Patience and Persistence

I’ve found that there are many challenges to getting a new online business venture off the ground. I had anticipated a lot of these challenges but have encountered a few that I simply didn’t plan on. By far the biggest challenge I hadn’t anticipated is the waiting. You can spend countless hours tweaking your website layout, crafting witty product descriptions, and developing advertising campaigns, but you can’t speed up time. You won’t know if any of your efforts were worthwhile until you let enough time pass to evaluate your results. My current thinking is that any long term success this business might attain will boil down to two things: patience and persistence.

Patience

I’m not by nature a very patient person. I suppose I can partially blame a technology laden lifestyle that has gotten me accustomed to instant gratification. It might only take me an hour to upload new products to my storefront, but I always have to wait a few days before I can see whether or not anyone likes them. I really struggle with this delay, but have to learn to live with it. In a way I’m fortunate that this business is a “side project” for me and that I have a challenging full time job that keeps me occupied for a good chunk of the day. If PiX were a full time venture I’m fairly certain I’d drive myself insane sitting around and waiting for things to happen. I also sometimes fear that my impatience causes a lot of churn because I don’t let my ideas take root for long enough to be proven good or bad.

Persistence

Tim Ferris has an interesting post on his blog titled, “Harnessing Entrepreneurial Manic-Depression: Making the Rollercoaster Work For You” in which guest author Cameron Herold describes the manic-depression that a lot of entrepreneurs experience through the course of getting a new business venture off the ground. This article rings true to me in a lot of ways. I can’t even begin to describe how awesome it feels to see order notification emails roll in; it’s truly a bit euphoric. The high of that feeling is only matched by the low I feel when a week or two goes by with no orders. To put it bluntly: it sucks. Cameron’s article has a lot of good suggestions for dealing with this roller coaster that I’ve found very helpful over the past few weeks. I also need to constantly remind myself that I need to plow through the down times. I really and truly believe that this product is good, but I’ll only succeed if I keep trying.

Keep It Going

“Patience and Persistence” has become a mantra for me lately. There will be plenty of small defeats and victories along the way, but in the end I will only have failed when I give up.