© 2001 Elena Fawkner
From time to time (at least once a day
actually) I'll get an impossible-to-respond-to email that says
something like, "How can I work from home?", or "I want to start
my own home business. Please send info." or even, "Please
send free info.". Naturally such vague, generalized
requests are not, for reasons of time (among others), going to
elicit a particularly helpful response but it does exemplify the
mindset of a proportion of my site visitors - they think they
want to start a home business but where on earth do they
start?
HOW DO I START A HOME BUSINESS?
The
best advice I can give to someone who asks a question as vague
as this is that they're asking the wrong question. The first
question they should be asking themselves is: "SHOULD I start a
home business?", not HOW do they do so.
The person who
asks how to start a home business has not given much, if any,
thought to what they might do as such a business (otherwise,
their question would be "How do I start an errand service home
business?" or "How do I start a gourmet gift basket home
business?").
So, first things first. Why do you
want to start a home business? What are the advantages as
you see them? What are the disadvantages? What
entrepreneurial qualities do you bring to the table that make
you think you could make a success of your own business?
What is your plan? What product or service will you market?
Who are your customers? When will you give up your day
job? Are you thinking about this because you just LOST your
day job (if so, warning bells should be ringing very
loudly!)? A home business is most definitely NOT for
everyone and it's certainly not a solution to unemployment per
se.
There are financial considerations too,
obviously. How will you support yourself until you
generate a profit? Where will you obtain financing?
For more thought starters, read "Look Before You Leap
... Is a Home-Based Business REALLY For You?" in the
AHBBO Articles Library at http://www.ahbbo.com/lookb4uleap.html .
Assuming you work your way through the
above considerations and conclude that you do, indeed, want to
start your own home business, then, and only then, should you ask
"HOW do I start a home business?"
There are as many
answers to this question as there are individuals who ask
it. There is no one answer that fits all sizes.
Generally speaking, however, the process of starting one's own
home business can be broken down into seven broad
steps.
=>
IDENTIFY YOUR PASSIONS
If you're truly starting at
ground zero and you don't already do something on the side that
you'd kind of like to see if you could make fly, your first step
is to decide what it is you'd like to do as your
business.
I'm a firm believer in following your passion,
whether that be for gardening (start a herb and spice business
or cultivate cuttings for distribution via mail order),
lead- lighting (design and create stained glass
lampshades), accounting (run a home-based small business
accountancy service) or website design. It doesn't matter
whether other people are equally as passionate about
what you're passionate about. It's YOUR passion that
counts and it's YOUR passion that will propel you
towards success. Do something you love to do in other
words. Make your work your joy and you won't be able to
help but succeed.
=> IDENTIFY A NICHE MARKET FOR YOUR
PASSION
Now, it's one thing to know what you're
passionate about, it's quite another to identify an unmet need
in that field. But that's what you must do if you want
to turn your passion into a truly profitable business
venture.
Identifying your niche is a pretty straightforward
process:
1. Identify your general category and
sub-category
Let's say your general passion is
gardening. Gardening is your general category. Let's
also say that you're particularly interested in growing herbs and
how they can be used for cooking and medicinal purposes.
Herb growing is your sub-category.
2. Hang out with
people interested in your sub-category
In order to identify
unmet needs in your sub-category (step 3.), you must find out
from people interested in your sub-category what they're looking
for that they can't find. A good way to find out is to
hang out where they hang out - offline and on. Offline, you
may belong to a local gardening club or cooking class at which
you hear that so-and-so has been looking high and low for a
certain type of specialty herb that isn't commonly grown in your
country. Online, you may sign up for mailing lists and hang
out in newsgroups to listen to what people are asking time and
again.
3. Identify unmet or under-met needs in
your sub-category
If you follow step 2, chances are, if you
hear the same things repeatedly, you've found potential unmet
needs or needs that aren't being adequately serviced by
your competition. After all, if the need is being
met, it won't be the subject of repeated
questions.
4. Inventory your experience, interests and
competencies
In order to decide what to focus on in
particular out of a group of potential unmet or under-met needs,
take account of your experience, interests and
competencies. People are generally good at what they enjoy
and are interested in, after all.
5. Fill the unmet
or under-met need
Once you've identified the unmet need(s) in
your sub-category, you can start thinking about how
your business can fill that unmet
need.
=> SURVEY THE MARKET AND YOUR
COMPETITION
At this stage, you need to take your
business idea and survey your niche market and your
competition. If you have competition, can you be better? If
your market is dominated by a few large,
well-established players and you really don't bring anything new
or different to the table, then the competition is
probably going to be too stiff. On the other hand, if
that competition is focused on the high end of the
market leaving the lower end largely uncatered for, then
this could well be an excellent niche for you.
The bottom
line is to identify your best competition in your niche and
decide whether you can be better. Only if you believe you can be
the best in your niche should you proceed. If not, keep
looking until you find a niche perfectly suited to your
particular blend of experience, interests and competencies
in which you can be the absolute best.
=> BUSINESS
PLAN
Once you've identified your niche and surveyed
your market and competition and are reasonably confident you
can be at least as good as your best competitor, it's time to get
down to brass tacks.
This is where you take your business
idea and shape it into a battle plan. Formulating a
business plan is goal-setting for your business. For a more
detailed treatment of writing a business plan, read "Putting
the Plan Back Into Your Business Plan" at http://www.ahbbo.com/busplan.html .
Once you've thought through and recorded
your business plan you should have an extremely thorough
understanding of your industry and the challenges you must
overcome to make a success of your business. Take your
business plan and establish objectives, goals (which support
attainment of the objectives) and tasks (which support
attainment of the goals).
Put your tasks and goals into
action to achieve your objectives. Decide where you want
your business to be in five years time and work backwards
until you have 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 year objectives and goals to
support them and tasks to support the goals. The end result
should be a daily to-do list of things that will directly lead
you closer to the achievement of your goals and
objectives.
=> ACTION
Once you have your daily
to-do list, DO IT! The best laid plans of mice and men are
useless if not translated into action. It's action that
will propel you and your business towards success. Mere
thoughts and plans are necessary but insufficient. They
must be translated into activity.
=> TRANSITION
If
possible, transition from whatever you're doing now into your
business. Test the waters, in other words. If you're
currently in a paid job, stay there and run your business
part-time, taking the risk on someone else's nickel until you can
be confident this thing's going to float. Know when you're
better off devoting your full time and attention to your business
(i.e., know when an hour of your time is worth more
when spent invested in your business than your job) for that
is the time to shift into full-time
entrepreneurship.
=> MAKING THE LEAP
Finally, make
the leap with faith and courage. Sure, you'll have moments
of self-doubt, thoughts of "can I do this?" when you're wondering
where the next order's going to come from and you think back to
the nice, safe, secure paycheck you used to be able to count
on in your job. But recognize these insecurities for what
they are. They are your mind playing tricks on you.
You can do anything you set your mind to. You just have to want
it badly enough. So, when the time comes to make the leap,
do it and hold nothing back. Your success or failure is up
to you alone. There are no excuses.
So, in answer
to the question "how do I start my own home business?", it's
quite simple really. You do what it
takes.
_________________________
Elena Fawkner is editor of A Home-Based
Business Online ... practical ideas, resources and strategies for
your home-based or online business. http://www.ahbbo.com
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