In this article, I would like to share with you a series of business and life lessons that I have learned over the years that I believe have helped me become successful in this business.


To begin, you will have set backs in this business. If you believe that you are going to be making $200,000 a year when you first open for business, you need a check-up from the neck up.

One of the first things you will find out in this business is that it usually takes a while to find out what advertising works in your area and you will lose a fair bit of money doing this.
Dont let it get you down and make you think you arent cut out for this job. Instead, analyze your advertising and get someone else to look at it.
Perhaps your target market wasnt correct? Lets say you put an ad in an industry specific paper like a builders magazine so you can get networking jobs wiring up new buildings. When a builder needs to find someone to do the networking, will they think to look in the builders magazine? or the Yellow Pages? They wont expect to see a networking ad in their builders magazine so will probably reach for the Yellow Pages.

It is possible that your targeting was correct but your ad was hard to see amonst all the other computer repair ads. You have to be analytical with your advertising as it wont work immediately. Tweak your advertising until you find out what works. Success is actually a series of failures.

You have to be passionate and believe in what you are doing in this business. If you go the self employed route you need to love having your abilities tested and keep on improving yourself. If you are in it just for the money then you will get burnt out because there are too many times where the amount of work is not worth the money, but it is worth learning the lesson and improving yourself.

In this business, you really need to know how to control your money. If you earned $1000 in a week, it doesnt mean you can go out and spend $1000 at the end of the week (this is often the mindset of many 9-5 workers). You should invest about 20% of that into advertising, save another 10% to cover the tax bill you are going to get nailed with at the end of the year and then put some aside to get you through the slow weeks. Once you start doing well, you should keep your overheads low because things can change.

How much you earn is often not proportional to how much you worked. There will be many times where you will work all day and earn very little, but there will also be times where you do very little and earn a lot.

In just about all businesses where you are working for yourself, you need to keep pushing forward and taking things to the next step because if you arent growing, you’re dying.

Once you enter any service industry, your time becomes extremely important. Many people say they dont have the time to run their own business (or have their own business already but keep running out of time in the day). These people need to look at how much time they spend watching TV and doing other unproductive things. I actually know someone who is quite wealthy from owning mutliple businesses, has a wife and kids but still has time to get things done. I asked him how he manages it (especially with two young children) and he says that he doesnt really watch TV or do any other avoidable time wasting activities. He works flat out for 8 hours a day and spends the rest of the time with his family. When you think about it, how much TV do you watch in a day? What could you have achieved if you spent that time working on your business?

I am not saying you should completely avoid TV as it can be a great education or relaxation tool, but there are many shows that I could personally do without watching and I am sure you have some too.