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How Easy is it to Start Your Own Business?

This will depend on the complexity of the business, your existing skills, your willingness to work hard and what kind of business you intend to start.

Part-time Hobby Business
One of the easiest ways to start your own business is to set up part-time as a hobby business that you can do in the evenings or at weekends. This way you can keep your nine to five going at the same time if you need a regular income.

You can see how this could work for many different business ideas, for example offering services such as:

• mobile hairdressing

• massage or beauty therapy

• disc jockey

• cleaning

You could also sell items you’ve produced in your spare time at home. The internet provides a great opportunity for you to do this, as do seasonal and farmers’ markets as they usually take place at weekends. You could make:

• food items – home-baked cakes, biscuits, chocolates

• craft items – bags, hats, cards

• resale of goods or collectibles – stamps, coins, books

• cosmetics – hand-made creams, salts, soaps

Starting a business part-time allows you to see how well it performs before giving up other reliable streams of income. Hopefully, you’ll become so busy you’ll be able to transition from working full-time for someone else to working full-time for yourself in no time at all!

However, starting your business part-time does have its drawbacks:

• you cannot dedicate the amount of time you would do if it were your only job

• you may have to spend many unsociable hours working on it, leaving little time for other pursuits

• you are limited to seeing potential clients or suppliers, visiting markets and so on in your spare time

Full-time Business
If your part-time business does well or you feel you have sufficient skills, knowledge and confidence to make the idea work, you can start full-time. People all around you have already made this step. For example decorators, builders and hairdressers would most likely have started off working for others. During this time they gain knowledge about the business, gather important contacts, learn the essential administration and so on. They then have the information needed to put together a credible business plan to attract investors and the skills to make the business a success.

If you intend to start a business using an idea that’s not been used before you will need to carry out extensive market research. This should tell you, amongst many other things:

• what your potential customer base will be

• how much profit you are likely to make

• at what level you should price your product or service

• how much money you’ll need to start up

A comprehensive business plan is essential if you want to convince people to invest in your business. It shows you’ve put time and thought into your business idea and that you are serious about making it work.

The Advantages
Starting your business full-time does have some significant advantages. You can:

• dedicate the whole of your time to making it work

• see suppliers, contacts and potential clients at times to suit them

• build time to relax into your day as you’ll not be working on your business alongside another job

• take time off without asking permission from, or working around, others

• choose when in the day you work

• decide what work or clients you’d like to accept

Possible Drawbacks
Of course there are also some drawbacks to owning a business such as:

• you are wholly responsible for its success or failure – how well the business does is entirely dependent on your desire to work hard at it

  
  

• you have to make all the important decisions – this can be stressful if you are not used to shouldering responsibility

  
  

• you are responsible for the behaviour, safety and wellbeing of any staff you employ – it’s important to know your legal obligations and employ people you can trust and rely on

  
  

• making sure there is enough money should you not be able to work – you need to have a plan in place in the event of you being incapacitated and unable to bring in money

  
  

• the buck stops with you – you will be responsible for resolving any complaints about the service or product

Help!
There is a lot of help available for new business owners if you need it, so the above points shouldn’t cause you too much concern. Your bank should be able to give you comprehensive help – they’ll be especially interested if they’ve lent you money. Your local business centre – such as Business Link in the UK – will also be able to help. You can enrol on courses or connect with mentors who can walk you through the business process until you are confident by yourself. And, you can connect with people on free social networking sites, such as LinkedIn where you can network with other business owners.

Once you’ve mastered running your business and your confidence grows you should start to enjoy your new found independence.

Buying a Business
There are other ways of making it easy to start your own business – the easiest being to buy a business that’s already a going concern. This way you’ll have a set of working practices that are already established. You may, of course, wish to change them, but to begin with you know the business works. Plus, you’ll be safe in the knowledge that the business has a solid customer base. You should already have a good idea how much profit you will make so there’s no wondering if the business will make enough money to live on! And, you should be making enough money to give up any other work from day one.

The same applies to buying a franchise, although when you do this training usually comes as part of the package so it’s even easier to start as you’ll be helped with every aspect of the business.

Of course buying an established business or franchise also has drawbacks – the main one being price. You will need significantly more money to buy a business with a solid reputation, premises and stock than you would to start it from scratch. And, with a franchise you’ll have to stick with the tried and tested ways of the business you are buying into.

Your Input
You will have to be prepared to learn some new skills and do some menial tasks that you may be used to having others do in the past but, it will be worth it in the end.

So, as you can see, starting a business can be easy and there is plenty of help available. Ultimately, the satisfaction you’ll get from working for yourself will far outweigh any challenges you may encounter.

Business Training can help you Start Your Own Business. To find out more request a prospectus for our Start Your Own Business course.