Start Your Own Business (4 page)

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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.

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Analyze your personal attributes.
Are you friendly and selfmotivated? 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, while you concentrate on the tasks you do best.

FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH

 

O
ne 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.

Did they fail to conduct market research before forging ahead? Were they unwilling to work long hours? Were they undercapitalized? Did they have misconceptions about what it really takes to be an entrepreneur?

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 (like 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.

 

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Analyze your professional attributes.
Small-business owners wear many different hats, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a jackof-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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Specificity.
You have a better chance of achieving a goal if it is specific. “Raising capital” isn’t a specific goal; “raising $10,000 by July 1” is.

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Optimism.
Be positive when you set your goals. “Being able to pay the bills” isn’t exactly an inspirational goal. “Achieving financial security” phrases your goal in a more positive manner, thus firing up your energy to attain it.

 

TIP

 

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).

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Realism.
If you set a goal to earn $100,000 a month when you’ve never earned that much in a year, that goal is unrealistic. Begin with small steps, such as increasing your monthly income by 25 percent. Once your first goal is met, you can reach for larger ones.

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Short and long term.
Short-term goals are attainable in a period of weeks to a year. Long-term goals can be for five, 10 or even 20 years; they should be substantially greater than short-term goals but should still be realistic.

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Income.
Many entrepreneurs go into business to achieve financial security. Consider how much money you want to make during your first year of operation and each year thereafter, up to five years.

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Lifestyle.
This includes areas such as travel, hours of work, investment of personal assets and geographic location. Are you willing to travel extensively or to move? How many hours are you willing to work? Which assets are you willing to risk?

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Type of work.
When setting goals for type of work, you need to determine whether you like working outdoors, in an office, with computers, on the phone, with lots of people, with children and so on.

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Ego gratification.
Face it: Many people go into business to satisfy their egos. Owning a business can be very egogratifying, especially if you’re in a business that’s considered glamorous or exciting. You need to decide how important ego gratification is to you and what business best fills that need.

 

e-FYI

 

The Online Women’s Business Center has a lot to offer women—and men, too—from answering questions about financing businesses or becoming an international company to finding a mentor. Check it out at
sba.gov
under “Local Resources.”

Personal Goals and Objectives Worksheet

 

Setting goals not only gives you an ongoing road map for success, but it shows you the best alternatives should you need or desire a change along the way. You should review your goals on a regular basis. Many do this daily as it helps them assess their progress and gives them the ability to make faster and more informed decisions. Take a few minutes to fill out the following worksheet. You’ll find this very helpful in setting and resetting your goals.

1. The most important reason for being in business for myself is:

 

2. What I like best about being in business for myself is:

3. Within five years I would like my business to be:

4. When I look back over the past five years of my career I feel:

5. My financial condition as of today is:

6. I feel the next thing I must do about my business is:

7. The most important part of my business is (or will be):

8. The area of my business I really excel in is: