Starting a small business is not an easy task. We love reading success stories of entrepreneurs but we often forget how they hit the jackpot.
Contrary to common perceptions towards business owners, you will not have free time. You can’t leave the place when you need to. Your task of growing your business does not end within 8 hours.
You will experience sleepless nights and spend hours thinking on how to improve and manage the system. You will give yourself a deadline that you have to be successful within months or years, but there’s also a high risk that you won’t.
So, before you pour out your whole heart to your venture, make sure that you’re ready to start one.
Ask yourself these questions at least five times to know that you’re ready to start a small business.
- Do I really want to start a small business?
- Am I financially ready?
- Am I open to possibilities?
- Do I see myself working with a team?
- Am I ready to lose and start again?
Do I really want to start a small business?
It’s easy to be swayed when you see a social media post bragging of their success in business.
When you see that others are making it, you will tell yourself that there’s no reason you can’t do it. If they can, why can’t you? More often, you get tired of corporate setup or frustrated with the current life you have so you decide to start a small business. Or maybe, you feel like you need a new direction so you start one.
While these are good motivations, they’re not good foundations of starting a business. Why?
When you start a small business, make sure that you have fully decided on doing it. You take ownership of the process, and results. There’s an advantage when you want something.
When you do, you will find yourself finding ways on how to overcome the problem. You stop blaming others for the result, and you see yourself taking the same path in the long run.
Am I financially ready?
Wait a minute! I’m not saying that you need to have 10 million pesos to start one. Anyone can begin with 100,000, 50,000 or even 1,000 pesos!
When I say financially ready, I’m talking about your capital and budgeting skills. When you’re starting your journey, you will see yourself paying more fees than your actual sales. Sad truth but expect your bank account to be in the red. That’s true!
You will ask yourself why your landlord or online platform is asking for business registration. When you find one, you will need to pay fees to do so.
Let’s say you’re able to pay off the initial fees. You will then see yourself paying for people, goods, and loans with your own pocket.
As they say, budgeting is more important than having so much money in the bank.
At least when the time comes that your business needs additional funding, you will see yourself confident in handling finances.
Am I open to possibilities?
Nope. That’s not networking. Lol. When you start a small business, you often end up with different plans.
At first, you have a target market in mind. But as days go by, you realized that your target people are different from what you expected.
Maybe you’re rooting for Product A, but you end up having good sales for Product B. You see, when you open a business, you have to be open to possibilities and changes.
I remember relocating to another location just because the place got burnt in our first month. It was devastating to see how you prepared for months, but ended up transferring to another place. But it all turned out that the changes were for the better.
If you are into business, accept the fact that the plan, model, finances and others will change for MANY reasons.
Do I see myself working with a team?
Here’s another truth. When you start a business, you will not work by yourself. You need a team.
This consists of people who will give you feedback on what you’re doing. You need help from members to delegate the tasks such as welcoming clients, running errands, opening the store, and more.
If you think you can do it by yourself, you have to accept that you can’t.
Along the way, you will realize that others can give you better suggestions on how to fix things. I, myself, am not skilled to do everything in the services and products we offered.
The truth is, most of them are collective ideas from different people. Even the feedback of your customers matter! If you are working alone, it’s not different from working as an employee.
But if you work with team to execute your vision, you will feel the difference of starting a small business.
Am I ready to lose and start again?
Going back to what I said earlier, starting a business doesn’t guarantee success. It’s normal to be optimistic in the beginning but you will always end up with more failures.
You will fail, see yourself losing, and feel that you’re not gaining anything. However, you will understand that your business is a long process. You need start again when you need to.
You need to play with the market, keep up with the trend, provide the needs of your customers.
That’s what starting a small business is like. More than the registration, process, and others, it’s more like being mentally strong that you can finish what you have started.
To all aspiring entrepreneurs, you got this!
