How Do I Start a Home Business?
>From time to time (at least once a day actually) I'll get an
impossible-to-respond-to email that says something like, "How
can I work from home?", or "I want to start my own home
business. Please send info." or even, "Please send free info.".
Naturally such vague, generalized requests are not, for reasons
of time (among others), going to elicit a particularly helpful
response but it does exemplify the mindset of a proportion of my
site visitors - they think they want to start a home business
but where on earth do they start?
HOW DO I START A HOME BUSINESS?
The best advice I can give to someone who asks a question as
vague as this is that they're asking the wrong question. The
first question they should be asking themselves is: "SHOULD I
start a home business?", not HOW do they do so.
The person who asks how to start a home business has not given
much, if any, thought to what they might do as such a business
(otherwise, their question would be "How do I start an errand
service home business?" or "How do I start a gourmet gift basket
home business?").
So, first things first. Why do you want to start a home
business? What are the advantages as you see them? What are the
disadvantages? What entrepreneurial qualities do you bring to
the table that make you think you could make a success of your
own business? What is your plan? What product or service will
you market? Who are your customers? When will you give up your
day job? Are you thinking about this because you just LOST your
day job (if so, warning bells should be ringing very loudly!)? A
home business is most definitely NOT for everyone and it's
certainly not a solution to unemployment per se.
There are financial considerations too, obviously. How will you
support yourself until you generate a profit? Where will you
obtain financing?
For more thought starters, read "Look Before You Leap ... Is a
Home-Based Business REALLY For You?" in the AHBBO Articles
Library at http://www.ahbbo.com/lookb4uleap.html .
Assuming you work your way through the above considerations and
conclude that you do, indeed, want to start your own home
business, then, and only then, should you ask "HOW do I start a
home business?"
There are as many answers to this question as there are
individuals who ask it. There is no one answer that fits all
sizes. Generally speaking, however, the process of starting
one's own home business can be broken down into seven broad
steps.
=> IDENTIFY YOUR PASSIONS
If you're truly starting at ground zero and you don't already do
something on the side that you'd kind of like to see if you
could make fly, your first step is to decide what it is you'd
like to do as your business.
I'm a firm believer in following your passion, whether that be
for gardening (start a herb and spice business or cultivate
cuttings for distribution via mail order), lead- lighting
(design and create stained glass lampshades), accounting (run a
home-based small business accountancy service) or website
design. It doesn't matter whether other people are equally as
passionate about what you're passionate about. It's YOUR passion
that counts and it's YOUR passion that will propel you towards
success. Do something you love to do in other words. Make your
work your joy and you won't be able to help but succeed.
=> IDENTIFY A NICHE MARKET FOR YOUR PASSION
Now, it's one thing to know what you're passionate about, it's
quite another to identify an unmet need in that field. But
that's what you must do if you want to turn your passion into a
truly profitable business venture. Identifying your niche is a
pretty straightforward process:
1. Identify your general category and sub-category
Let's say your general passion is gardening. Gardening is your
general category. Let's also say that you're particularly
interested in growing herbs and how they can be used for cooking
and medicinal purposes. Herb growing is your sub-category.
2. Hang out with people interested in your sub-category
In order to identify unmet needs in your sub-category (step 3.),
you must find out from people interested in your sub-category
what they're looking for that they can't find. A good way to
find out is to hang out where they hang out - offline and on.
Offline, you may belong to a local gardening club or cooking
class at which you hear that so-and-so has been looking high and
low for a certain type of specialty herb that isn't commonly
grown in your country. Online, you may sign up for mailing lists
and hang out in newsgroups to listen to what people are asking
time and again.
3. Identify unmet or under-met needs in your sub-category
If you follow step 2, chances are, if you hear the same things
repeatedly, you've found potential unmet needs or needs that
aren't being adequately serviced by your competition. After all,
if the need is being met, it won't be the subject of repeated
questions.
4. Inventory your experience, interests and competencies
In order to decide what to focus on in particular out of a group
of potential unmet or under-met needs, take account of your
experience, interests and competencies. People are generally
good at what they enjoy and are interested in, after all.
5. Fill the unmet or under-met need
Once you've identified the unmet need(s) in your sub-category,
you can start thinking about how your business can fill that
unmet need.
=> SURVEY THE MARKET AND YOUR COMPETITION
At this stage, you need to take your business idea and survey
your niche market and your competition.
If you have competition, can you be better? If your market is
dominated by a few large, well-established players and you
really don't bring anything new or different to the table, then
the competition is probably going to be too stiff. On the other
hand, if that competition is focused on the high end of the
market leaving the lower end largely uncatered for, then this
could well be an excellent niche for you.
The bottom line is to identify your best competition in your
niche and decide whether you can be better.
Only if you believe you can be the best in your niche should you
proceed. If not, keep looking until you find a niche perfectly
suited to your particular blend of experience, interests and
competencies in which you can be the absolute best.
=> BUSINESS PLAN
Once you've identified your niche and surveyed your market and
competition and are reasonably confident you can be at least as
good as your best competitor, it's time to get down to brass
tacks.
This is where you take your business idea and shape it into a
battle plan. Formulating a business plan is goal-setting for
your business. For a more detailed treatment of writing a
business plan, read "Putting the Plan Back Into Your Business
Plan" at http://www.ahbbo.com/busplan.html .
Once you've thought through and recorded your business plan you
should have an extremely thorough understanding of your industry
and the challenges you must overcome to make a success of your
business. Take your business plan and establish objectives,
goals (which support attainment of the objectives) and tasks
(which support attainment of the goals).
Put your tasks and goals into action to achieve your objectives.
Decide where you want your business to be in five years time and
work backwards until you have 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 year objectives
and goals to support them and tasks to support the goals. The
end result should be a daily to-do list of things that will
directly lead you closer to the achievement of your goals and
objectives.
=> ACTION
Once you have your daily to-do list, DO IT! The best laid plans
of mice and men are useless if not translated into action. It's
action that will propel you and your business towards success.
Mere thoughts and plans are necessary but insufficient. They
must be translated into activity.
=> TRANSITION
If possible, transition from whatever you're doing now into your
business. Test the waters, in other words. If you're currently
in a paid job, stay there and run your business part-time,
taking the risk on someone else's nickel until you can be
confident this thing's going to float. Know when you're better
off devoting your full time and attention to your business
(i.e., know when an hour of your time is worth more when spent
invested in your business than your job) for that is the time to
shift into full-time entrepreneurship.
=> MAKING THE LEAP
Finally, make the leap with faith and courage. Sure, you'll have
moments of self-doubt, thoughts of "can I do this?" when you're
wondering where the next order's going to come from and you
think back to the nice, safe, secure paycheck you used to be
able to count on in your job. But recognize these insecurities
for what they are. They are your mind playing tricks on you. You
can do anything you set your mind to. You just have to want it
badly enough. So, when the time comes to make the leap, do it
and hold nothing back. Your success or failure is up to you
alone. There are no excuses.
So, in answer to the question "how do I start my own home
business?", it's quite simple really. You do what it takes.