5 STEPS TO STARTING A SUCCESSFUL SMALL BUSINESS – AND ARE YOU THE PERSON TO DO IT
Below is from a great article I recently read. It was easy to understand, concise and made perfect sense. It also seemed a bit too easy to me since I have opened 3 businesses before and have the battle wounds to prove it – haha. But to get you thinking and to build at least 5 folders to fill of things to start the new year or data points to learn about – it’s good!
5 Steps to Starting a Successful Small Business
So you have a great business idea and the entrepreneurial spirit to see it through. Excellent! Now it’s time to turn that vision into reality. Here are the essential steps to get your small business up and running:
- Develop a business plan. This will help you outline your idea, target market, and financial projections. It shows you’ve done your homework and helps you secure funding.
- Determine the business structure. Will you be a sole proprietor, partnership or corporation? Each has its own legal and tax implications, so choose wisely based on your needs.
- Register the business. You’ll need to register with your state and obtain licenses or permits. Make it official — you’re now open for business!
- Build your team. Hire qualified staff and consider using a payroll service to properly classify them and pay them on time. For small businesses, every employee should pull their weight.
- Secure financing. Whether using a bank loan, investor funds or your own savings, you need capital to start and maintain your business. Consider crowdfunding or peer-to-peer lending as alternatives.
https://warespace.com/articles/small-business-guides-and-tips/how-to-start-a-small-business-guide
LET’S BREAK DOWN 1 OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SENTENCES
The most important part of this article is “So you have a great business idea and the entrepreneurial spirit…”. Entrepreneurial Spirit is a thing, and we should know about it, honor it and respect it. As someone with an Entrepreneurial Spirit you must feel the passion for what you’re going to embark on, you must admit that you’re going to make a lot of mistakes, every day, and you must be willing to make more decisions in a day then most people make in a lifetime – and like it! That’s just who we are. We aren’t afraid to make decisions and we aren’t afraid to stand by the decisions we make. We are also okay doing most of the jobs in our businesses, but smart enough to hire people better than us in areas we are not strong in. At Curt’s Café my favorite “station” was the 3 compartment dish sink. I was good at it, no one bothered me, I had a starting place and an end goal I could reach throughout my shift and I knew I could succeed (and I loved talking with the students about life and choices and goals if they did decide to join me in the soapy sinks). But I also had to be okay plunging the toilet, writing yearly budgets, making cappuccinos when the line got long, doing strategic visioning with the staff, holding a student’s hand when just released from prison, and creating a marketing plan to be executed with no budget. That’s the Entrepreneurial Spirit!
Udemy.com wrote my thoughts on Entrepreneurial Spirit in a much more articulate way…
“…Entrepreneurial Spirit is a way of thinking that pursues change instead of waiting for it. Anyone, including entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and working professionals, can have entrepreneurial spirit. Those with entrepreneurial spirit embrace fear, aspire to grow, and aim to try new things.”
https://www.udemy.com/course/cultivating-the-entrepreneurial-spirit/
Pursuing change instead of waiting for it I believe is how we all started our dream. It was often tied to wanting to spread our wings and keep money made by our skills in our own pockets, but most of us thought we could do something better than someone else and we wanted to show that changing mediocre behavior or product was possible.
The fear of failure, not for ourselves but for the people we employ who rely on a paycheck from us, is one of the hardest things. The fear of not having enough time in the day to accomplish everything you know has to be done to make money and the fear you won’t have enough money in the bank to pay your staff, your bills or yourself (but as a true entrepreneur you will usually pay your staff first, your vendors second and yourself last). But we do embrace fear and rarely curl up in a corner and cower from it – although I’m not going to lie I have been in a fetal position crying more than once. We usually face it head on knowing that if we don’t it becomes our demise. Ask around – most people have a huge fear of failure, but entrepreneurs can’t because then our customers would question our product and hard work and our Staff would not have faith in us.
We do aspire to grow but to be honest I think growth is something we should always check ourselves on. Many of us have been wildly successful in our first endeavor and logically two great things are better than one, so we look at growth options. However we have to remind ourselves that we are only human and although often we accomplish what most people believe could never be accomplished in just one day – there are only 24 hours in a day and you only have 2 hands and 1 brilliant mind – no more, no less. Not to say growth isn’t often wonderful and necessary but I would suggest you first remind yourself of what you want your entire life to look and feel like or your life’s journey, not just at the end of it.
The aim to try new things is what I think our tattoo’s should be! We are curious people, we never think we know it all (if we do, we shouldn’t) and we are always aiming to try new things for our mind, body and spirit to feel fully satisfied. Curiosity may have killed the cat, as the phrase goes, but it fuels us and makes us feel alive. Even when my first business was at $28M in revenue I still took a Time Management class once a year because I was curious on what was trending to help me fit more into each day. When our kids were young I needed to find some way to shut off my mind for just a short time so I took flamingo dancing because I was curious how they moved their hands and hips and arms all in different directions at the same time. Turned out that it was so hard I ended up just focusing on just not falling down, which did end up giving me the hour of not thinking about anything else I was curious about. And now at 67 years old I am taking harp lessons because I’m curious how any instrument can sound like clouds gently gliding through the sky. There was never much new in time management because 24 hours is 24 hours but I have loved all my curious journeys and if nothing else they have taught me patience, and how to laugh at myself; a very valuable tool for an entrepreneur.
So, do you have the Entrepreneurial Spirit? Do you think you can learn what you need to in order to shore up your success? Do you even want to? These are the important things to be honest with yourself about before opening a business. The other stuff I guarantee you can be learned. But listening to the Spirit of our Souls cannot be learned, only listened to.
