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Choosing a Business Opportunity – Getting Started in Your Ow
Millions of people are desperate to escape the 9 to 5 grind. One popular
alternative is to look for a business opportunity that turns you from an
employee into a self-employed entrepreneur running your own business.
There are many good reasons why this can be a wise move. Being your own
boss means you can set your own hours. This can be very important if you
have small children who need to be looked after, or simply want to spend
more time at home.
Working from home can also save valuable time, if the alternative is
spending two or three hours every day commuting back and forth to your
work place.
And of course, working for yourself also gives you the opportunity to
make a whole lot more money.
In other words, being your own boss gives you that valuable commodity
called freedom. It sets you free from the limitations of being someone
else ’s paid employee, and in return makes you responsible for your own
future. As a self-employed entrepreneur you are free to set your own
hours, establish your own work habits, choose what work you will do or
will not do, create your own products, drum up your own customers, and do
what you have to do to make those customers happy.
And perhaps most important, when you are self-employed you are free to
set your own prices and make as much or as little income as you are able.
You will not have to answer to anyone other than yourself, your
suppliers, and of course, the ever-present taxman, after you become
successful.
How to get started – Two Alternatives
There are two obvious ways you can go about starting your own business.
The first way is to quit your day job and launch full bore into your new
business. We ‘ll call this the “all or nothing approach “.
The second way is to continue on with your current employment and develop
a business on the side, in your spare time. We ‘ll call this the “spare
time approach ” to starting your own business.
Depending on your point of view, taking the All or Nothing Approach can
be either an act of courage and good sense, or just plain reckless.
Unless you are independently wealthy, planning and timing are very
important with this approach. That ’s because once you leave your
previous employment your source of income will be gone and you will have
a limited amount of time to make your business work. It is “sink or
swim “. And you can sink pretty quickly without a source of income.
So that means you should plan the changeover to self-employment very
carefully. Every situation will be different. An acquantance of mine was
able to step from his quasi-government job into a private consulting
business because he spent the last few months of his employment
developing leads and contacts within his industry. When he went on his
own he had customers waiting in the wings and was able to more than
double his income in his very first year.
But most of us are not so lucky. We do not have the quality leads, the
specialized skills, nor the opportunity to use our present employment to
build a launching pad of potential customers before we take off into the
wild blue yonder of self-employment. Most of us are starting from scratch
with a few vague ideas, a questionable set of yet-to-be-defined skills,
and severly limited income. So our venture into self-employment had
better take off within a few months or we ‘re likely to crash and burn.
That is why the Spare Time Approach is best for most new self-employed
entrepreneurs. The spare time approach lets you test your ideas, develop
your skills, and build your business slowly. If you are unsure about the
products or services you intend to sell, the spare time approach lets you
try out different product lines and see how well they fit in with your
overall objectives.
Often new entrepreneurs find their first ideas are not realistic, or
there is no market for the services they want to provide. Or they find
they cannot charge enough to make any money providing the products or
services they have chosen.
Choose your product carefully
Like all new entrepreneurs, whether you take the “all or nothing
approach ” or the “spare time approach ” you should be very tight-fisted
with your limited resources. That means do not invest any serious money
in a product or business idea until you have checked it out thoroughly.
The best way to “check it out ” is to
* Talk to people who are already selling the product or service
* Establish the credibility of the person or company providing the
product or service
* Make sure the company provides on-going support for their product(s)
* Make sure there are no hidden or unexpected costs (such as franchise
fees) that will eat away your profits
This applies whether you are looking at an “online ” product such as an
MLM or affiliate scheme, or a more traditional product or service aimed
only at local customers. For example, an associate of mine produces
Business Card Displays. The idea behind this product is that it provides
new entrepreneurs the opportunity to set up an advertising service for
local businesses. The entrepreneur creates a network of displays placed
in high traffic retail outlets like grocery stores, hair salons, and
bowling alleys. Then local advertisers can place their business cards in
one of the sixteen slots in the displays across the network. If someone
browsing one of the displays sees a service they are interested in, they
just take a card for future reference.
The actual inventor of this product can show you examples of successful
advertising networks where his displays are used. He will also provide
testimonials and contact information from real people who you can ask how
well the product is working for them.
And to top it off, he uses the product himself in a network of over 40
displays, and can provide hands-on information about how it actually
works in a real-life situation. For advice and “mentoring ” he can be
contacted by toll free telephone, email, Skype, or MS Messenger. Having
expert advice like that close at hand can make the difference between
success and failure.
This is pretty rare in the world of “business opportunities “. Many are
run by “take the money and run ” types who make wildly exaggerated
claims about how successful you can be. But in many cases they have never
actually made the idea work for themselves.
As any successful entrepreneur will tell you, your choice of products is
crucial to your success or failure. Many products are simply bogus ideas
with no hope of working. And many others are designed to produce maximum
profits for their creators, and minimum profits for people like you and
me who sell them. So no matter how hard you work, or how committed you
are to being successful, if you choose the wrong product you will be
operating with a millstone around your neck.
Get more information about the business opportunity mentioned in this
article, and read about more factors to be considered when choosing a
money-making business idea.
Rick Hendershot is a writer and online publisher. For online promotional
ideas see Online Promotional Ideas.
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Whats the lesson here? Flexibility