The idea of starting your own business can be a daunting one, but for some people, it is the perfect thing to do, especially if the other option seems to be long-term unemployment. It’s far better to try something different and start a business than to wait and see if something will come up in terms of work, assuming you are ready to do so. Here are some of the things to think about when you are wondering whether it’s time to start your own business.
Passion
One of the signs that it’s time to start your own business is that you have the passion for it. It your new venture the only thing you can focus on? Do you find you are daydreaming about it? When you are so passionate about something that it is taking over your life and becomes the only thing you can (and the only thing you want to) think about, then you know that you should start turning those ideas into a business. However, just because you are passionate about something doesn’t mean that you can launch straight into it in business terms; take your time and write a business plan first.
- Executive Summary.
- Business Description.
- Market Analysis.
- Organization Management.
- Sales Strategies.
- Funding Requirements.
- Financial Projections.
Decision Making
When you run your own business, you need to be confident in your ability to make decisions, both big and small. If you are worried about any of these decisions, then it may mean that you aren’t quite ready to run your own business and that you need to build up some confidence first. There are many books that you can read that will go into more detail about decision making and how to do it well – you should even be able to find videos on YouTube that can help you. Only when you feel ready to make all the decisions necessary to get your business off the ground, including what you’re selling, how you’re selling it, and who you’re selling it to, should you attempt to start.
Opportunities
Some people will look at a situation and just see problems. When you’re ready to run your own business, you will see challenges and opportunities instead. Business is all about finding a solution to issues that other people have, and that’s why you need to be able to spot these opportunities and act on them. Many people may feel that the economy is in a poor state and that starting a business would be a bad idea, but for someone who is ready to do so, they will look more closely and see specific niches that can be fulfilled and problems that can be solved instead.
https://youtu.be/WoCTAfLiIJw?t=1m
The Boss
Running your own business means you will need to be your own boss, and potentially other people’s boss as well. If you are unsure about doing this and would prefer the security of working for someone, then running a business is not for you, and you will need to focus your efforts on finding a job working for someone rather than running your own enterprise. You will have to take on a lot of responsibility, including making sure that your business is entirely secure, both on and offline.
According to Success Harbor there are several reasons why a business fails:
- You can’t pay your bills. When you run out of cash your business has failed. You can make profit predictions all day long, but the only thing that helps you pay your bills is cash. If you ever do business with large companies, you will find that many of them are slow to pay. I mean it’s not unusual for a large company to take 4-6 months to pay. They are masters at controlling their cash flow. Learn from them.
- You are offering something people are not willing to pay for. This one is easy, but so many miss it. Especially, those who end up creating a product or build software without confirming with the market that there is a demand.
- Failing to attract paying customers in a cost effective way. You might have a product people are willing to pay for, but you can’t figure out a way to market it in a cost effective way. If it costs you more money to get a new customer than you can afford you don’t have a business.
- You don’t have the skills to manage your business and you are not willing to learn. No one is a born entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs who succeed are fast learners. Learn or your business will fail.
- Unable to build a winning team. When you start out, there is a good chance that you have to do everything, but you will only build a business if you can build a team around you.
- Unable to create systems. If you look at a successful business, it runs on systems. It doesn’t rely on an all knowing business founder. There are systems within the business that enable the company to scale and grow.
This may fall under the category of unable to create systems but another common reason businesses fail is because that had a catastrophic failure of their computer data and had not backed it up properly. Imagine losing all your billing data or client data, inventory data etc. If you lost just one of these datasets you could easily be done. A computer crash can hurt any-sized company, but for a small business it can be extremely costly. Imagine for instance, having thousands of dollars in outstanding receivables and not being able to send customers their bills! Companies such as Secure Data Recovery Services can help you try to recover that data but it isn’t always possible and can be expensive, so a better solution is to have scheduled backups and off-site data storage. These days with “Cloud-based” storage solutions it is very simple to do.
You might also like:
