What Is Freedom Anyways?
The benefits of owning your own business
By: Sandi Krakowski
When I built my first business I was a single Mommy raising my son by myself and working to overcome the poverty that we were living in. At the time we were living on a $5,000 per year income and governmental supplementation. My desire to raise my son and not leave him with a day care center caused me to 'create' a job for myself rather than going to find someone who would hire me. I did research on one of my most favorite things, cleaning. I studied about cleaning asphalt, linoleum, ceramic and more. Then I created business cards and without any prior experience formed my first DBA under the name Smiley's Cleaning Service.
My desire was to be able to work at night while my son slept, hire a teenaged girl to care for him and then I could be the sole caregiver of my son when he was little. In under 3 weeks I had 4 jobs that paid me $ 80 per week each. This was in 1990. My income was $ 320 per week. It took me 3 hours per night and I had regular work.
In my mind, this is what 'everyone' who didn't want to work a ton of hours in order to earn more money did. It never even crossed my mind that not everyone was 'doing this' and that most people thought that if you owned your own business you must be special or at the very least, specially gifted. I just figured if I wanted to make more money and stay home with my son it wasn't going to happen working for someone else.
Meeting the man of my dreams, Alan Krakowski, when my baby was a few months old, changed my life. When he was four years old, we got married, Alan adopted Jeremy and we had our second son, Justin after just 11 months of marriage. I never worked in our early years of marriage because my husband had a great job at General Motors as a designer.
With a desire to be a great Mom and create an awesome home for my kids to be raised in, I stayed home with them full time. To this day my children have never been in daycare and I've always been the one caring for them. They've also never stepped foot in a school, all have been homeschooled. Now 20 years later and an almost 18 and 16 year old still in my home, it has become quite apparent to me that we made the right decision.
We've been very blessed. To say it's always been easy would be a huge lie. Nothing of value is easy. We've homeschooled our kids through my illnesses, relocations and through thick and thin financially. It's been worth it every step of the way.
When my littlest baby Bobby was two, I got the itch for business again. This time I wanted to do something online while still being able to work from the comfort of my own home. At the time I was publishing a newsletter for more than 300 women which was printed and distributed the good old fashioned way and sent by regular mail. This was the foundational key to my business, I just didn't know it at the time. Today, it is still a foundational key to what we do on a daily basis.
Every month I'd write an article and also include a time management tip for business moms. We'd add a recipe, some childcare and homeschooling tips and then mail them out. The feedback was amazing every single month. Writing a newsletter and raising my kids, what more could a girl ask for?
The more I studied about cooking and baking the more I realized I needed some good kitchenware tools to do the kind of things I was dreaming of! Making 20 lbs of dough by hand was just not wise time management. But when I first saw the price of $ 249 for a Bosch Kitchen Mixer I knew there was probably no way we could afford such a luxury. Then it dawned on me… what if there were women on my newsletter list who also wanted to get such a mixer but also didn't know where to buy one or didn't know how to use them. It never entered my mind that they couldn't afford them. So I did what every self-respecting ambitious woman on a mission would do and I put a little 'notice' in our monthly newsletter that I'd like to provide these to our families and if anyone was interested in getting one to please write us or email us with their request.
We had recently gotten a Pentium 1 286 computer and I was becoming a business woman with my very first email address. I knew nothing about how to use the internet or publish anything on it, but I could communicate with people all over the world through this thing called email.
During the next few weeks so many requests came in for the kitchen mixers that we had made more than two months of my husband's salary with our orders! I was hooked! Lifestyle changes and dreams of more began entering my head! And my 'company' expanded with every new catalog a vendor would send me.
This company would later grow to do more than $4 million dollars in profits by our 4th year. But the running of such a company nearly killed me, literally. Working 90 hours per week, still homeschooling my kids and pursuing the dream of the 'perfect' home. I had no mentors, only 1 staff and very little knowledge of how to maintain a company, not only did my business dreams go down the drains, so did my health. And….. I swore I'd never do it again.
