This month I’ve got some statistics for you, courtesy of an article on the Forbes website entitled “16 Surprising Statistics About Small Businesses”. I’m not going to go through all 16 here but I’m going to highlight three that I think are particularly interesting:
- There are over 28 million small businesses in the US. Of these, 22 million are enterprises where one person works alone with no additional employees.
- Approximately 543,000 new businesses get started each month (but more shut down than start up)!
- 52% of small businesses are home-based.
So what does this mean for you and me?
First, that if you’re tired of working for someone else, you hate the rat-race and office politics or you’re sick of a long, tiring commute each day, then you could be one of those people seriously thinking about working for themselves.
If you already have an idea that you’d like to investigate further, then do it! If not, put your thinking cap on and really go out of your way to come up with ideas that you could turn into a business. It doesn’t have to be a huge enterprise – something you can do from home initially, with low overheads, would be ideal.
That takes care of points 1 and 3, but what about point 2?
You need to be cautious and do your research properly before you launch into anything. It might even be worthwhile trying to run your new venture alongside your existing job at first so that you still have a wage coming in to cover your family’s outgoings and provide cash for the new business.
You need to make sure that you have the qualities required to be a self-employed business person. There’s no doubt about it, you’ll probably work longer hours than when you were working for someone else, but there will be a lot more satisfaction and all the profits will be yours.
You also need to make sure that you have the right mental attitude. Can you cope with stress, when problems arise? Are you good at solving problems? Do you have a ‘can do’ attitude or a supportive family and friends who will help you?
Have you done your research and planning properly? Lack of research and planning are two of the most common reasons for business failure – so you’ve only yourself to blame if you’ve skimped on this and things start to go wrong. Everyone needs a good solid business plan before they start – you can’t do it on a wing and a prayer.
If you’ve ever thought about setting up your own business then you might want to consider our Start Your Own Business Course. It has a great checklist of questions that you need to ask yourself before you decide to go it alone; lots of help and advice on all aspects of setting up and developing a small business and detailed tuition on actually putting together your own business plan which you can use to approach banks or lenders if you need financial backing. It could just mean the difference between success and failure!
Author: Diana Nadin
