Dear Significant Other,
By now, you’ve probably figured out that your spouse was cut from a different mold than everyone else. Most other people go to some sort of school or training, pass out their resumes to a number of preferred employers, and locked themselves down to the traditions of a conventional job. There’s nothing wrong with that, but your husband, significant other, life partner or whatever else he wants to call himself decided it wasn’t for him. (And I say “him” here, but it’s just applicable to all the female Internet professionals too.)
For some of you, you may have come to respect the nature of working from home and earning a living from the Internet, even if you don’t completely understand it. For the rest of you, you might see this digital entrepreneurship as a “phase.” Believe me; it’s not a phase.
If you’re hoping that the affiliate marketer or professional blogger that you married is going to give up on his dream and buckle down to a regular 9-to-5, you’re going to be disappointed and frustrated… that is, until said affiliate marketing and professional blogging starts paying for fancy steak dinners in paradise and stylish new cars. Running an online business is just as legitimate as running a brick-and-mortar business, without the added headache of a physical location and unnecessary overhead costs.
What this means is, for the most part, the online entrepreneur in your life is probably going to be working out of a home office (when we’re not working on the go). If you stay at home too, you’re going to see a lot of him. If you have your own job outside the home, guess who’s still going to be home when you get back from your evening commute? Whatever the case, you should remember one thing:
Just because we’re home doesn’t mean we’re available.
There is a definite sense of freedom that comes with the dot com lifestyle, but it doesn’t mean that we want to run errands and do household chores just because we’re already home. We’d much rather spend that time building our business. And you need to respect that.
Oh, and yes, of course I’d love for you to come along on business trips. But the same philosophy still applies. If we’re going some place for a trade show, we’re there for the trade show. We’ll want to walk the convention floor, attend the talks, and hang around a bunch of networking events too. We’ll probably end up talking a lot of shop. We have fun, for sure, but it may not be your cup of tea. Whatever the case, we won’t be as freely available as we would be on a “non-work” vacation. If you’re not into Internet marketing or whatever it is that we do, you might have a better time doing your own thing and we’ll meet up later. And that’s okay.
And one more thing. We may not necessarily earn regular paychecks like how we would at more of a typical office job. It’s not like we can expect to get the same amount of money in our bank accounts every couple of weeks. That offers both a wonderful upside, since there is limitless potential, as well as the possibility of catastrophic failure.
But you know how successful online entrepreneurs view these catastrophic failures? We see them as blessings. We see them as learning opportunities. We see them as the necessary bumps on the road to far greater things. And we’d love for you to come along for the ride. After all, behind every successful man is a woman. We’re happy you’re standing there with us.
With love,
An Online Entrepreneur
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