The path of a micropreneur is one with unique attributes and challenges. With a business that you operate yourself, it may seem that resources for accomplishing your goals are severely limited. However, it is quite possible to leverage business relationships so that you are able to take advantage of vast resources and knowledge. By operating your own shop, it will allow you to maximize the time spent in pursuit of your business goals and personally control the direction of your business. The fundamentals of being a micropreneur are articulated in the four pillars. These four pillars are Passion, Profits, Control and Leverage.
1) Passion
a. A primary purpose of becoming a micropreneur is the ability to pursue your life’s passion. In some cases this passion can be a particular line of work or industry, and in other cases this passion can be time with family and freedom to travel. The most important first step is to do some serious soul searching to determine your life’s passion. Generally speaking, a burning passion is something that doesn’t feel like work when you are doing it.
b. A famous cliché of the professional world states that “If it was fun, it wouldn’t be called work.” That sentiment is truer than many of us would like to admit. By creating and building an entrepreneurial venture that is oriented around your personal passion, it will help to create the necessary fire for building a business that pushes past failure to cross the line of success.
c. It may be that your ventures as a micropreneur start in a small niche that is chosen specifically for its viability in producing immediate profits. As your business ventures continue, you will have opportunities to shift the emphasis of your activities toward your personal passion. You are in total control of the direction your business takes.
2) Profits
a. One of the common characteristics of a micropreneur is somebody that is pursuing a personal passion, and in some cases there are more profitable business or employment opportunities available. The hitch is that these other opportunities either require an onerous time commitment, are particularly unpleasant, or both. While it is important for a micropreneur to pursue their passions, it is also critical to generate profits from your entrepreneurial activities.
b. In the beginning, many micropreneurs generate very modest revenue, but succeed because their expenses are kept very low. When you engage in a scalable business with expenses that do not increase at the same rate as your revenue grows, it can allow you the opportunity to generate increasingly attractive profits in the future. When you are starting as a micropreneur, it is most important to take action that generates immediate cash flow. There will be time and opportunities to scale-up your revenue in the future, but nothing will happen if you do not take action.
c. It is certainly true that many people value lifestyle considerations over money, but it is equally true that money is a necessity of life. As a micropreneur, it is critical to leverage your time and the time of people who you work with. This will allow your business to accommodate your lifestyle, instead of forcing your lifestyle to accommodate your business.
3) Control
a. Many people currently feel that their lives are spinning further out of control with each passing day. It is well known that many corporations require employees to ‘play the game’ if they want to succeed and achieve promotions. This frustration has left people with a feeling that their professional lives are being dictated by their company and that they must absorb ever increase time commitments.
b. There is also a sizeable population of people who are losing control of their financial life. In many cases, these are people who have been trained in an area of specialty that is not delivering the level of income that is necessary to support their lifestyle. These people are facing a very real choice between lowering their lifestyle and finding a way to increase their income.
c. The path of a micropreneur is frequently appealing to both types of person, since it provides financial opportunities to people that do not fit into the mold for traditional corporate employees and provides control over time and work to experienced professionals who have grown tired of the demands placed upon them by their profession.
4) Leverage
a. Robert Allen once commented that wealth is when small efforts produce large results and poverty is when large efforts produce small results. Producing large results with small efforts is the fundamental basis of success, since it allows you to multiply the impact of your time. As a micropreneur, one of the primary goals that you will be seeking to accomplish is both business and financial leverage.
b. Business leverage allows you to automate your business activities so that a maximum amount of activities are handled by somebody else or something else. Business systems are a typical means by which this kind of leverage is achieved. As a micropreneur, you can attain business leverage without the necessity of hiring employees. This is accomplished by partnering with service agencies that will conduct routine business activities on your behalf in exchange for a negotiated fee. By simplifying business activities, it allows more time for the entrepreneur to focus on the strategy of their venture instead of the day to day operations.
Financial leverage is the art of using other people’s money to capitalize your investments and ventures. This will allow you to generate passive income, and larger rates of return on attractive investments. By utilizing financial leverage, a micropreneur can minimize the amount of time devoted to work so that more time is available for other interests such as family, education, or personal hobbies.
The Solomon Success Team
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