Imagine two would be Entrepreneurs lets call them John and Mark. Both of them are working in jobs and dreaming of being their own boss heading up a successful business.

To save argument just imagine that both these guys have the same business ides. The idea is to start offering an online backup service to small businesses in Ireland to help them safeguard the information on their computers in the event their PC crashes.

Here is how Mark approaches his dream.

He makes a list of all the tasks that he needs to complete and draws up some goals for where he wants to be in six months.

He finds a company that provides white label software for setting up your own name brand backup service.

He commissions a web designer on elance to create him a website. He finds a hosting company to provide him with secure hosting space. In the meantime he puts together a list of business owners that he knows and calls them all outlining his new business and offering them to use the service at a reduced cost.

Each day in his lunch hour at work he calls 5 businesses and makes his pitch. Sure to begin with he gets very little interest, actually it is hard to even get past the secretary in most places, but it only takes him 20 minutes per day and after about 4 weeks he starts to get the hang of it and is signing up 1 business per week for a 1 month free trial.

After 6 months Mark is just ahead of his targetted goal and asks his boss if he can work a 4 day week, to which his boss agrees.

Now he spends half a day per week calling round to business parks and offices, and the other half day ringing his current customers and making sure they are happy with the service and asking them if they can recommend any other business owners that might be interested in the service.

He continues like this for another 6 months and smashes through his targets for the business. Now each month the business is generating enough income to replace 75% of his full time salary, he knows that if he were to be working at it full time he would be away. So he meets with his employer and explains the situation and amicably hands in his resignation. Mark is free from a Job and is now full time in his own business.
And this is how John approaches it.

He sits at his desk at work and fantasises about being his own boss, what kind of car would he be driving an nice new BMW 7 series - yes thats right.

He tells all his work colleaugues that they are wasting their lives, and that he is going to start his own business and break free from the rat race. Every lunch hour he spends 30 minutes reading a forum blog or coming up with a new strategy. Perhaps it would be better to offer other services as well as online backup, surely these business owners must want other things.

He dreams up all sorts of other schemes that could work alongside the main online backup business. Yes his company is going to be big, if Google can do all these different things then surely why can’t my business.

A month passes and John is still tweaking his business plan and financial forecasts, wow look after a year if all goes well I will be loaded he thinks.

6 months passes and by now all of Johns workmates and friends have got sick of hearing about how John is going to revolutionise the world of online backup. They joke amongst themselves that John is a bit of a loser.

A year passes and John has now has his business plan professionally bound and got a designer to create lots of different logos and created business cards and brochures. Now he feels he is ready.

He marches into his bosses office and tells him he is quitting. Life is too short to be sitting in a dead end job, John is going places.

He searches on daft and finds a nice central dublin office suite for just €1800 a month. He buys some furniture and sets up the office.

On his first day working full time for himself John gets in early. He spends the morning chatting to a mate of his on Skype about all the ideas he has for his business. Then he spends 2 hours adjusting the furniture in his office so it will look its best for his clients. 4:30pm comes and it is time to go home, hell he is the boss he can leave when he wants.
Now expand this same scenario out over 24 months.

Mark keeps adding customers each month and the customers he has are referring new ones on to him. He has been able to take on a telemarketer to set up appointments for himself to make his day more productive. He is signing up plenty of customers for his service. Sure there have been setbacks like the day when his backup server crashed and he had to let all his customers know they would have to rerun their backups, but these things are to be expected when running a growing business.
Meanwhile John has taken out lots of adverts in the paper and spent a fortune on a TV advert on the Dublin city channel, well he did look good sitting there in his best suit showing off his offices. But none of this has resulted in many customers. He spends a lot of his day on forums moaning and bitching about how it is so difficult to run a business these days. He has run out of cash so decides to take out a loan from the bank, surely it is only a matter of time before his business “comes good

So the moral of this story is start small and build up your business slowly, take action a little and often and you will get there. Don’t waste your time dreaming and procrastinating as this will only end in disaster and frustration!Stop reading my blog and take some action in your business!