I Felt Lost, Alone and Out of My Depth

Building a home business has been tough, especially going the route that I did. It’s been diverse, interesting, exciting, rewarding, crushing, stifling and draining but above all it’s been unpredictable and lonely.

I never knew if it would succeed or if I would ever reach out and actually make a difference.

Secondly, I could never imagine actually making any money from it because it would just be too good to do something I have a great passion for and have someone pay me for it – right?

It’s coming together now and the road I am on has a few less forks in it, the dust has settled and I can see a fairly clear path ahead – but let me tell you that it wasn’t like this for a very long time.

You see, I never really knew if I had it in me to succeed. But then – who does? You never know until you try and it takes a leap of faith to absolutely go for it. I felt like there was a huge pool of success that people were happily swimming in, but I was too afraid to take the plunge and so I settled for splashing about in the puddles around the edge.

Plus there was pressure to learn fast, implement and do something tangible. I needed something to show my family. I felt that if I could say ‘Here, look see – I have a website, I’m not just on here chatting’, they would be more inclined to have some faith in what I was doing.

But what I didn’t realise was this ‘It wasn’t that they didn’t have faith in me, it was that I didn’t have faith in myself’. I needed to prove it to myself!

Now don’t get me wrong – I have had great support, really great. But unless your family or friends have experience in building an online business, it’s near on impossible for them to understand what is involved – so don’t waste too much time trying to explain.
I build my own websites, but first I needed to learn how. I wanted to help others to turn a business dream into a reality, but first I needed to experience it myself – I needed to be credible – and sheesh – that takes time! Time I felt I needed to constantly account for!

My husband often used to jokingly ask ‘Are we rich yet?’. He was under the illusion that for the amount of hours I spend on the computer, we should be dripping in cash. I’d be really interested to know how far he would have come in the same space of time – but we’ll never know because it’s not in his nature to do this.

Plus, I have this awful tendency to come up with a ton of ideas and jump from one great thing to another, I needed to calm down, focus, implement and build one thing at a time. I basically needed to practice what I preach.

But why am I telling you all of this?

Because I have wasted a crap load of time and time is the one thing that you need when you are trying to build a business.

• I’ve wasted time wondering if I could do it

• I’ve wasted time explaining ‘What I am Doing’ to family and friends

• I’ve wasted time learning more than I will ever need

• I’ve wasted time procrastinating and wondering whether I’m good enough

• I’ve wasted time because I didn’t have enough faith in myself

Honestly? I’m hoping that if you are feeling lost or alone you might gain a little hope from this post. Don’t ever give up and don’t ever feel that you are alone because most entrepreneurs go through this whilst they build their businesses. The successful ones are those who realise that they do have what it takes and they push through any barriers or constraints that they might have.

Your business won’t be built overnight – it does take time, but don’t feel pressurised to ‘prove’ anything. Just keep working at it and have faith in yourself and your abilities.

Realistically it can take 4-5 yrs for a fledgling business to turn a good profit, so if you are no where near that stage and you’re doing alright then give yourself a pat on the back.

Accept that family and friends really have no concept of building an online business from scratch so don’t waste time trying to explain it all. And know that you are not alone – even if it really does feel like it at times. There are many people who are in the same position and even more who can help you.

So make the plunge into the pool of success and know that there are other more experienced swimmers out there to keep you afloat if ever you get out of your depth. Don’t continue to paddle in the puddles because toe-dipping won’t bring you the success you deserve!

Photo Credit Erik Charlton

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