STEP ONE: Examine Your Motivation
for Business Ownership
This
series will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses.
Knowing them ahead of time will help you plan for any problems
that may occur because of them. You can overcome your weaknesses,
by either hiring someone to do them for you, patterning with
someone that can handle that aspect of the business, or train
to strengthen yourself.
Answering
these tough questions is the first and one of the most important
steps in your decision-making process to enter the world of
business ownership. Ask yourself hard questions. Be brutally
honest with yourself as most small businesses fail due to problems
and issues that arise which should have been anticipated and
dealt with initially.
Table
of contents:
Your
Personal Evaluation - what are the personal traits most
used in owning and operating your own business
Pros
& Cons of a Home Based Business What
is a homebased business like?
Financial
Consideration Can
you afford to start a business?
Personal Goal Setting
What do you want out of your business?
Your
Personal Evaluation
Your
Personal Objective
Have you
defined your personal needs? What
are your financial objectives?
Why do you
think you will be happy as a business owner? Are
you mainly interested in money, power or flexibility?
Have you
examined your family needs? Personal
skills and education.
Make an honest appraisal of your personal skills and education.
You should list everything, especially if you are unsure what
type of business in which you want to become involved. Don't
list any faults or doubts here. This is a place to remember
all of the things that you know how to do well (no skimping
on personal praise).
Do you like
to sell? Can you sell? You will be required to sell yourself,
your company and your products.
Do you have
special skills or education in a particular industry?
How will
these talents help you in the development and operation of your
own business?
Your
Business Knowledge.
If you know what you are interested in, list what you know about
the field or industry. If you are well versed, simply outline
the general areas. If you are not sure, you should list everything.
Concentrate on specific business information rather than general
life experience. All experience will be useful, but we can only
use the business experience when we are making a decision about
what skills you may need to develop in order to run your business.
Your
decision making abilities.
When you own your business, you are in charge, and many decisions
will have to be made based on what you think. Not all of these
decisions will have to be made immediately, but some of them
will have to. If your normal response is to give problem solving
to someone else, then you will probably have difficulty with
running a business.
Are you authoritarian
or a team player? How will this affect your relationship with
employees, customers, and suppliers? Can
you handle the stress of time deadlines from customers?
Can you live
with yourself if you have to fire an employee?
Are
you willing to risk everything you own?
Will you be able to live with yourself with the fear of loss?
Will your family?
Can you handle weeks or months of “entrepreneurial terror,”
I.e., insufficient cash flow for all the reoccurring obligations
such as taxes, payroll, accounts payable or debt payments?
Identify
your entrepreneurial skills.
As we mentioned earlier, a lot of Successful entrepreneurs have
a lot of initiative and also take risks, and they have learned
from making their own mistakes. Taking a clear look at your source
of motivation and your belief in yourself will help you to be
prepared for the challenges that come with owning your own business.
Are you persistent?
Do you keep your goal clearly in mind?
Do you learn
from your mistakes?
Am I adaptable
to new and different ideas?
If something
can't be done, do you find a way?
Do you see
problems as challenges?
Do you take
chances?
Are you willing
to undergo sacrifices to gain possible long term rewards?
Probably
the three most important factors on the road to Success are:
the ability to be flexible, the willingness to change with the
market as technology advances, and the ability to trust yourself.
If you have all of these, you are more than halfway there. Once
you have completed your assessment, you may want to review all
three areas to determine where you are at this point in time.
By evaluating and understanding the whys and hows of what you
have or have not accomplished up to this point in your life,
you can better use this knowledge to your advantage, now and
in the future. The following questions will help you do this.
Remember, the more honest you can be in answering the questions,
the more useful the information will be to you.
Evaluate
yourself.
What do you feel are your main strengths?
What do you feel are your more serious weaknesses?
How do you think someone else might answer the above two questions
about you?
What talents do you possess and in what situations have you
been able to use them?
How would you personally define the idea of having a job or
being employed?
Now, things
are already starting to make sense or you are beginning to have
doubts. Either way, listen to your feelings and trust yourself.
In the end, these are only tools for you to use in your evaluation
process, nothing more and nothing less. Next
are the pros and cons to having a home-based business.
|
