I’ve said before that if you had a friend or family member say something like, ‘I want to start up my own plumbing business, but I don’t want anything to do with any of that pipes and water nonsense,’ you would be forgiven for looking at them slightly aghast and maybe asking them quite how they were expecting to do this…

However, somebody can say – ‘I want to run my own online recruitment agency, but I don’t want to do any technical stuff at all’ – and yet nobody seems to bat an eyelid.

This is just one example of how we can all sometimes think that because something happens online, it is not subject to the same common-sense rules which operate in the offline world. 

In the same way, you can’t be a plumber without getting a little damp occasionally, so it would be very naïve to think that you could run a profitable online business without at least having to do something on a computer.

Now, I’m not suggesting everybody should pop off and study ‘php development’ or anything like that but having at least a tenuous appreciation of what needs to go on will not only make life a lot easier for you… it need not be that hard to master.

After all, I’ve been very successful in this industry for over four decades now… yet this email is being typed with just two fingers and I will be the first to acknowledge that when it comes to all things techie I have to rely on my fantastic IT support team.

The success that I have enjoyed has been not through technical prowess but realising early on that many of the same rules that apply in the offline world are just as applicable in the online one… and that just because it’s ‘on the internet’ it’s not a whole new world at all… there are just some different rules to add to the ones you already know.

A good idea is still a good idea – and doing nothing still gets you nothing – important things like those are still the same.

Now, ten, or even five years ago there were an awful lot of moving parts… but that’s not really the case anymore. 

Let me close then by saying that yes, starting an online home-based recruitment agency has its challenges (you are, after all, starting a recruitment business) but you must be careful that you are not overburdening yourself by making the word ’online’ a bigger factor than it needs to be.

You see, with the advent of things like one-to-one coaching and Zoom training sessions, starting small and making something like a few thousand pounds a month and building from there is probably easier than it ever has been before...