The Secret to Small Business Success: Sell What You Love

“I don’t base my involvement exclusively on sales,” Russ says. “[It’s] actually more [about offering] help and guidance, and through that trust, people will then see my website and see the feedback [and say] ‘Why not get someone who’ll give me the personal service?’”

A personal touch in business is not a novel idea, but in home-based business it may be the deciding factor between flourishing and floundering. According to Inc.com, customers are seeking accountability, confidence, empathy and, most importantly, honesty. In an age where anything and everything can be done online, the personal touch that Russ employs in his business is more important than ever.

It also doesn’t hurt that Russ has the field experience necessary to be successful: “I’ve been into aquariums for over forty years,” he says. “As a businessman, doing this particular business, it’s been seven years.”

But all of this should not undercut the importance of the Internet in shaping the current state of his business, and Russ recognizes the almost serendipitous timing of its creation. Smiling, he recounts: “[When I was a teen] there was always the unknown of how to go about maintaining the saltwater aquarium, because there was no Internet. There were no books written on it, it was just people in a pet shop telling you how to do it. You could see there wasn’t great success in the hobby in those days.”

He remembers that it was many years before the technology needed to properly keep these fish at home caught up to the enthusiasm that people had for them. In the late ‘90s and early 2000s, the Internet made the practice more accessible to the masses.

“Things started to snowball and it was like a geometric progression,” Russ says. “Bulletin boards popped up all over the place and clubs started forming and people started sharing their experiences so that the hobby became much easier for everyone to do.”

It was those forums that became Russ’s “ primary source of contact” for new and returning customers, and are both the toughest and most rewarding part of the job for him.

“I do have a lot of late nights,” he says. “At one or two in the morning, I can and do respond to people’s queries.” Those restrictions underscore the main difference between home-based business and working outside of the home—you are never really off the job.

Though he can’t really go on vacation, none of this seems to bother Russ. In fact, he seems to relish it.

“Everybody has the same product to sell,” he says. “The only thing I have different is me. My service. My ability. My experience. It doesn’t pay for me to sell someone something and [have that be] the end of it.”

It’s an odd socio-economic anomaly that while the Internet has made the creation of business easier and increased the speed at which business can be done, it has also created an emphasis on the human element that wasn’t necessarily such a large part of sales in the past. That’s how we get wonderfully off-kilter and triumphant stories of accountants becoming saltwater fish tank gurus—because there is no limit to what a person can do when they have the right tools and the motivation.

Not to mention a certain amount of savvy.

“Learn everything about everything,” Russ says, attributing his luck in the timing and execution of his business as a matter of merely being interested in something. “You never know what direction life is going to take. Keeping your doors open is, to me, a great way to pursue something, whatever that something is… it’s going to differ for everybody.”

Russ is living proof that we can turn passions into careers.