Starting a New Business

Starting a new business is both exciting and challenging. Many reach a point when they feel they could do it better or would like to reap the benefits of business ownership. Initially we would all underestimate the tasks with starting a new business. Many business owners were once employees and it looks much easier from an employee's perspective than a business owner's perspective.

Running a business is simple right? Just tell others what to do and collect income. Ha, experienced business owners are laughing right now because that is far from the truth. As years go by you learn how to be a business owner and what it takes to run a great business.

As a business owner you're always changing and improving your business. Even if you're a single employee, you're still trying to improve. Make things easier, more effective, more valuable, and provide a better product in most cases.

What most business owners didn't have when starting out was a great coach or guide. Most dive right in the deep-end and see if they can stay afloat. The average business dies within the first few years and the stats go even lower at the 10 year mark. Why is this?

Starting a business is expensive. Expensive with time and money. If you're fortunate enough to start a business that you can perform yourself you're in a better position to start. Less money up-front but often a more difficult position for scalability. When things go awry if you're able to do the work yourself you don't have to eat the cost of paying someone else to do the same job or work twice, that helps. And, when you're doing the work yourself it's very difficult to scale because you don't have time to find good talent and manage the business. What do you do?

A good place to start is to find someone else who's done it before you. This is a humbling experience as most don't want anyone to know they have no idea what they're doing. Or, worse you don't know what you're doing but you believe you do. This is not necessarily asking for help. You're learning how to be a business owner. Just because you receive advice does not mean you have to follow it. Working with and for really bad business owners provides great learning opportunities.

Common Bad Business Owner Traits:

• Believes they know everything
• Stubborn
• Does not listen to employees or customers
• Reckless spending
• Favoritism

More experienced business owners figure these out and correct, usually. When they don't they just work hard and not smarter.

We're a great solution for anyone starting a new business. We've seen it, we've stopped it, we've helped it. Over the years we know that we don't know everything but we do know enough to help business from drowning or shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to business process and marketing. Starting with marketing, don't pay for any marketing without understanding what you're buying. And, no, they sales person you're talking to is not the person to provide this advice as their advice is bias. Find a business coach. Get on Social Media ask questions. Find business networking organizations. A great organization is BNI. There're many out there and the key is to participate with a few. Listen to existing business owners and take away what you can.

Proper planning helps prevent wasteful spending, which is critical in the beginning of your business. We're working on trying to get in-front of business before they perform many purchases but we're not always successful. Most research online, buy first, and learn later.

It's unfortunate for us to hear when a business owner says "We purchased thousands of dollars worth of marketing and none of it worked. We wish we found a business like yours sooner." It's disturbing how often we hear this, which is why we're trying to get in-front of more businesses starting out.