How do I start my own business?

How do I start my own business?

I want to start my own business. Where do I begin?

“Starting a business is more than a catchy name and flashy business cards. They really need to do their homework to educate themselves on all the other spokes involved,” said Renee Hode of Central Piedmont Community College’s Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Center.

Here are Hode’s tips for getting started:

Begin by interviewing yourself. Ask yourself tough questions: Do you have the traits of an entrepreneur? Do you have the characteristics to help you succeed? And does the business opportunity meet both your personal and professional goals?


That last question is often overlooked, Hode said, but it’s essential to think about what’s important to you in everyday life. “Some individuals will come in and want to start that auto shop, or start that salon, but they might have a different lifestyle in mind,” she said.

For instance: “ ‘I’m a parent, I have three children, I want to be home on the weekends.’… Do those things align well with the business you want to start?”


Do your research. Generally speaking, most businesses will fail within the first three years, Hode said. So research and planning is critical to the viability of your business long term.

Among the areas to study: Is there a need for your service? Will your business provide a solution to a problem? Or what are you doing differently that will give you a competitive advantage over businesses providing a similar service? Make sure your idea is feasible and unique to the marketplace.


Know what you know – and what you don’t. Say you want to start a restaurant. Do you have experience in the industry? If not, your first step is to educate yourself in the trade in order to be successful. And that might mean taking on a job in the industry, Hode said.

“It’s a great opportunity for them to ... be there day-to-day to see what are all the things that occur” – from back-of-the-house duties, to the kitchen, to busing tables, to working the front of the house.


Also, be aware of the financial, accounting and legal matters involved in running a business – from doing payroll to picking the best business structure. Take classes or seminars, or look for people with these skills to include on your team.


Write a business plan: You need to show investors or banks you have a strategy if you want them to help fund your business. A business plan helps with that, by detailing your costs from startup to opening day for your business to daily operations, Hode said. A business plan is also a road map to keep you on course with the mission of your business.


Finally, pay attention to how you feel throughout the process. Some people keep that passion for what they want to do and have the tenacity to go through all the steps, Hode said.

But “if you’re having a hard time dedicating yourself to putting together the plan, you’re probably going to face a lot more challenges along the way in running and operating the business,” she said.


“We have a lot of great ideas. Everyone does,” Hode said. “It’s being able to live up to that charge, to take that idea, to execute it and turn it into your dream, your passion, your profitability.”

Starting Your Own Business - An Alternative To The Job Search

Starting Your Own Business - An Alternative To The Job Search

(NAPSI)—While being laid off or “downsized” can be a traumatic time for anyone, especially in a tight job market, it could also be an opportunity to change your career direction. One popular alternative is to start your own business. After all, how many of us dream of “being our own boss” and controlling our own destiny? But is starting your own business right for you?

There are four key questions you will need to ask yourself before making the transition from worker to entrepreneur:

• What sets you apart? According to CNN, there are nearly 6 million small businesses in the U.S. What skills are you able to perform, or what products are you able to produce that will set you apart and make you better than the rest? It is vital that you do your research to see how saturated this particular segment of the market is.

• What skills are you lacking? When you start your own business, you become responsible for every aspect. Do you know how to write a business plan, analyze profit margins and set prices? Do you know the regulations governing your industry? What tax implications do you need to understand? Does your industry require particular certifications? You may need to consider additional education, whether it be a certificate or a full academic degree. Speak with other small-business owners; ask them if there is education they wish they had pursued before starting out.

• How are you going to pay for this? Consider all your expenses. Will you operate your business out of your home or will you need a physical office space? Will you be a sole proprietor or hiring contractors and employees? What types of insurance and precautionary measures are necessary? It is crucial to keep in mind the amount of time it takes to build a customer base; it is likely that you will be operating at a loss for the first couple years. Do you plan on taking out a loan or seeking investors? Also, consider the amount of risk involved-is there another steady income in your household or is this business the sole income?

• Where can you seek help? Many small businesses thrive by helping each other out. If you are not willing to get out there and talk up your business, entrepreneurship is probably not for you. Work with your local chamber of commerce and small-business administration; they provide resources for promoting your business and networking and serve as excellent resources for the inevitable bevy of questions you will have along the way.

8 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Business From Home

8 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Business From Home

Launching a business from home can provide tremendous flexibility and the kind of work-life balancethat we all crave. But the reality is that home businesses bring their own set of challenges, says Caroline Daniels, lecturer for entrepreneurship and technology at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. For example, "doing your business on your own from home can get stale. It's hard to keep feeding the imagination all on your own."

