Many people sometime in their lifetime consider starting a business of their own.
Lately, these entrepreneurs at heart tend to resort to the internet as the medium
for their businesses. Unfortunately, most of them fail drastically. The reason
for that most of these people fail is not lack of effort, knowledge or business
background...it's their business plan. Some of these eager individuals are so
enthusiastic about their new quest, that they forget to stop and come up with a
plan. Now, I don’t recommend you over-plan things to the extent that your idea
will sound impossible. But do consider whether or not your business idea has the
following parameters.
First of all, your idea has to be something that excites you and drives you. You
have to be completely passionate about what you want to do in order to be successful
at it. It is very hard to find a successful entrepreneur that doesn’t like what he/she
is doing. When you think of a business idea, consider whether you would be happy
doing that for the rest of your life. Is your investment buying you freedom or is
it buying you a job? It's interesting to me to see the number of people that invest
their life savings in a business that doesn’t appeal to them, you see them buying
franchises to become professional burger flippers, pizza toppers and chicken fryers,
and they slave away firing manager after manager in order to make their business
successful.
Once you have found an idea that sounds exciting, you should try to determine whether
you can afford to carry it out. In this stage of the process it is necessary to find
out how much will it cost to launch the business, but most importantly, how much it
would cost to keep the business running. At first it's very likely that you will
not be profitable. You have to make sure you have enough capital to run the business
for at least two or three months without making a penny. It pays to be pessimistic
when it comes to this. You should find out whether you are going to need partners,
investors or creditors in order to finance your operation.
Another point to consider is how much work (labor) will take to keep the business
running. If you are going to require a customer service department, or shipping
department, then you must see how many people you will need to employ. This will
be closely related to the budget aspect of your business plan. The more people
necessary to run the operation, then the more money you will need to start out.
Last, but not least you must consider the most important aspect of all –the one
you have no control over...time. Do you have the time to manage your business
or will you have to hire somebody else to manage it? The more time your business
takes out of you, then the less time you will have to start another venture.
In conclusion, you want a business idea that drives you, something that is within
your budget, it doesn’t take too much labor to keep it running and it is time
friendly. Only with a business model like this will you be able to succeed online. |
