Work. You may have to demonstrate your ability before you get contracted to supply product/services.
- Warranty Work. Even if you do not offer an explicit warranty, you may do mistakes. You may have to fix or compensate for you and your associates errors. After all, it is in the name of customer satisfaction – the big driver behind your growth.
- Learning curve. It is common to start a business when you know 80% of what you need to know. Learning that other 20% of what you need to know is painful and require lots of efforts. It better be fun, because it is usually not paid.
- You can’t sell. Everybody can sell. But that doesn’t mean everybody has the practice, skill, motivation and industry contacts to sell as much as the goal. There will be times when you can’t sell your own self-set goals. You better have fun at building what you are building, or you will feel frustrated.
- Possibility of Failure. A business can fail. It may happen that after many months the business can’t sell more than it consumes. Those last few months of struggle until you throw the towel would be wasted time if you didn’t enjoyed at least a portion of them.
This article is not a suggestion to pursue a futile business, to intentionally work for free, underprice, or otherwise impact your success. It is rather a strong re-iteration that you should build your business around something that you are willing to do for free. Hopefully most of the time you will win big. It just have to be fun enough so that if you end up doing something for free for a brief period of time it doesn’t becomes frustrating.
work at home business is getting popular among people in the past few years. make money at home is a dream for several individuals but now financial market offers services that can be used to finance it. One option is to get owner loan or use real estate for this purpose. Mortgage finance can be used to finance a startup home business. mortgage calculator and second mortgage is available to secure better deals for loans. Credit card is also a form of loan that they can get but is very primitive one.
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Getting paid for something you love to do feels exactly like paid vacation time. Even if its every once in a while, we should all find a way to make it happen.