structure is simply stifling that improvement.
But opportunity comes in many guises. It might be when potential customers start calling you, or perhaps a business in your area is failing and you know you can make it work. Or maybe you feel as if you’re underemployed (working below your potential salary or your skill level) or not putting your skills and talents to their best use. Perhaps there’s a need for the product or service you want to provide. Or you’ve simply figured out a better or a new way to do something.
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Need inspiration? Check out Ted.com/talks for inspirational talks on almost any topic, all advice and messages you can use to empower yourself to live the life you desire. While the site’s subject matter covers everything from fitness to raising kids, its target audience is anybody with an entrepreneurial spirit. Speakers of all kinds—including many entrepreneurs—offer new ideas, inspiring thoughts, and powerful motivation.
Reality Check
Once you’ve made the decision to break away, there are several things you should do before taking the next step. Conducting thorough market research is a must. Make sure you have enough cash—not only for the business, but to sustain your life—and discuss the decision with your family. (You’ll find out more about all these steps in Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this book.)
Remember, the rewards of small-business ownership are not instantaneous. You must be determined, patient, persistent, and willing to make sacrifices to ensure those rewards eventually do come.
You’ll need to prepare for the responsibilities that come with business ownership. When things go wrong, the buck stops with you. You won’t have the luxury of going home at 5 o’clock while the boss stays all night to fix a chaotic situation. Someone whose only desire is to get rich quick probably won’t last long owning his or her own business.
Through surveys and research, we know that successful entrepreneurs share some common personality traits, the most important of which is confidence. They possess confidence not only in themselves but also in their ability to sell their ideas, set up a business, and trust their intuition along the way. Small business is fiercely competitive, and it’s the business owners with confidence who survive.
Your Strengths and Weaknesses
It’s rare that one person possesses all the qualities needed to be successful in business. Everyone has strong suits and weak points. What’s important is to understand your strengths and weaknesses. To do this, you need to evaluate the major achievements in your personal and professional life and the skills you used to accomplish them. The following steps can help:
1. Create a personal resume. Compose a resume that lists your professional and personal experiences as well as your expertise. For each job, describe the duties you were responsible for and the degree of your success. Include professional skills, educational background, hobbies, and accomplishments that required expertise or special knowledge.
When complete, this resume will give you a better idea of the kind of business that best suits your interests and experience.
2. Analyze your personal attributes. Are you friendly and self-motivated? Are you a hard worker? Do you have common sense? Are you well-organized? Evaluating your personal attributes reveals your likes and dislikes as well as strengths and weaknesses. If you don’t feel comfortable around other people, then a business that requires a lot of customer interaction might not be right for you. Or you may want to hire a “people person” to handle customer service.
3. Analyze your professional attributes. Small-business owners wear many different hats, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a jack-of-all-trades. Just be aware of the areas where you’re competent and the areas where you need help, such as sales, marketing, advertising, and administration. Next to each function, record your competency level—excellent, good, fair, or poor.
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There are more than 8,000 groups with nearly 2.4 million members worldwide dedicated to entrepreneurs on Meetup.com at entrepreneur.meetup.com. Find one that suits you and you can “meet up” with individuals or for entrepreneurial events, networking, support, and even socializing.
One of the best ways to determine if now is the best time to start a business is to meet with other entrepreneurs and see what they do and how they do it. Looking at their life and talking about entrepreneurship can help you figure out if you’re ready.
Often when you talk to someone who’s done it, they’ll tell you all the negative things about owning a business, like the time they had to work a 24-hour day or when the power went out right as they were trying to meet a huge deadline. But those are the things you need to hear about before you get started.
In addition to meeting with successful entrepreneurs, you might want to talk to a few who weren’t so successful. Find out what went wrong with their ventures so you can avoid these problems.
Many potential business owners find it useful to attend entrepreneurial seminars or classes. You can often find such courses at community colleges, continuing education programs near you, or online. Others seek assistance from consulting firms that specialize in helping small businesses get off the ground. There are associations and organizations, both private and public such as Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) or the Small Business Development Centers that are eager to assist you. Don’t hesitate to ask for assistance. These people want to help you succeed.
Go for the Goal
In addition to evaluating your strengths and weaknesses, it’s important to define your business goals. For some people, the goal is the freedom to do what they want when they want, without anyone telling them otherwise. For others, the goal is financial security.
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Once you understand your strengths and weaknesses, there are three ways to deal with them: You can either improve in the areas where you are weak (by taking a class in bookkeeping, for example), hire an employee to handle these aspects of the business (for instance, hiring a bookkeeper), or outsource the tasks (such as contracting an outside company to do your bookkeeping). Outsourcing small tasks and one-off assignments to experts at reasonable rates has become much simpler with formal work-for-hire freelancer websites like Odesk.com.
Setting goals is an integral part of choosing the business that’s right for you. After all, if your business doesn’t meet your personal goals, you probably won’t be happy waking up each morning and trying to make the business a success. Sooner or later, you’ll stop putting forth the effort needed to make the concept work. When setting goals, aim for the following qualities: