The Internet has become the great leveler. You can now be in business in under a day and competing with the big boys. In a way the Internet is like one big newspaper job page - “Entrepreneur Required - no previous experience necessary. Choose your subject to make money.” However in the small print it says “100 hours a week - you’ll need to keep your old job going, no salary just commission, significant financial investment required, failure a likely outcome”

Not so attractive then is it.

For years I considered myself to be an entrepreneur. I’d been a successful consultant in the IT industry and had decided to move across into the world of business ownership and making real money. Easy right? Well having earned my titles in the traditional world of employment … developer, senior consultant, principle consultant etc I had now appointed myself the title of ENTREPRENEUR & BUSINESS OWNER. No track record needed, no specific skills needed, woke up one day and I was one.

Months and years later I had gotten no further in my endevours to be a successful entrepreneur although I had worked and worked harder than I ever did in my “rat race” career. What was going on ? Books have been written and will continue to be writen on how to be a successful entrepreneur and reading them all I saw lots of reasons why I was not progressing as fast as I should. However one day I read something that hit me like a spade in the face and it all started to make a lot of sense.

Was I actually an entrepreneur ? Or was I just an opportunity seeker.

When I heard the difference I knew what I was. I was an opportunity seeker. I’d tried various network marketing opportunities, I’d downloaded countless products offering the ultimate deal in making money online, I’d scattered myself and my hard earned money all over the internet still every day when a new email arrived in my email box offering at last the final solution to my problems I would run off with that instead. My energy was fragmented and my plans like a hopelessly entanged ball of string with no end visible.

You see an opportunity seeker is always looking for a solution and it may come from anywhere. The Entrepreneur has a well defined goal and has strategies, systems, and processes in place that are planned and implemented to achieve that goal. They may change the strategies,systems and processes based on results they see but essentially they are on a well defined route to success. What the Entrepreneur does or doesn’t compared to the opportunity seeker is they see the same flow of new opportunities passing by and the look at them and ask themselves this key question. Do any of these things fit into my strategy. If they don’t they are disgarded.

Going cold turkey to get off your addiction to e-books is hard. I’m not going to paint e-book vendors as drug dealers - I am one myself (an e-book vendor that is !). Rather I’d liken some of them to the friendly doctor that offers anti-depressant tablets that try to fix the symptoms of your life’s problems rather than get to the root cause.

Get yourself an indentity and start by becoming an Entrepreneur and not an Opportunity Seeker.
Here are some questions for you. You must decide whether you truly are an entpreneur before you proceed in your journey. I don’t believe entrepreneurs are necessarily born but to reach the critical mass of entrepreneur attributes
that you need to succeed may may take longer than others but it is a process of development you must undertake.

1) Do you need to be told what to do?
2) Do you wait around waiting for things to be perfect before you take action
3) Are you attracted by the concept of a business in a box where you are told
you just have to buy it to be a success?
4) Do you struggle to make decisions in the face of adversity?
5) Do you fear taking on that risk that presents itself?
6) Do you have a strong need to achieve?
7) Do you have a solid picture of what your business will look like
when it is successful.
Can you identify when something is strategically sensible to look at
and use in your business or whether it is an irrelevent distraction? This
is the key skill that distinguishes Entpreneurs from Opportunity Seekers
and this one thing helped turn around our business online.
9) If someone asked you in an elevator what you do could you give them a
a crisp answer? An answer that resonates with who you are and the
identity you have. I’ll bet you any money you like that the average
opportunity seeker on the Internet would not be able to and even if they
did it would not be the same answer they gave you the next week because
they would have moved off onto something else by then

To your success
Shaun O’Hagan

Shaun O’Hagan is the CEO of Internet Marketing and Technology Company KeyPageMedia.com. Currently his company is focussed on helping his customers with Web2.0 strategies for traffic generation