3 Rules To Start A Business

So you are thinking about starting a business.  Congratulations!  Now what?

Where do you start?  How do you know what kind of business to create?

Rule #1 is, don’t go do something you don’t know anything about! That seems obvious, but people break this rule all the time.  The internet is full of people who will sell you their system that is “guaranteed” to make you money.  Buying their system is only guaranteed only to make THEM money.  Admittedly, some of those people have a pretty good product to offer, but if you buy some system, be SURE you will use it.

It is better to take skills you already have and find how they can meet some urgent need lots of people have.  I got my start doing construction as a laborer, then superintendent, then project manager, and eventually business owner.  I did remodels for people’s homes.  It was a pretty good business because I did a great deal of the labor myself, subcontracted several things out, and ended up with some very satisfied customers.  I quit that business to obtain my MBA, but you can check out some of my projects here.

Rule #2 is, incremental improvement is the order of the day. That can be anything from reading good books, to attending seminars (related to your business or not), to exercising. One place to start is reading about other successful entrepreneurs.  Patterns start to emerge as you see how other businesses grow.  This book is a great place to start when you look for success patterns: Boom Start: Super Laws of Successful Entrepreneurs. These guys are great when it comes to making it easy to recognize great ideas that have high growth potential.

Rule #3 is, plan your work and work your plan. Having a great business plan serves several needs for the entrepreneur:

• Your business plan guides daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly decisions and goals.
• Your business plan serves as a marketing tool for banks, customers, suppliers, insurers, and others.
• Your business plan becomes a leadership tool as you bring others on board.
• Your business plan guides you when challenges come that threaten the survival of your business.
• Your business plan states your strategy for competing in your chosen market.

Obviously, a great business plan does more than just this, but too many business plans are just downloaded templates that collect dust and don’t help you succeed.

So if you need a business plan, shoot me an email and I can help you, whether you need a full plan, or to customize a plan you already started.

Tags: Business Plan, Entrepreneur, Improvement, Knowledge, Success Paterns

This entry was posted on February 26, 2010 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Three Rules. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.