It seems many people are heeding the call and forging their own path in the business world. Today we want to give attention to one route to starting your own business that circumvents many of the typical barriers to launch. Starting your own website and living the “internet lifestyle” can be a quick and relatively cheap way to go into business for yourself.The most popular ways to make money from a website is to sell your own products via the site or participate in affiliate marketing. We will defer explaining exactly how this is done to the multitude of other sites about this subject that already exist. Instead we will focus on the pros and cons of this form of entrepreneurship.The positives to the internet lifestyle are easy to understand, the word “freedom” explains it all:-No boss – you are the boss.-No dress code – work in your underwear if you like.-No schedule – no alarm clock, no sales meetings, no 9 to 5.-No working for the weekend – take off to do the things you love whenever you want.-No commute – you can work anywhere there is an internet connection.-Most importantly, you can make money while you are sleeping, your business can be run on autopilot.The cons of living the internet lifestyle may include:-No instant revenue – it takes time to build up a successful website (at least 6 months in most cases), it’s best to keep your day job and moonlight as a website owner at first.-Long Hours – you may find yourself working more that the standard 8 hours a day to truly build a successful, profit generating website.-No traditional benefits – health insurance and other expenses are paid by you.-No equity building (perhaps) – if you were to sell out who would buy your website?-Little human contact – you are “connected” but sometimes it’s beneficial to be face to face with customers.-Resume builder? – your own website may or may not look good on a resume, something to think about if you ever want to get (back) into the corporate world in the future.-Are you creating change? – most entrepreneurs enjoy creating some kind of positive change leaving things better than how they found them, will running a website allow you to do this? Maybe. (as a side note, if you become an affiliate marketing scam artists by sending spam to people’s inboxes and comment boxes you may be living the internet lifestyle but you are also extremely annoying)At the end of the day it comes down to a personal choice. Is living the internet lifestyle appealing to you? Many entrepreneurs have gone on to make millions through this line of work. Yanik Silver, a business adventurer, successful internet entrepreneur, and proponent of the internet lifestyle sums it up with this quote:”Personally, the Internet Lifestyle means being able to do pretty much whatever you want, almost anytime you want and let the Internet pay for it!”

Disasters, I know we all hate that word. As humans we gird ourselves and simply say, “It won’t happen to me”. But the data shows that it’s not if it’s going to happen, it’s when is it going to happen.According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), 40% to 60% of small businesses fail following a major disaster. The number of presidentially declared disasters has more than doubled in recent years. However, many disasters don’t affect a large number of people like these declared events do. In fact, fire is the leading business disaster.If that is not bad enough, researchers estimate that approximately: half of business do not survive their first 5 years and 8 out of 10 fail within the first 3 years after a disaster.*Small Businesses have unique challenges that are quite different from their larger counterpart. Since 52 % of businesses are operated from the owner’s home or property their ability to recover is harder simply because they have to focus to two recovery efforts. There is never enough time to get them both done quickly and easily. If their business is in their home, there is no place for the work to continue. The property damage for a small business owner impacts BOTH the family and their business.While owning a small business may seem like the American Dream, owning a small business has many challenges. But after a disaster the challenges become more profound. There seems to be recurring views of these owners both before and after the disaster.Here are 7 challenges Small Business Owners face after a disaster:1. Illusion of Security2. Nothing could be done to protect against this3. Complete 360-degree disaster for the individual4. Self-imposed limits5. Imprudent use of financial resources6. Not understanding what is happening to their customer base7. Assumption everything will get back to normalStarting a business is a big achievement for many entrepreneurs, but maintaining one is the larger challenge. There are many standard challenges that face every business whether they are large or small. The largest challenge for small business owner is planning.Small business owners invest a tremendous amount of time, money and resources to make their ventures successful, yet, many owners fail to properly plan and prepare for disaster situations. You can protect your business by identifying the risks associated with natural and man-made disasters, and by creating a plan for action should a disaster strike. By keeping those plans updated, you can help ensure the survival of your business.When disaster strikes, having a plan and being able to put it into immediate action can mean the difference between staying open to service the needs of your customers and community or shutting down for a few days.I know, not another plan! Who has time for that?Resilience is different from preparedness. Where preparedness is something that you do; resilience is something that you become. In becoming more resilient, you as the owner should take intentional action. Do one thing today. (Just one thing). Do you back up your data? No, then get that done. Do you have an emergency contact list for your employees, suppliers, major clients? No, then get that done. Do you review you insurance policy every year with your agent? No, then get that done. Little by little, doing one thing moves you closer.You’ve finally achieved your dream. Don’t lose it to a power outage, hacker disruption, fire, earthquake or other disaster. If you’re not prepared, a disaster could put you and your employees at risk, possibly shutting down your business forever.