The seven deadly sins of a side business entrepreneur
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This is part four in a series on securing your finances by adding new income streams. If you haven’t yet read the previous parts yet, check out the first, second and third part as well.
In the second post in this series we defined three principles that should always hold true to your side business. A good side business:
- Doesn’t make you lose your current job
- Doesn’t feel (too much) like work
- Brings you money even when you are not actively working
In this post I present you the seven deadly sins that can lead to violation of these rules and therefore to a slow and painful end to your career as side business entrepreneur.
1. Lust (Latin, luxuria)
In the original list of sins lust meant addiction. Mostly sexual addiction, but not limited to that. It can also mean:
RSS feed addiction.
Web browsing addiction.
Blog addiction.
Social networking addiction.
When your business is online and you need to use a web browser for managing it it’s really easy to get stuck into using the web for all the wrong things and to fill up your time reading what others have written, chatting with “potential business partners” and just mindlessly surfing.
When you use your precious time in doing something that isn’t productive, you don’t make money. You feel like you have spent all that time working but there are no results to be seen. And all that time you have been trying to work you have been away from your family, friends and other meaningful activities.
2. Gluttony (Latin, gula)
Gluttony is defined as an unnecessary excess of consumption. Consumption of food, drinks, newspapers… basically anything you can think of consuming too much.
In the context of side business entrepreneurship I define it as an unnecessary excess of time consumption.
Remember that we defined a good side business to be one that makes money when you are not working. Your time is valuable: there are so many things you want to do, and so little time.
I give you two tips:
- Don’t work by the hour: If you get paid for only the time that you are working, you’ll soon be spending all your precious time working for your customers. And in this context that’s a sin.
- Don’t become greedy: Yeah, I know, greed is a sin of it’s own, but what I mean here is that you shouldn’t try to build your business too fast by spending too much time on it every day. Take small steps, and finally you’ll get there.
3. Greed (Latin, avaritia)
Greed is one of the most dangerous sins as it can make you lose your business through many ways. So be extra careful with this one.
First of all, don’t act greedy upon your customers. Always put your customers first - and never never make them feel tricked.
If your blog is all about ads, paid reviews and more ads, I’m pretty sure that your readers won’t stick around for long.
If the quality of your product is nothing like you promised it would be, after a few people have bought it they’ll let their friends know and soon you’ll be out of customers.
Be honest with your customers, stay true to yourself, and work hard to avoid getting greedy.
Secondly, don’t act greedy at your day job. I’ve seen this happen, and the sight wasn’t beautiful.
If you want to build a successful business and keep your job, don’t compete against your employer, don’t try to steal his customers, and don’t use his money for your own business.
Otherwise when you’re found out, that’s the end of your job. And that’s a violation against the rule number one.
4. Sloth (Latin, acedia)
Sloth used to be called the sin of sadness meaning apathy, depression and joylessness. The modern description of this deadly sin is that it is a failure to utilize one’s talents and gifts, failing to achieve your full potential.
What it means is that you read these five articles about working creatively on the side, get inspired and start planning to do these things, but then give up without actually trying.
You plan for a week. Then another. And when nothing happens you give up thinking that this was a stupid idea in the first place.
But that’s not how it goes: planning is not enough.
You need to take control and start acting on your plans. If you start blogging, creating software or writing a book you need to keep doing it and utilize your full potential until you have reached your goals.
It will take a while before you see the results, so don’t give up.
5. Wrath (Latin, ira)
Wrath means uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger.
For some people the biggest reason for choosing to become self employed is the fact that they hate their jobs, maybe they even hate their bosses. So they want to start a business on their own but to be safe start it as a side business.
But here lies a great risk of falling into the sin of wrath.
If you hate your job and are actively working on replacing it with something else you may become overly confident. “I am working on my backup plan so I don’t have to worry about my boss that much anymore”, you reason.
If that’s your state of mind, you have forgotten one important point:
You are still working on your backup plan.
