Whenever I see a picture from inside the Oval Office, something always strikes me.
Yes, I\’m struck by how much nicer the President\’s office is than mine (although I think I\’ve got a better view). But mostly I\’m struck by his desk. It\’s big and old and it\’s nicely decorated… but that\’s not really what I\’m getting at either.
What\’s most striking about the President\’s desk – and this is true of the workspace of just about every top executive – is how empty it is. There are no piles of paper, no collections of dirty coffee cups… and apparently no computer.
There might be a few papers there, perhaps a report that he has to read or a bill he needs to sign, but there\’s none of the chaos that makes up many people\’s desks.
I don\’t think that\’s because president are particularly tidy. And I don\’t think it\’s because they have a team of people who keep their desk clean for them (now there\’s a service waiting to be supplied).
It\’s because their job, like the job of every leader, isn\’t to do. It\’s to tell other people what to do.
When you start building an Internet business, you\’re going to be doing everything yourself. You won\’t have much of a budget so you\’ll have to write the HTML, create the content, do the search engine optimization, track the ad results, manage the link exchanges, and wash out your own coffee cup too.
You can stay that way if you want. Many Internet marketers remain one-man or one-woman bands. But many others start to use their income to pay specialists to take on some of those tasks, freeing themselves to do the things that bring in the most revenue… or to do nothing at all but guide the site and cash the checks.
Both of these kinds of Internet businesses are perfectly legitimate. I now have an office with a fantastic team but I\’ve run plenty of businesses from my bedroom too.
The question that every budding Internet marketer needs to ask themselves is what do they want their business to do for them eventually: give them a busy desk; or leave them with a clean desk.