My name is Joy Healey and I live in the beautiful city of Norwich in the United Kingdom.
In my 20s and 30s it didn’t occur to me that I would ever want to retire! I was enjoying running my offline business too much.
Then, as I reached my 50s, I started to wonder what would happen when I no longer had the income from that business. Yes, I’d have the UK state pension, but a month’s pension could be be wiped out by one car bill. It certainly didn’t promise the enjoyable life that my friends and family seemed to be looking forward to. So I started looking for something to generate an extra retirement income.
As I’d been in the computer industry since my late teens, in seemed natural to look towards technology for an income – specifically an online business. With my background I imagined I’d find it easy.
Not at all!
Unfortunately I found it extremely difficult – there were so many different skills I needed to learn. I just didn’t even know what I didn’t know.
Also I completely underestimated how many unscrupulous marketers I would find – telling me “It’s easy”. I started to think I must be the only person not making a killing on-line. Then common sense kicked in, and I realized that if it were as easy as everyone was telling me, everyone would be Internet Millionaires – and they clearly are not.
The first part of the battle was applying my normal offline business sense to the online world.
The second part was learning the skills to run an online business
I’d love to tell you it was just a matter of weeks, but the honest truth is that it was more like years before I started to see success, because I tried to teach myself everything, without decent tools and proper training so it took forever as I had to reinvent the wheel repeatedly.
Long story short – if you try to launch an online business, please don’t be misled by promises that it’s easy and you can do it without spending a cent. I guess in theory you could, but at the expense of many many hours.
Far better to admit you need help, to make things easier for yourself. When you compare the cost of starting an online business the cost to start up a bricks-and-mortar business, or to train to be any other professional professional, the costs are minimal.
The first, essential skill you need is building an email list.
Don’t try to build your online business on a social media platform. They can shut you down in an instant.
I’ve lost social media pages I worked hard to build, with no explanation. And I’ve seen people with far more social media skills than I have be shut down too.
Build your OWN email list.
Click here for the list building training I recommend
