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Owning Your Own Business is Painful – Get Your Head Examined

Guest post by: Joanne Eckton

Article Overview: Wherever you are on the path towards owning your own business, stop at the nearest bench, stare into space and examine your head. Do some serious introspection. It’s easy to fantasize about owning your own business, but to make that fantasy a reality there are seven “must do” items you need to tackle first, before you spend a penny on any business opportunity.

Owning Your Own Business is Painful – Get Your Head Examined

Wherever you are on the path towards owning your own business, stop at the nearest bench, stare into space and examine your head. Do some serious introspection. It's easy to fantasize about owning your own business, but to make that fantasy a reality there are seven "must do" items you need to tackle first, before you spend a penny on any business opportunity. Owning your own business is hard work, not a get rich quick scheme, and if you truly want to build a sustainable, profitable business you need to lay the proper foundation.

1) Are you ready to be an entrepreneur? Assess your entrepreneurial aptitude.

Honestly think about your work habits, your motivation, and your drive. Do you have what it takes to run your own business? Why do you want to do this? You must be prepared to roll up your proverbial shirt sleeves and get to work, serious work. A business owner must be able to keep pushing forward every day, whether he feels like it or not. You need to determine your motivations for starting your own business and it needs to be something bigger than yourself. If you think your primary motivation is to make money, dig deeper. What difference will that money make in your life or in someone else's life? Paint a picture of that lifestyle in your mind that you are emotionally attached to and that picture can help sustain you when your motivations lag.

2) How are you really going to do this?



Think about the resources you can invest in your business. Do you have more time than money, or perhaps the reverse? The answer to that will steer you towards different strategies of outsourcing, staffing and doing it yourself. Starting and owning your own business takes considerable resources, and you must maximize those you have available.

3) The bottom line - what is your financial goal?



Write down real numbers. How much money do you want to make per month/per year? How much money do you want to be able to save or invest? What are the large expenses you have coming up that you need to pay for, such as college tuition, your daughter's wedding, or credit card debt.

4) Which business opportunity is right for you?



The world if full of opportunity if you go looking for it. Your email is probably full of all kinds of offers for the next greatest money making scheme. Define a set of criteria you are going to use to figure out which ones are right for you. Here are some questions to consider:

- Does the pricing structure give me the ability to make the money I want to make? What is the average profit per sale? How many sales will you need to make?

- Is there a support system in place to help get you started and to mastermind with?

- What is the credibility of the company? Has it been in business long?

- Look beyond the initial investment required to start the company to the ongoing costs you will need to run the operation, advertise, etc. Compare this to your answers in step #2.

5) Do you have what it takes? Or can you get there?



This is where you need to address your skills, talents and weaknesses. Make a list of all the jobs that will need to be done in order for your business to be successful. How many of these do you know how to do? How many can you learn? How many can you outsource or hire? Remember, though, that owning your own business makes you responsible for the eventual success or failure of the enterprise, but that does not mean doing it all yourself. In fact, going it alone is a recipe for disaster.

6) How will you get the word out?

In my neighborhood, restaurants pop up overnight and then go away just as quickly. You never hear about them. One day you drive by and see a sign in the window, and the next thing you know the lights are out. Marketing is critical to the lifeblood of any business. Figure out who your customer is, where they hang out, how you can reach them. Then figure out how to compel them to do business with you and how much all this will cost. Do not sugar-coat this step! You know you have the greatest thing in the world but you will not make one dime until your prospective customers believe this themselves.

7) What is your plan?

Owning your own business means you have to work ON your business rather than IN your business. You need to set down goals and define what you need to get accomplished to be successful. Goals should be both short term and long term. Break those goals down into tasks that will be stepping stones to success, and then put system in place for daily action. Learn time management techniques so you can pull yourself out of the tornado of all those items that keep you busy but not moving forward.

Only until you've gotten a clear idea of how to address all seven of these items are you ready to get off that bench and take the steps towards owning your own business. If you try to skip these steps, you will struggle, get frustrated, burn through your money, or worse, you may become one of those failed business owners that the statisticians talk about

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Article Tags: business opportunity, own your own business, owning your own business, starting your own business



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