It’s not completed yet so you don’t want to fall on it just yet. And in order to keep your backup plan a backup plan you need to be sure not to do anything to violate the relationship between you and your boss.
6. Envy (Latin, invidia)
Those who commit the sin of Envy desire something that someone else has which they perceive themselves as lacking.
That’s how Wikipedia describes envy. And sadly, envy is a really common problem among humans. It’s so easy to just envy someone else without noticing how much effort they have put in before getting to the position they are in today.
Don’t envy the successful entrepreneurs, bloggers, software developers, authors or artists.
Talk to them, look at their work and learn from them. This way you can become just like them, by working your way up one step at a time.
Support them. Feel good for their successes.
And when you succeed you can be sure that they will in turn support you.
7. Pride (Latin, superbia)
Last but not least, Pride. The sin that almost every list of sins consider the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the ultimate source from which the others arise.
Again, here’s what Wikipedia tells us about Pride:
A desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to give compliments to others though they may be deserving of them, and excessive love of self.
Just because you have a nice side business, you are a successful blogger or a praised author it doesn’t mean that you would be more important or attractive than others. It’s after all the others who either make or break your business.
If they see you as arrogant they won’t like you. And if they don’t like you they won’t buy your products. That’s how simple it is.
So, be careful not to become so proud that you start seeing yourself as someone of higher class compared to your customers or colleagues. Successful people know their value, but stay humble and maintain their customer service mentality.
You are a great person and should be proud of your achievements. But remember that so is everyone around you.
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17 Responses to “The seven deadly sins of a side business entrepreneur”
5 mentions in the press
- Links for the Weekend, 9-1-2007
- IttyBiz » Case Study: Jarkko Laine - Insanely Interested In Everything
- Blog at veanndesign.com » Sunday Weekly Roundup #13 - 10/21/2007
- Single Author Blogs I Read at The Shane & Peter Inc. Blog
- IttyBiz » Look Like an Idiot in 7 Easy Steps
August 16th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
I’m guilty of #1 for sure. I’m a side business entrepreneur but sometimes my RSS Feed addiction and my blog/website addiction get in the way of doing work. Thankfully, I’m not addicted to the social networks yet. :-)
Very thought out article. I like it.
August 16th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Thanks Deron! Yeah, the first one is really tough for me as well. I guess we just need to fight hard to beat the addiction and stay productive. :)
By the way, I just bought a cube from You Cubez to point to this article. Take a look and let me know what you think about that. Also, if you came to this page by clicking on my cube, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts.
August 16th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Yeah, I really try to stay focused and at least write an article, comment on a few blogs, etc., before I start reading my RSS Feeds or visiting forums.
I’m not sure about You Cubez. I guess for such a small investment it can’t hurt, right? I guess it just seems hard to really differentiate sites by using cubes. I mean, if you have a really cool logo or tag line or something unique that could draw attention and get you clicks, that’d be nice, but you don’t. All you have a cube that looks like everyone else’s cube. It seems more luck of the draw than anything else. I don’t know.
You must have seen something in it or you wouldn’t have signed up. What are you thoughts?
August 16th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I took a look at that cube thing and I don’t really see the point. Should people go to their site to click a random cube? Bizarre…
At least they should improve their marketing message on the entry page :-)
August 17th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Hey there - Nice to see the site getting a little mention [although it's not particularly positive :) ] Anyway, comments are always appreciated. Cubez that are higher up do (belieive it or not) get clicked. Read the testimonials to see what some of our members have to say :)
August 17th, 2007 at 6:18 am
Deron: I would say that getting a cube wasn’t something that I planned for long. It was rather a feeling of “hey, that’s crazy - let’s give it a try” ;)
But anyway here are some thoughts that crossed my mind when I found the cube site:
- It’s a link on a PR5 site (as long as it stays on the front page)
- The system is pretty new, so maybe I can get a “novelty bonus”, meaning that I’m already there when (and if) the masses come.