Here are eight mistakes to avoid when starting a business from home:

1. Spending Too Much Time at Home: Loneliness is the number one complaint from people who work at home, says Anne Alexander, a small-business coach in Brevard, N.C. "Many people are not prepared for the isolated working environment." While it may seem easier to do everything virtually, that isn't the best approach. Instead, take time away from your home office for face-to-face meetings that will help build your business. Plan lunch dates, attend networking groups or work from coffee shops to build a social element into your day, Alexander says
2. Keeping a 24-7 Work Schedule: When Leon Oks co-founded iCanvasART, an online seller of custom canvases, he and several employees spent day and night working from his dining room. It's a recipe for burnout. "You're feeling guilty that you're not working, and there's no disconnect," Oks says. Eventually, he asked employees to leave by 6 p.m. and made sure to schedule free time into his day. But this year, he moved his Niles, Ill.-based company to an office space because the growing business was becoming difficult to manage at home.
3. Allowing Interruptions: Without a boss breathing down your neck, it's easy to take a phone call or two from family and friends. But when you're constantly in "interrupt mode," it hurts your business focus, Daniels says. To combat disruptions, she recommends setting aside blocks of quiet time throughout the day when you don't allow phone calls or email alerts. You also need to be careful about getting pulled too often into distracting chores like laundry or childcare. Remind family members and babysitters of your work hours and explain you'll be answering only urgent requests.
4. Depending Too Much on Loved Ones: Without coworkers around, you can easily fall into a habit of talking out your business problems with your spouse or friends. But loved ones may get weary of talking about your business. What's more, they may not provide the best advice because they don't always understand your business, Alexander says. So, try to connect with others in your field to develop an informal network of advisors. "Build a mastermind group of others with home-based businesses," Alexander suggests.
5. Failing to Create a Separate Work Area: Even if you don't live in a huge home, set aside a space reserved almost entirely for work. Opt for a little-used room or even an empty corner of your living area to create a physical divide between work and home. If you must work in a common area of the house like the dining room or kitchen, put away personal objects to set a professional tone for the day, Daniels says. "Even if you don't have a separate space, you can create it."
6. Letting Employees Abuse Your Home: You risk damage to your home if you don't establish rules for how employees should behave there. For example, Oks got stressed out over how his workers would eat lunch in his living room, walk on his light-colored carpet with their shoes on, and tack notes onto the walls. Instead of scolding employees later, it's better to set expectations from the get go, Oks says. "Set up rules you're comfortable with." Oks began asking employees to take off their shoes and clean off their workspace at the end of the day so he could use his dining room table each evening.
7. Getting too Busy to Stay Organized: As work piles up, it's easy to let organization slide, says Tata Harper, who started an eponymous skincare line at her home in Shoreham, Vt. "It is easy to succumb to disorganization when you are working in the same place that you live since it is a private space that you don't often share with" coworkers or other visitors, she says. Harper files papers away before they pile up and stores only business-related items there. In addition, she finds that decorating and brightly lighting her office motivates her to keep it clean.
8. Starting the Day Without a Plan: "Without conscious decisions about how to spend your time, your day can slip away without much to show for it," says Elaine Quinn, Chicago-based author of There's No Place Like Working From Home (Calloran Publishing, July 2011). Instead, give time to both short-term actions and long-term goals so you run your business in a more balanced manner. Create a schedule and stick to it. "Rather than making to-do lists, enter tasks directly into your [daily] planner," which allows you to set a specific deadline for completing each task, Quinn says. Also, make sure you leave unscheduled time in the day to deal with important but unexpected issues that crop up.

BY ALINA DIZIK 

3 Pieces of Startup Advice

3 Pieces of Startup Advice

I’ll tell you something that no one told me when I started up: somehow, putting up your own shingle also means putting up a sign that you’re open to advice. All sorts of people start offering their words of wisdom — experienced executives, college students, and even people who’ve never actually done anything with that good business idea they won’t tell you about, because you’ll steal it.

While people generally do mean well, their advice often misses the mark. Here are three bits of advice that I’ve received or incorporated that have never led me wrong:

1. Build from your strengths. In today’s fast-paced and crowded market, being good simply isn’t good enough. Rather than building a business that will have you cap out at “good,” take the time to assess your team’s core capabilities and build from what you can be truly great at. It’ll galvanize your team and your market, and give you early momentum so that you won’t get by merely being good. Every business mistake I’ve made can be traced back to not getting our business out of the comfort zone of our strengths.

2. Fanatically focus on your customers. Your business really isn’t about you; it’s about how you provide a solution to your customers that is worth paying for. Growth comes from serving more customers better, and the fastest way to get there is to get to know the conversation going on in your customers’ heads. Note: This doesn’t mean that your customer is always right, but it does let you know what your customer needs and values are so that you can determine how and where you’re going to serve them best.

3. Failure is necessary for learning. As frustrating as it is, we usually don’t learn as much from success as we do from failure. Fortunately for us, success is usually harder to come by, so we therefore have a lot of opportunities to learn. To be an entrepreneur is to chart unfamiliar territory, and to turn opportunities with uncertain outcomes into economic value. To do that well, you’re going to have to try some things that may not work out. But to not try at all because there may be failure is worse than trying and failing, for you learn nothing from what you don’t try. Seth Godin has been saying “fail fast and fail cheap” for a while, and Jim Collins advocates a similar approach in Great by Choice when he show that great businesses “fire bullets, then cannonballs.” Find a growth opportunity in your business and start a small experiment — a big win is absolutely worth a few small failures.

