Many people these days are beginning to entertain the idea of entrepreneurship – starting businesses for themselves which are more in line with their own specific skills, interests or a gap they have identified in the market. Starting your own business can be a daunting but extremely rewarding prospect: long hours to make the business a success can seem counterproductive to those who left the Monday to Friday in order to pursue their own hours, but that’s just the beginning. Owning and running your own business can have tons of pros and cons and starting it up can seem to be far too complicated, but here is a quick newbies guide to entrepreneurship.
Business Ideas
Of course the most important aspect of starting a business is the overall business idea that you will be tackling as a part of your services or product offering. If you come to the table with a re-hashed idea that already exists the likelihood of you attracting a multitude of clients significantly decreases. Instead, ensure you have an idea, product or service that there is a gap in the market for, or take an existing idea and find a way to use it in another way. These are key points to consider when you’re thinking of starting up your own business.
Markets, Growth and Development of the Brand
It can be tempting when you’re just starting out to try and compete with the market ups and downs, and it can lead to you thinking you’re failing when really you’re just riding the waves. This is the best way to be when starting out as while your business may be slightly affected by the trends in the market (ie: people may be less willing to purchase your service or product depending on the market trends), your business won’t be fully affected by massive downturns in the markets like larger multi-million dollar corporations will be.
Likewise, going with the flow when you’re just starting out you should have clearly pre-determined ideas of what success is to you in your field. For example, success in entrepreneurship can be easily measured in the little things: opening a shop, getting some custom signage done through a signage company, or hiring one employee. Success is not always measured in figures and dividends, especially for small start ups.
Developing the brand can come slowly but surely, especially through word of mouth, social media and other avenues. Don’t be afraid to run small competitions – many smaller businesses run “Friday Freebie” style competitions on things like Facebook to get likes and shares and generate more traffic to their pages.
Monitoring and Development
Monitoring the success of small businesses and the development can be easy in the beginning. Start by setting specific, achievable goals for your first month, quarter, half and year and see how you progress through them. This can also help highlight areas where you need to devote more time and energy.
Overall, starting your own business can be an incredibly rewarding and beneficial step in your life. Autonomy, and the development of leadership qualities can really help you grow personally and professionally.