- I get to choose the link and the color ;)
- I can try increasing the value of my cube by keeping it on the front page (it works so that you need to click on a button every day and you get some bonus…strange)
- Later I can try selling my cube… If you want a pretty nice cube, just send me £6 and you’ll have it :D
But most imporantly, I wanted to try something different. You could call this an addiction to buying stuff, if you like (and I know it’s not good for me, but…).
Petteri, You’re right in the sense that if it was something more than cubes it would probably be much easier to differenciate from other links. Then again, if it would just be a site full of ads, why would people go therer in the first place. Now that they are cubes, it might raise some kind of interest in checking out and clicking on a few cubes.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Allowing members to add logos and other kinds of designs (in my opinion) would create one hell of a messy site. Badly designed logos etc… would begin to look real tacky so this is the one main reason we decided against it. So… how can you differentiate against them? Well you can’t! But… that’s not important. If you’re that worried about receiving traffic then start increasing your cube and move it towards the top. If you managed to get yourself on the Top or even better - “Top Cube” then it will receive clicks! Other alternatives such as the Gold Cube will also help and there are 3 more of these to come :)
August 17th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
You make some pretty good points Jarkko. I think it’s something that could only stand to help you and won’t hurt you at all. It would be different if they were charging hundreds of dollars per cube, but (at least right now) they’re not so maybe down the road, if it does get bigger, like you said, you can sell your cube. That would be a nice little payday for one little colored cube. :)
August 17th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
That’s the idea!!! :)
Inviting friends, logging in, referring visitors, referring buyers etc… all help to increase your cube! Even if you make just £5 profit a cube, who says you can’t do it 100’s of times! :)
It just takes people like yourselves to give it a go (after all… it does only cost FROM £1.00 for 1 Year) and help make it a huge success!
August 18th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
I LOVE this post. I think I’ve also probably experienced every deadly sin in one form or another.
August 19th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Hey Sara!
Thanks for your comment. You’re right, these sins are not something uncommon - most of them are actually quite easy to commit, so we need to be careful :)
September 21st, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Efficiency is a killer one to master (note I am reading this site..lol) - but a certain amount of rss reading and general browsing can be a good thing. Just there’s a time and a place for it? Otherwise the readers of this post would never have read this!!!!
Great insite though Jarkko - and I seriously like your layout - is class!!
.w.
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:10 am
Hey woody, you’re right. Preaching efficiency in a blog is a bit problematic.
I have seen many bloggers say that you should limit your web surfing and RSS feed subscriptions. And then they go on saying that you should still not unsubscribe from their blog ;)
So, we want to tell people how to be more efficient but still want to keep them as our readers… Which can sometimes be a dilemma.
Anyway. I agree with you that there is a time and place for RSS reading and web surfing. I spend about an hour to it every day, and that’s still OK, I think. I stay updated on what’s happening on the web and in the world. Plus it’s relaxing.
Thanks for you comment. I’m actually working on some improvements to the layout which I plan to make public in a few weeks. I hope you like the new version as well (It’s going to maintain the same style and spirit as the current one).
September 29th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
fair play I will look out for it!
.w.
November 20th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
I was reading this series of posts when I got to the first sin.
After reading that sin I stopped reading went to sleep and the next day made a blog post.
The day after that I returned to Jarkkos blog and finished reading this wonderful post.
Great post and great series of posts! I would like to have a table of content on each post so that I could easily see the previous posts also like; part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 etc.
November 21st, 2007 at 12:02 am
Sorry. There is a table of contents at the beginging of the posts but its not full and you have to go trough every post to get to the last one. That’s clever because you have to stay longer on the blog surfing through every post os the series. So nevermind the last sentence of the previous comment ;)
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:33 am
Thanks, Sami!
You’re right: there probably should also be a link from each article to the next one in the series. The current “table of contents” works fine if you start by reading the last one, but if you start from the first, you probably don’t realize that there is more…