Step 1: Choose A Hobby Based Business or an Opportunity Based Business
To begin, we need to understand that there are two types of business you can start:
- Hobby/passion based business
- Opportunity based business
Let me explain further…
A ‘hobby/passion based’ business is when you convert an exciting hobby you currently enjoy into a profit making venture. The passion element of this type of business is quite important since it is the type of activity you would engage in even if you were not being paid. Examples could be sports, photography, earring making, writing code and building websites, etc. The list is endless! I actually believe that everyone has a hobby they could convert into a business!
The ‘opportunity’ type of business can be quite tricky and whilst it can produce significant wealth, it requires a great deal of entrepreneurial skills, a pioneering spirit and huge amounts of perseverance. These types of businesses will include internet marketing opportunities, affiliate marketing, product supply, or an opportunity you spotted in your workplace (this is generally a winner).
Step 2: Choose A Niche
So, once you have decided whether you’re going to go for a hobby/passion based business or an opportunity based business, the next step is to decide on a market niche.
As a basic definition, ‘market niche’ is a small segment of the overall potential market that could purchase your product. When starting a business, the last thing you want to do is to try to sell your products to every single person under the sun. You can decide on your niche market based on age, location, town, city or a particular type of need. Even if you may not want to, it is absolutely essential that you discipline yourself to come up with a niche that you are going to target.
Let us take another example. If you want to supply web services, it is essential to decide what market you are going to supply that web service. It could be web services for plumbers, cleaning companies, consultants, doctors or dentists. One particular key advantage of choosing a niche is that it will enable you to initially specialise to a particular market and reduce your marketing cost because you are very focused towards a particular group of people/businesses.
Step 3: Get Started
Someone once said, “To start a business, start a business!”
We can talk about choosing the type of business to start, the products to sell for many hours but the point is… you’re going to need to start your business.
For one person getting started could just be making a phone call, reading a book, going on the seminar, talking to someone who has done a similar business. It is about doing something that takes you further ahead then where you are, and towards your goal of owning your own business. For someone else it could be contacting the people within your niche and having a conversation with them about the product you are thinking of releasing, finding out whether they’re interested, creating a prototype and getting them to comment on it, purchase it or give you some form of feedback. To another person getting started could be selling the first two units of your product or getting the first two clients to pay you for delivering your services.
Whatever ‘how to start a business’ means… you’ve got to get started.
Don’t waste your time sitting down trying to create a fancy website or brand/logo, borrowing money, looking for solicitors and all the irrelevant things people engage in. Do the first things first. You can do all the other stuff later. It is more important for you to know that you have a product or service people want and that solves the problems your niche has, instead of having a £3000 website! It is better for you to earn your first £500 instead paying someone to design a £500 logo for your business.
I always tell people to not register a company until you decide that the business you’re thinking about doing is actually the one you’re going to end up doing.
Entrepreneurship is a journey. Sometimes you start on the journey and decide that that particular destination is no longer of any interest to you, so you simply change that destination or adapt the way you plan to travel. Never start your business in such a rigid way that makes it difficult for you to make changes.
To Conclude
I want to give you one final piece of good advice: if you start looking into a business and then discover that you are no longer interested, don’t feel guilty. At the beginning, it takes a while for most people to find exactly the type of products or services they’re going to actually deliver. Success in business is not some straightforward hockey curve as the media leads many people to believe. It is full of zig-zags, ups and downs, and many bendy and windy turns.
However if you don’t get started, you will never really end up owning and running a successful business. So what are you waiting for? Get started today!
Resources
You can download my FREE Step-by-Step Guide on how to start your own business within the next 30 days. Use it and get amazing results!
Further information:
In the UK: http://startupbritain.org/
In the USA: https://www.sba.gov /