Stop Doing, and Start Loving Your Business

This is not a fair world we live in.

As a small business owner, one expects mountains, if you are to compete with the bog box stores, you are expected to give exceptional customer service, great prices, be flexible, reachable, deliver on quality, and provide choices, choices, choices.

All this could be setting yourself up for failure, don’t get it? Here’s an illustration:

If there is one flaw and strength that I have it’s that I have a natural curiosity.

I can be bound to such a happy medium, but the minute something sparks my curiosity I pursue it like a dog, get excited, buy into it, and then as quickly as my passion flares up, I abandon it.

As a result I have skills of varying degrees in varying things.

I wanted to work in marketing, so I took a marketing major and diligently pursued and secured internships. I then wanted to take on more video production work so I learned my hand at Adobe Premier Pro and pursued that. And then I was struck by graphics and design and by then it was too late in my college career to add that to my plate so I taught myself InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, and landed a graphic design internship.

Then I wanted to work with small businesses to develop their marketing plans, so I set up this site, and learned very basic html for my portfolio last fall. And now I am trying to set-up a website to sell African Art because I wanted to try to start my own small business and do some good.

And so I will be graduating May 2012 with a double major in Marketing and Communications. And my resume is littered with my experiences and passions that I pursued for a summer or two and then abandoned.

I am driven. I am passionate. And I am curios.

But at the end of the day, this drive leaves me exhausted and unable to create the interesting, thrilling, posts from the hundreds of ideas that filter though my head daily.

And if I don’t curb this appetite and learn to discipline it, I will not get very far -my nightmare is some lackluster job that sucks away my creativity and enthusiasm.

Take heed, figure out what your small business is good at, what customers love about your offering, pick 3 things and drive it home!