You just got fired for the last time. Now you’re in charge of the hiring / firing policy. Why? Because you are starting your own business… FINALLY.
To hang the “BOSS” sign on your door, here are 5 quick tips:
1) Play to Your Passion: Figure out what turns you on – if you’re passionate about a business idea, your chances of success go way up. That passion will help you get through the tough times. See Life Planning at StartupNation, the first of 10 Steps to open a business.
2) Take Stock: No, not shares of the company. We mean take stock of what your skills are, the resources you have available, the track record you might be able to leverage from a marketing perspective.
3) Commit to Your Concept: create a short but clear statement about what your business idea is. It’s OK if this morphs into something else, but you need to force yourself to distill the idea into a brief statement that’s clear to any third party (money people, customers, partners, employees, web designers, etc.)
4) Google Like Mad: To collect some quick research, immediately start Googling for anything and everything associated with your idea. The faster you become an authority, the faster you’ll be able to come up with your business strategy, including pricing, target markets, milestone timing, operations and more.
5) Test Drive: Find someone—maybe a few people—who’ll be your sounding board for your ideas and strategies. It’s easy to buy into your own hype when working up a business opportunity. Use insiders for this, but don’t be afraid to ask people who have no relationship with you. One smart thing to do is find someone in non-competitive geographic market who runs a similar business and ask them to be a mentor.
If you take these quick steps, you’ll quickly replace confusion, fear, desperation or any of those kinds of negative thoughts with information, action items and the beginning of a path forward to get your own business off the ground.
