Are you thinking about starting your own business? You might have read numerous reports online claiming that anyone can do this, but is this technically the truth? Well, the answer to that question is complicated. First, it’s important to understand that the vast majority of businesses fail in the first year. Some experts believe that the number of businesses that do fail could be as high as 90%, for some industries. Others suggest that it’s a tad slower than this. However, regardless that does show you the odds that you are working with here and they’re not the greatest. So, you do need to take the right steps to give your own business the best chance. While it’s true that anyone can start their own company, you can increase your chances of success by taking some key steps and hitting the right targets.
The Right Mindset
First, it is important to have the right mindset when setting up your company. Regardless of which business you need to set up, it’s going to be important to make sure that you do put in the effort. There’s no business plan that you will be able to sleep walkthrough. You need to be determined and passionate about the business that you are proposing. If you don’t have the right drive, then you are going to struggle to ensure that your business does find a target audience on the market. You also won’t put the time in necessary to help your business find its feet in the first few months.
Do The Research
While technically anyone can start their own business, you still need to understand the crucial first steps of forming a company. For instance, to form a company, you need to make sure that you are filling in the right forms, crossing the t’s, and dotting the i’s so to speak. If you don’t take this step, then you could run into some significant legal issues a little further down the line and that’s the last thing that you want. If you are worried about missing some key elements then it is advised that you think about hiring an advisor. They will be able to help ensure that you don’t slip up here and that your company formation is legally sound.
How Much Money?
Another big claim that you might have found online is that you can start a business with no money in your pocket and no investment. Again, this is technically true but it’s not the whole story. A business that is set up without a capital injection is always going to find it more difficult to compete because your competitors and rivals will be making the right investments. Take marketing as an example. For marketing, it’s recommended that you spend 20% of your total budget. This likely means that you will spend a couple of thousand on marketing in your first year, depending largely on the audience level that you are aiming to reach. It’s true that interest in a strong brand can grow somewhat naturally. But you still need to be ready to give it the right push and ensure that you do build a significant buzz.
If you are running an online business, then you should expect to spend at least a few thousand. If you are running a brick-and-mortar company, the average investment is closer to 10K for the first year alone. You may not have this money in your account so you will need to borrow without running into the issue of building debt. This can be difficult to shake.
Qualifications And Skills
Finally, you don’t technically need any qualifications to start your own company. You don’t need to take any leadership courses or gain any skills of a manager. But it’s always going to help and it will make your chance of succeeding far more likely. It will also give the peace of mind to your clients and your investors that they are dealing with a professional and ensure that they feel as though they can trust you to deliver the right service and have a solid plan in place.
We hope this helps you understand that while anyone can start a company, there’s no guarantee that it will be successful or that it will be open after a couple of months on the market. To give yourself the greatest chance at success, you need to make sure that you are considering some of the key variables that we have discussed above. You need to be aware of the path to a successful business and the building blocks that should be in place from day one.