When I first decided to start my own business a few years ago I was pretty much broke. I was a moderately good painter and writer, but I had never done anything very remarkable.

I am happy to say things have changed in some very big ways. The spark first started when I helped a stranger out. A quick thank you note the next saying my suggestion had already made him $100. Thats when I realised where my future would be.

Here are a few of the critical lessons I’ve learned, and I think you should too:

1. Take your business seriously. Scrap the dreams of making six figures working an hour a day 5 days a week. That day can come, but until then, set your goals and work, sleep, work until they happen. Everything else takes a back seat. A perfect quote from Quadzilla — “You’re in the right industry. You’re in it at the right time. You’re in it while search is still in its infancy.” Don’t pass up on the biggest opportunity of generations because your school guidance counselor says this isn’t real.

2. Read between the lines, but don’t read into them. In other words, try to figure out what is really there, but don’t fantasize things that aren’t really there. In your mind you want an accurate and functioning image of how all the other companies in your industry (and outside of it) function and make their profits.

3. Test, test, and test some more. My first 3 businesses were flops. The next few were pretty mediocre. I’ve tested different industries, business partners, monetization methods and so on. The more you test the more you understand what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes you discover those things that didn’t work, actually work really well, you just had a few things wrong with the technical implementation. If you insist on believing its luck, then its the testing which tips the odds in your favor.

4. Scale up and scale out. The difference between the guy making $70,000 a year and the guy making $7,000,000 a year is scale. Additionally you can stretch your knowledge into different markets to magnify your profits through redundant systems.

5. Read a lot, but more importantly test what you read. Warren Buffet likes to read, but I’m guessing Rich Dad Poor Dad isn’t on his bedstand. All of these marketing business self-help e-book, seminars, and so on are great — once. Too many people are addicted to them and they never get anywhere. This leads into number 6.

6. Diversify your knowledge base. Contacts are critical. Many of those 20 page sales-letter people are have created a closed sub-culture. Its asphyxiating your future by being around them all day. Go to conferences for unrelated industries, network with entrepreneurs in NYC, find out what businesses are doing in the Southern hemisphere, talk to outsourced workers in Manila. Instead of reading just Business 2.0, go pick up a copy of the Economist. You can make a damn good living just knowing the right people.

7. You have to like doing it. If you hate it, you look for reasons not to work rather than reasons to work. Life is too short to be miserable. If you are miserable it is not because your don’t have enough money — it is because you don’t do what you love.