There’s a Shakespeare quote you’ve heard: “To thine own self be true.”
And here’s another one (not quite with the Shakespeare flair, but still quite eloquent): “You can’t fit a round peg into a square hole.”
People online will tell you what to do. How to do it. When to do it.
They’ll tell you to get up two hours early and work on your business before work. Or set a timer for 30 minutes and work without distraction. Or enter a niche just because there is money there. They’ll tell you all sorts of things. And they’ll even get righteously indignant when you don’t do what they tell you to do.
So now I’m going to tell you what to do. Seriously.
Know yourself first. Yes, you can get round pegs into square holes, but it does a tremendous amount of damage to the round peg. If you like to sleep in until 10:00 am, then maybe that’s what you should do. You probably do your best work in the afternoon and evening anyway.
If you have a flair for an odd niche, maybe you should find a way to monetize that, instead of going into a more popular and overcrowded field that everyone is telling you to enter.
If you don’t like speaking to people in person, why are you buying that course on how to do marketing for local businesses?
Figure out who you are and what you’re good at. Then build your business around YOU.
For example, if you’re great at seeing the big picture and hate details, then focus on what needs to be done and have other people do the actual work through outsourcing. If you love to write but hate to deal with websites, have someone else set up and run your blog. If you hate writing but love talking, make a vlog instead of a blog. Or do a podcast. Or both.
Just don’t do the thing you hate to do, because guess what? You cannot force yourself to do the things you don’t like for any real length of time. It just isn’t going to work.
To be successful, figure out who you are and what you like. THEN figure out how to build a business around you, instead of trying to mold yourself to a business you simply aren’t suited to.
