Starting your own business

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People think starting and running your own business is all fun and games until they do it themselves. Operating businesses are tough especially from scratch and you have to be mentally prepared for what’s about to come. On the outside it might seem nice because you get to be your own boss and work your own hours but the opposite is usually always true. In the beginning be prepared to spend 12-14 hours working everyday with little to no sleep and don’t even think about taking a day off in the first couple of years. Here are some things you should know before starting your own business.

1. Don’t start a business unless you have the capital to fund it. New businesses always require more money than you anticipate. You could spend years gathering information and running through numbers and you will still most likely overspend. If you are tight on money don’t start your own business because not only will you overspend but there’s a good chance the business will not be profitable until years to come.
2. Know the industry inside out. If you start your own business, you have to due your research and due diligence about the industry and market trends. Just because a business model worked somewhere else, doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. My best advice is to work in the industry until you have the skills and connection to start your own.
3. Choose who you work with carefully. Choosing the right partners and employees are critical if you want success. Make sure all the partners are on the same page in terms of the company’s vision and strategy. The last thing you want is to spend weeks and months making decisions because of disagreements. Choose partners with the right skillset and experience. Don’t just ask a friend or family member because its convenient. Most of the time businesses will ruin your relationship with them. I also can’t stress the importance of communication between team members. So many costly mistakes can be avoided with better communication period. Your employees and partners will become the face of the company so you want to make sure you spend the time and find the right ones or your business will fail. Businesses are made of very small details and make sure you get them right at the beginning which starts with the staff and partners.
4. Consider purchasing a business or investing in a business. New businesses have extremely high chances of failure. Purchasing a business is good because you don’t have to invent anything yourself. There is a proven model and someone already made some of the mistakes for you and will lower your risk.
5. Everything that will go wrong will go wrong. You name it, renovation issues, software issues, customer complaints, product launches, suppliers and marketing. Things will always come up and a new issue will arise everyday. Things you didn’t think could go wrong will go wrong and that’s just the nature of running your own business. Make sure you are mentally prepared for whats about to come. Make sure you are able to take the stress and the pressure and push forward.

Thats it for this post even though I can talk about this topic for a long time but that will be for a different time. Even though starting a running a business is exhausting sometimes it’s important you just do it and take action because you will never be ready and have the perfect plan. You don’t need to be great to start but you do need to start to be great. Just be cautious and continue to learn everyday. As always thanks for reading.