I did recover from all of my diseases in a very miraculous way in 2004 and I'm happy to say have been disease free ever since. With deep gratitude I changed my mind about never running another business and eventually ended up building a total of 9 businesses by the time it was all said and done. A kitchenware business, two vitamin stores, a bread making forum and teaching business, published a cookbook, sales copywriting firm, a marketing company, spiritual life coach, business consultant and now a training and coaching company with 20+ information products published.
The reality in business is this- the marketplace has a need, you fill it. You fill it in such a unique way that you outpace your competitors. You serve people with excellence and integrity and then, my friends, you can build something that lasts long term.
In the 14 years that I've been online building businesses, writing, consulting, coaching and teaching, I've gotten a bird's eye view of how people market to weak vulnerable people who think owning a business is a piece of cake and anyone can do it. It's not a piece of cake, but neither is having a great marriage, keeping your body in tip top shape or having a home and teenagers without rebellion or power struggles. It is available to anyone who wants it but it takes good old fashioned hard work! And work, on a daily basis!
What is freedom anyways?
Emails pour into our customer support center, comments come in our blog and replies are made through our social media connections from people who wants freedom, so they are choosing to build a home based business. They only want to work when they want to work, they aren't willing to invest into their skillset and they know absolutely nothing about business, but……. they are starting a business. Or at least they think they are.
Freedom always costs someone something.
The notion that you can put up a website and it will turn into an Overnight ATM Cash Cow Machine is completely bogus. But if you're willing to give as much commitment and devotion to a business as you would a degree or high level career, you'll be able to experience freedom in a way that most people will never encounter.
Every year people consult with colleges, plan out their future and pursue their dreams. Get the Almighty Master's Degree and attain the accolades is the targeted goal. But equally, every single year people with prestigious degrees struggle with making ends meet and even worse yet, getting a job where they can use their degree.
I'm not against a college education but the marketplace does not pay for a degree, they pay for experience. Every job worth pursuing comes with a learning curve and an establishing period. Even people who get Master's Degrees in marketing know absolutely nothing when it comes to the internet until they get into the mud day in and day out and Do The WORK, as Steven Pressfield so beautifully calls it. As a matter of fact, most people who have a MBA end up coming face to face with the sad realty that their degree means absolutely nothing when it comes to PPC, Blogging and Massive Lead Generation in the online marketing world.
Freedom is the goal, not business
When I sought to build my first business my goal was to be able to have enough time with my son during the day that he didn't have to be raised by someone else. My goal with my kitchenware business was to be able to get my entire kitchen stocked with the best tools and machines and make enough money so that we were never limited. My desire with copywriting was to be able to work anywhere in the world, completely mobile, and serve clients all over the world with the written word. This company was planned and developed to be a long term training and service company that would employ our entire family at some point and be able to be run from anywhere in the world.
Freedom was the goal, not business. Freedom to live together, grow together, impact thousands of lives was and is the focus, not the money. Ironically, the money follows the goals of the free. It rarely if ever follows the goals of those who simply crave not answering to anyone and want to just do whatever they want everyday.
What does your life look like when you are free?
What will it take in reality to get you there?
Are you willing to do what it takes or are you going to forever just 'dream' and 'hope' that one day some finances drop out of the sky and change your life?
Building a business can quite literally change your life, as it has changed our lives. But it takes work, fortitude, a stick to it attitude and a commitment to never quit. Our world and our economy needs more people to get over their own issues so that they can serve the world with the business they are dreaming of.
Imagine, if every person reading this article who dreams about building a business….. what if they actually DO IT?
That my friend is a world of freedom!
Sandi Krakowski is a "Back To Basics Step By Step Business" expert who currently serves more than 100,000 clients in over 136 countries. Her systems help the average business owner as well as big corporations get extra-ordinary results quickly. She has a track record for her 'bringing it into action' processes that company owners find easy to implement with quick results. She has been working online successfully for the last 14 years.
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