How Do I Start Up My Small Business?

Things you will need: (1) money (2) sanity. Now prepare to spend both until they’re all gone…

Well, OK, it’s not that bad. Not always, anyway. Assuming that you don’t already have a wad to invest, there are banks, venture finance companies, insurance companies and other financial institutions that will nearly jump all over themselves to lend to entrepreneurs. Failing that, there is the Small Business Alliance (SBA), which another place that you can turn to and they would help you out with your financial needs.

So, the obvious money question out of the way - What do you really need to start a business?

Time, and lots of it. Whether you get partners or fly solo, you will have to be your own boss, and a pretty strict boss at that if you ever intend to make it. For this reason, you will need dedication. Getting a business off the ground isn’t something you can do in a month - six months or a year will barely make it. You will have so much work on your hands, that you’ll often miss the times when you could just unwind at home and forget about work, after a shift on that dead-end job you got disgusted with and left.

Know your strengths and weaknesses. You don’t have a boss anymore giving you performance reviews. You will have to know for yourself whether you’re really smarter than everybody else in your line or whether you’ll have a hard time keeping up. Both underestimating and underestimating your skills can have tragic consequences.

Making it grow beyond anything but a one-person show will require hiring people. And if you thought it was tough having co-workers at your last day job, wait until you deal with the headache of interviewing, training, and keeping staff. It is especially tough for a small business just starting out to keep the best workers - because you can’t offer very much for wages and benefits. That being said, it’s even tougher to deal with a dishonest employee. Somewhere along your twentieth employee, you will probably meet one who pads the expense account, slacks off, calls in “sick”, or even outright embezzles and there won’t be much you can do about it! Except fire them when you catch them.

Small businesses probably have the greatest headache with bureaucratic red tape. Inspections, permits, licenses, tax forms, titles, insurance, certificates, fees to city hall - it will seem for a while like you are constantly on the phone with city hall or the board of health. Just be prepared to deal with these hassles when they come up.

The first screaming need you will notice is that you need marketing. Yes, as soon as you open your doors on the first day of business and endure that dreadful first hour when nobody at all walks in, you will be wishing for a bigger marketing budget. Here, you will want massive amounts of Internet promotion, which is the cheapest business advertising there is. Next, you will probably want paper ads - newspaper, phone book, flyers - and so the printer will be your new best friend.

These are just some of the challenges facing you in your first few months of starting a small business. Is it worth it? It most certainly will be, if you succeed. But only “if”. then, there is no heady feeling in the world, like knowing that you seized your own destiny and made your own way. Before you jump in to anything too hastily, we have known about this company for awhile and we know of its reliability and they are well established; they call themselves SiteSell and you must at least read the introductory page. It may change your mind about the way you’re currently approaching things.