Want to know how to eliminate the possibility of making mistakes? Want a foolproof method for ensuring you start off making lots of money with no obstacles in the way?
Good luck with that. One thing you can be sure of, when starting your own business, is that mistakes will be made. Opportunities missed. You’ll find yourself working longer hours than you’d planned, you’ll find that your business model needs to be revamped, you’ll find that what works for someone else doesn’t work for you, and you’ll find that if it were that easy, everyone would do it.
Worried about charging too much/not enough? Don’t worry. You will. You’ll find yourself eating some costs or spending too much time on a fixed rate job, and, if you’re lucky, you’ll find a job you quoted easier than you thought, and you’ll come out ahead. Admittedly, that’s a bit more unlikely, but it could happen.
There are guidelines you can follow, and you can solicit advice from a multitude of people, some of whom may have no idea what you’re doing, or trying to do, and others who do, and some of it will work, and some of it won’t, and you may not know the difference until you try it out and see for yourself.
The only one who can tell you what will definitively work and what will not work for your business is you. For example, some people swear by cold calling. Many don’t. How should this affect you? Should you try it and see? Or do you know you don’t want to go with that method of marketing? There’s no wrong decision because it’s your decision alone.
“But how do I know what will work and what won’t before I’ve even started!” you wail, and I tell you this because it’s the truth: You don’t. You don’t know until you do it, and then you find out, and then you know what to do next time, or what not to do.
There are some things that are a given. Don’t run an expensive yellow pages ad if you’re running a web-based business. Do as much free marketing as possible. Meet as many people as possible. But givens are another topic, aren’t they?
The method I used to start my business was this: Plan out what I can, start by throwing myself into it, and then see what happens. The fun of having your own business is being able to change directions, to back up, slow down, or speed up, and there’s no one to tell you not to. (There will be people who will be happy to tell you, but it isn’t their business, it’s your decision alone.) You get to decide. You get to make your own hours, and who hasn’t heard that making your own hours means you get to work as many weekends as you like? It’s true. You’ll probably work more hours than you’d planned.
Small businesses can react quickly to market forces. We don’t have to submit ideas to someone else and have them forgotten. We get to do it ourselves. Of course, that means there’s a level of responsibility that we wouldn’t have with a job. It’s up to us to get it done, and that may be an inconvenience, and it’s up to us to make the decisions, and they could be bad decisions, and then there’s no one to blame but ourselves.
But that’s how it works. Greater rewards, greater risk. If you don’t want risk, you should get a job, though these days that’s also a risk, isn’t it? But it’s stable. And if you want a raise, you better be prepared to ask someone for one.
It’s up to you. Your decisions. Your profit, or your loss, but it’s more than money. It’s how you want to live your life, and there is no right or wrong way, there’s only what you decide to do with it, and how you react to what you find out as you go.
Which is sort of like life, isn’t it?
