It’s been awhile since I wrote. Running a real life business is demanding both emotionally and time wise. Most of the time at the end of the day, after all the battles, I just wanna watch a movie and hit the pillow. The internet business is like anything else in life, if you want to succeed it is not going to be a bed of roses; you will have to work hard and some days you will hate what you are doing.

This time I wanted to write about the emotional part of running any business. After almost a full year of running a business I can say that no business school in the world can teach how to deal with the emotional aspect of starting up the business. Even working in a big corporation and being responsible for bunch of people won’t give an idea what is like to fight for your idea, be responsible for other people’s lives, have fun, make money, and stay sane while doing it.

I think that no matter what business you are starting it won’t go as smoothly as planned and you are likely to run into obstacles that can bring you down. In an internet business like mine where you sell ads you don’t even have a product to sell in the beginning (no page views no sales). We’ve been doing a lot of seeding work and you won’t see the fruits of our labour immediately. We’ve been screwed over by our web company that effectively prevented us for close to a year to start making any money on the website. So how do I personally and the company as a result keep going?

As “Good to Great” states we face the brutal facts and then we still have unconditional belief that with hard work we shall reach our goal no matter what. This is simple advice, but sometimes it is hard to continue believing in yourself when nobody else does, when you family/friends tell you to get a real job and you start doubting yourself. Guess what? This why running a business is not for everybody. This is what separates fighters from wanna-bes. Your ability to not let the emotion take over you, to believe in yourself and continue to push hard is what makes a winner. In anything there is a breaking point where 90% of people will give up and 10% will continue to push, people who push become extraordinary in whatever they do.

We only live once, so I think it is worth figuring out are you a fighter or not?  So NEVER and I mean NEVER stop believing in yourself.

Working from home poses and raising a start-up is not easy and probably is harder than a corporate world. It is different kind of hard – a fun hard. Keeping myself motivated is a top priority for me since there is nobody who will make me complete my tasks except myself.

I also paid attention that now I read more blog posts and articles that I used to skip before. In particular the posts about management, winning and business creation. Here is the list of what I really liked this week:

• Business creation – The 5 pillars of customer experience  by Freshbooks. Great short and yet comprehensive and clear post on how products need to be created in a new era when consumers are highly educated and advertising returns are diminishing. Who doesn’t like Freshbooks? And they are from Toronto!
• Motivation – 3 Lessons Learned from Ultimate Frisbee by Idea Drunk. Again this post is pretty simple to understand yet very powerful in motivating yourself to “want it more.” You should check out Idea Drunk there are lots of inspiring posts over there that could be compared to Seth Godin’s style of writing and quality.
• Sales Management – Why your sales team needs mission by Canadian Business. Great make sense article to anyone who been in sales and managed sales reps. If you are planning to run your business or running it already you got to know that sales is pretty much a core of your business, so you got to do whatever it takes to help you sales. I like the fact that author says “Okay, I’ve been a business coach long enough to know that some of you are rolling your eyes. I talk about creating your vision, mission and purpose, and you hear “pink fluffy clouds.” That sentence resonated with my right away and gave creditability to the whole article.
• Music Help – 58 Motivational Songs to Keep you Going by Young Entrepreneur. I love music and it helps a lot to work by yourself in the office day after day. This post will give you some pointers