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6 must-do steps to start a small business

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Starting your own business is often the most difficult part of the whole journey
Starting your own business is often the most difficult part of the whole journey

Steve Jobs dropped out of college to start a little computer company in his garage, and Mark Zuckerberg launched the first iteration of Facebook from his dormitory room at Harvard.

While every successful entrepreneur’s career path looks a bit different, there are universal signposts that can steer everyone who owns a small business in the right direction.

Here are six principles to keep in mind for small business owners:

1 Success requires courage

It takes courage to start and persevere in your business. In some ways, starting is often the most difficult part of the whole journey. Remember that courage is really 50% fear. Being courageous means having a goal that you believe in. The more deeply
you believe in that goal, the more fear you will be willing to overcome.

Your goal should be more than financial profit. Having your own business is usually a long-term – even lifelong – project. With the inevitable obstacles and setbacks that will arise, doing something you really believe in is essential to finding the courage to continue.

2 Well begun is half done

The fearful may think that they are never quite at the point where they are ready to get started. As a result, many never start.

It’s easy to justify fear: “The time isn’t right”, “I need to collect more data first”, “I can’t find the right talented people”, “It doesn’t feel quite right”, “I need to reflect on it some more”, and so on.

By justifying fear, such rationalisations become the entrepreneur’s Achilles heel.

Of course, it’s possible to be too impulsive and get started without sufficient planning, but that’s not common. For most people, it’s just hard to get the
ball rolling because it always seems that you can do more planning.

The art, however, is knowing when enough is enough – and it’s time to get started. No formula can answer that for you; it’s more like a feeling in your gut.

3 Find the right mentor

Getting over that fear hump may require a good support group or mentor. It’s a lot easier for another person to identify your excessive fear than it is for you to see it. If you haven’t identified your rationalisations, even the best mentor can’t help – you will just ignore them, using your rationalisations to prove that the mentor is wrong.

You need to think and be open. You also need to be careful when selecting your advisers, otherwise you will just listen to people who collude with your current fears.

You have to be willing to question your viewpoint and listen to other viewpoints, but don’t blindly listen to those viewpoints.

However, you should give yourself time to reflect on those viewpoints in an attempt to discover what you might be missing.

If you spend time with your mentors, you can get a feel for them and then cultivate the ability to sense whether or not they are coming from a place of wisdom.

4 Keep the overheads down

The Donald Trumps of the world might start big, but generally speaking, individuals launching businesses start small. Keep your overheads down. Lack of cash flow is probably the biggest cause of failure in small businesses, and it’s a lot easier to expand than it is to cut back.

If you’re not careful, renting an office space, hiring your first employees, buying the requisite technology and all the other start-up costs can be enough to bring a fledgling business to a screeching halt.

As the business progresses, it tends to accumulate costly baggage. You will do well to review your chequebook and cut unnecessary expenses. Maximise your chances of profitability by taking a minimalist approach to overhead costs.

5 Carefully guard the keys to the courthouse

We live in an incredibly litigious time. Conflicts can easily result in litigation, which consumes a tremendous amount of time, energy and money.

When you enter a partnership, you are giving that partner a lot of power that they could, through litigation or not, wield against you if things go awry, and the effects can be devastating.

You need to be very careful when it comes to selecting partners. It’s important that their goals support your goals. Also, carefully assess their integrity. Otherwise, if they see an opportunity to maximise their profits at your expense, they may well do that.

Fair-weather partners are easy to find. However, you need to assess what a partner will be like when the going gets rough.

6 Maintain control

These days, control seems to have quite a negative connotation. The truth is, many aspects of control are positive and important attributes. Maintaining proper control means staying true to your vision and honouring your instincts on what is right for your business – after all, you understand your business better than anyone.

No one ever said having a small business would be easy. These six points are essential to having a prosperous business while avoiding unnecessary challenges. These points are not just cold, hard facts; there is an artistry to their implementation.

To be successful in business means to practise and develop that artistry over time. It starts with thoughtful reflection and research, then find the courage to wisely and artfully take that first step and every step thereafter, day after day, month after month, year after year. Entrepreneur.com

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