Partner Article

The Startup

This is a series of articles written by an entrepreneur who has started, grown and managed a number of businesses. As a consequence of success through hard work, a bit of luck, experiencing good times and not so good times now enjoys what has been achieved.

First Instalment: Starting a business:

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.“ (Mark Twain)

Starting a business can be daunting for anyone. There will be an angel on one shoulder, saying, do it! It will be great. The angel on the other shoulder, saying, don’t do it! You must be mad!!

What has made you think of setting up for yourself? Redundancy? Time of Life? Great idea? Or you have you been persuaded by someone else? Understanding why you are starting a business is important because it will influence your willingness to take risk.

Working life for each of us generally sits on a continuum of working for someone else; lower risk and leads to income generation or working for yourself; higher risk and leads more to wealth creation. What is your propensity for risk? Successful entrepreneurs do not take uncalculated risks!

There are a number of important questions pre start up. It can be quite traumatic and time consuming dealing with these questions. You will have a feeling of nervousness, if you are leaving a job. A feeling of vulnerability if you are out of work. These are coupled with feelings of anticipation and excitement. If you can avoid it don’t just let feelings govern your decisions.

Some of the basic questions are:

What is your business idea? Is this the time to launch your business? Are you bringing something different to the market? Can you do it quicker, smarter or better than anyone else in the market?

What are you bringing to the business? What are personal characteristics? Do you have the personal skills? Do you have the business skills? Are you capable of persevering? How do you handle stress? Do you have support from family and friends? Are you ambitious? Are you capable of hard work?

Consider the market for your product; is there a market for the product or service? What is the size of the market? What is the market missing? How does the market work? What do the buyers’ value?

Consider the financial aspects of your business; How are you going to finance the business? What will set up costs be? Over what time frame will funding be required? How will you fund growth? Where will you access funding?

You do not want to go into any venture blind, I have met too many people who have failed to do the initial hard work and have consequently not done as well as they could have. Success in business is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

You have made your decision you are definitely going to start up your own business! Great, let’s get on and get it done. The hard work starts here.

Regards, The Entrepreneur

Further articles will deal with some of the questions asked and will help you in starting and growing your business.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by The Secret Entrepreneur .