5 Entrepreneur Antidotes to Negativity in a Startup

5 Entrepreneur Antidotes to Negativity in a Startup

Throughout my career in small companies and large, I’ve always been appalled by the number of people who seem to complain all of the time. These people don’t seem to realize that they are hurting themselves, as well as other people’s productivity, and the company they are working for.

I’ve always thought that I might be overly sensitive, until I saw an old survey done by badbossoloy.com, which claims that a majority of employees spend 10 hours or more a month complaining or listening to others complain, and nearly one third spend 20 or more hours. No startup can afford that huge cost in emotional capital, as well as productivity!

In the survey, negativity is seen as an indictment of bad managers, but I believe it is also an indictment of whiners. Ten to twenty hours a month is a lot of time to waste, not to mention the indirect time lost of the listeners, and the morale impact.

What does all this mean, and how do you correct it, or prevent it in your startup? Here are some recommendations from experts for proactive and recovery actions by all parties to minimize the problem in both employee and management ranks:


Executives have to be the role model. If you as the founder, or other members your executive team are chronic complainers, the disease will spread rapidly through the rest of the organization. Don’t play the blame game, give negatively charged emotional speeches, berate employees in public, or wear an angry face at the office.


Use the hiring process effectively. Too many startups give short shrift to the hiring process, because they are too busy, don’t want to pay market prices, or have no experience. It’s actually easy to spot whiners during the interview process, by listening to them run down previous employers and not accepting accountability. Don’t hire them.


Encourage regular self-assessment. Encourage your management team and employees to always check themselves before making unsolicited comments against the following criteria: “Will this comment add value to our company, our customers, the person I am talking to, or the one I am talking about? If not, don’t say it.”


Openly reward positive suggestions. Maybe it’s time to establish or re-activate the old-fashioned “suggestion box.” Make it work by regularly handing out real accolades, as well as real money, to people who add value or reduce costs in your business. A positive can-do attitude should also be recognized in job performance feedback.


Quietly deal with people who won’t change. Some whiners have been that way all their life, and don’t know how to change their stripes. With proper counseling, they need to be moved out of your business before they do more damage. How quickly and quietly you deal with these problems will be the loudest message you can send to others.

Some people will use “honesty” as the excuse for negative and insensitive comments. In fact, the most honest and productive comments are always positive recommendations on how to fix a problem, rather than the complaint that someone or something is a problem. Even if some of your co-workers are jerks, you have no moral, ethical or legal obligation to broadcast this view.

Everyone needs to understand that complaining about salary or pay, criticizing colleagues and bosses, or vendors and customers, will generally just reflect negatively on the whiner, rather than accomplish any positive results.

The truth is that optimists lead better lives, and startups with positive teams are more successful, simply because they believe that what they are doing is going to work. Negativity also is a self-fulfilling prophecy, with an outcome that can be the demise of your startup.

Marty Zwilling

Business Start up Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Business Start up Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Overview

Launching a small business can be risky and success is not always guaranteed. Businesses are most vulnerable to failure during the early years of trading, with 20 per cent of new businesses folding within their first year and 50 per cent within their first three years.

These figures should not scare you off, but should prepare you for some of the challenges entrepreneurs face when starting a business. With hard work and an awareness of the issues, a new business can be a great success.

This guide looks at the most common mistakes new business owners make and, more importantly, how you can avoid them. It also shows you how to improve the chances of your business idea succeeding.Poor or inadequate market research

Research and planning are vital to ensure that your business idea is viable and that your pricing is both competitive in your market place and provides an adequate return.

A common misconception is that entrepreneurs who have failed simply lacked sufficient funding or did not put the right team in place. However, many fail because they have not spent enough time researching their business idea and its viability in the market.
Lack of in-depth market research

Lack of proper market research is one of the key problems for new businesses. It's easy to get carried away with a business idea and set up a business without testing its viability.

It is also important to consider what your audience or customer needs are and to use market research to test them, and to then factor feedback into any products or services you are designing.
Keeping your business ideas to yourself

Failing to share your business ideas with people you trust means that you will miss out on objective feedback.

Brainstorm with colleagues to give you valuable perspective. Note down any good ideas you get from brainstorming and use them when developing your business.

For more information, see our guide on how toresearch and develop your business ideas .

Asking potential customers what they think of your plans or allowing them to examine a prototype can be invaluable. It can help you discover whether your product offers a solution to customers' problems or something new and unique that they would purchase. Positive feedback will give you the confidence to proceed and could help you attract investment funding. On the other hand, negative feedback will alert you to the need to rethink your plans and could help you avoid wasting time and money on a product that will not sell.

If you want to keep your ideas confidential, consider using a non-disclosure agreement, also known as a confidentiality agreement. This is a legal contract between you and another party not to disclose information you have shared for a specific purpose.
Not knowing your clients or marketplace

If you do not complete adequate research, you are in danger of selling to the wrong people or of not understanding your marketplace. To avoid this:
use information, such as free government data or your own network of contacts
carry out field research to explore customers' profiles and discover buying trends
swap ideas with people in the same sector