Have you ever heard a successful actress say that her success was quick and easy? That winning an Oscar isn’t that big of a deal? You haven’t, right? If winning an Oscar were so easy, we’d all be Oscar winners, right? But we aren’t. ‘Cause it isn’t easy. In fact, it’s really difficult to get one. That’s why they spend so much time thanking those who helped them get there, don’t you think so? How many actors are there in Hollywood? And how many win that little golden statue?

So this post is obviously not about the Oscars, but about the hard work you have to invest to win. If you watched this year’s Oscars’ ceremony, you may recall Lady Gaga’s speech. I wanted so bad to hit “pause” and write it down! Now, I didn’t ‘cause my hubby would have killed me, so I had to watch the replay once more time and look for that very minute she was on stage. Anyway, if you didn’t watch it, check out what she said about what it takes to get there:

So powerful, right?? I mean, she’s telling us – what we all know, actually – that dreams don’t come true overnight. That dreams are there to fight for. That we can achieve our dreams, but it’s hard work. And it’s all about not giving up. About standing up after failing.

What do Lady Gaga and bloggers have in common?

Now, if you delete all references to glamour and the Oscars’ night, what do you get? Lady Gaga is talking about how important it is to keep consistency to achieve our goals. And isn’t it applicable to everything else in life? To solopreneurs? Or bloggers?

Consistency and not quitting are the key factors to blogging full time, and yet it is so hard! So hard to keep working so much on something which isn’t giving you any money at all. But that’s just the beginning. If you don’t keep going, you won’t crack that point where you actually start making money.

You know, fear is what stops most of us from doing what we’d really like to do. But fear shouldn’t play a role if you want to start something on your own in the online world! The investment you have to make to start blogging isn’t huge, and you can always change anything that isn’t resonating with your audience.

I mean, it’s not like when you open a restaurant and it isn’t working as fast as you’d like to. What would you do in that case? You couldn’t change your restaurant into a grocery store or a library, right? You would stick to it, work hard for your new business, and hope you can start making money to cover all your expenses.

However, when you have a blog or an online business that isn’t working, you can tweak your strategies, your audience, and even the blog subject! Probably nobody would actually notice if you’re just starting out. And the best thing about it? You don’t have to invest that much money! Check out this blog post about starting an online business on a budget. It doesn’t even have to cost you a cent – just quite a lot of time, and hard work. Feel free to download this content brainstorming sheet if you struggle with coming up with ideas for your blog posts. I hope you find it useful!

Did you know that Netflix started as a DVD service? Or that Flickr was actually an online game? When the founders realized that the game wasn’t as successful as the image exchange service, they focused on the image exchange platform! Oh, and YouTube was meant to be a video dating site!

So if these hugely successful companies failed at their initial idea, and adapted it, why shouldn’t you also try. They started as small as you are now. And you can only test if your ideas work by actually trying them out.

Recap – Oscar Winners & Bloggers

Whether you want to blog full time or get the next Oscar to the best actress, you’re going to work hard, my friend. So do yourself a favor, believe in yourself, and stop listening to all those voices telling you that you aren’t enough. Laughing at your aspirations. Trying to convince you not to spend any more time behind your PC – ’cause it’s not worth it.

Just do what you want to do, work hard for your dreams, and if they don’t go as expected, just tweak them – and keep working 😉

Alicia

Are you born to freelance?