Five Things You Need To Remember Before Starting a Small Business
by Chris Le Roy
Everyone knows someone who has decided to go into small business but did you
know that 70 percent of all small businesses fail within the first 12 months of
operation. In some countries that failure rate is as high as 85 to 90 percent.
Small Business is one of the toughest industries you can ever decide to take on
and most people who go into small business go into it for the wrong reason.
I have started 4 small businesses over the last 10 years and every single one of
them has been started from scratch and survived into a thriving business. Just
recently I have decided to sell one of the businesses off cause it had done what
I expected it to do which is the first issue you need to think about.
Issue 1. Have a Clear Understanding of What You Want To Achieve In Your Business
The majority of people, who actually go into business, go into it for the wrong
reasons. Even I have been guilty of that. So what is this wrong reason, most
people start a small business because they believe they can do a better job then
their current boss. Maybe this is true, maybe it is not but what most people
really want is better working conditions and better pay. No one can blame you
for wanting that. If that is all you want, then I strongly suggest you stay away
from small business.
One of the key issues you must remember before evening thinking about starting a
small business is this. Do you know what your business will look like? If you
were walking down the street, how would you want to be found? What impression do
you want to give to your clients? What clearly do you what to achieve in this business?
The second clear understanding you must have of your business is, when will you
know when it is finished? When you have built what you want to achieve and more
importantly, how will you get out?
See most people when they go into business have no exit strategy and that is one
of the worst things you can do. Before you ever start a business, the first
thing you must work out is how you are going to get out of the business.
Two years ago, I started a small car cleaning business. My wife and I both
started it because she wanted to see if she could build a business. Our exit
strategy was to sell the business once it was done. How we would sell it was
something we were not sure of?
See we could have taken a number of approaches to this. Our exit strategy could
have been to franchise the business, sell it to a single owner or to float it on
the stock market. We chose that we only wanted to sell it to another owner, but
we still built the business in such a way that there was still plenty of growth
and opportunity in the business for the new owner, but we had removed the risk
for them on how to run the business by clearly documenting everything they
needed to do to run that business.
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