Starting A Small Scale Business

Owning a small business helps in developing great business skills that even an MBA course cannot develop. You yourself are the accountant, salesman, store manager, marketer, technician, manager of your business. Managing all these departments help in enhancing not only your knowledge and skills but also your personality. You become more aware of your senses, aware of your strengths and weaknesses.

Starting an enterprise is a logical extension of the work being done as an individual contractor, so the transition seems easy enough. The business planning, marketing and competitive analysis aspects of operating an enterprise, as opposed to negotiating single person efforts. Industry teaming, having others work for you and dealing as a company instead of a person were all challenges.

It feels like you`ve outsmart over others who are preferring to continue doing their full time 45-year plan (from graduation to retirement). And they all watch you in secret, with seething envy, wonder, amazement, complete with shaking their heads for pure disbelief. You sense the negative vibes right away.

When you start a business you tell your friends that you like the independence to set your own schedule and take off whenever you want without needing to be accountable to anyone. Then you end up working more hours every day, weekends and rarely taking a vacation.

An entrepreneur has the great privilege of raising something that will go on to become a great contributor to our society. Small business is the back bone of our neighborhoods, cities and country. SME s owners are solving problems and delivering vital services that we often take for granted.

Small business ownership is not for everyone, the hours are long and vacations are few. However if you love what you are doing and want to make your corner of the world a better place there is no better way, in my mind, to do it than to become an entrepreneur.

Its an adventure in self awareness, you become, on the regular, somehow aware of your strengths and weaknesses all at once. If you are not aware, you re in trouble. You see, most small business owners get into their business based on a skill or passion that they have. Kudos, that s good, but what is so often lacking is the robust business acumen required to fully operate their business.

Running a business for some micro-enterprise owners may be getting more complicated. It depends on what kind of business they re in. If your in a business that has you using or dealing with chemicals or dangerous materials or high risk activities there are certainly more rules and regulations imposed by government departments.

Innumerable of these rules and regulations have come into being because of the irresponsibility of a few business owners trying to cut corners to save money and time regardless of who might end up being impacted. It s unfortunate people can t do what they know is the right thing unless they are threatened with punitive actions. They complain about the growth of government and the scrutiny they must endure but they often are the cause for new laws and regulations that lead to expanding the government in order enforce the new regulations.

Being a small business owner, especially one that has just started out means you are the accountant, CEO, marketer, admin and everything else. It might be daunting at the start as there are lots of risks. But a lot of people do this everyday and succeed. Think of potential pitfalls and try to plan as much as possible to ensure you re covered. There isn t 100% guarantee of success or failure plus take incremental steps daily towards your ultimate goal. The best you can do is never give up.

Ownership mostly gives a mix of responsibilities and luxuries., possessing a small business is not different it has lot of responsibilities with luxury to enjoy freedom with decent income. The preponderance common hardships in small businesses are low profitability, business competition, staff and technology. These hardships can be avoided through proper planning with smart decision making, small businesses gives immense opportunity to learning and growth.

The world is getting more complex in addition to that obviously impacts small business owners, they have to know as well as stay on top of numerous things. On the other hand, innumerable things that they had to do before themselves are offered as services or on a part time basis so they can appear more professional just by themselves. One example is cloud computing eliminates complicated IT installation.

What worked yesterday won t necessarily work tomorrow, things will be going great then a landlord will double the rent, a major client will switch to another company without warning, or you will get entangled in legal issues you could never have foreseen.

You need to take the long term view but still be willing to switch on a dime, exploit what works and quickly cut what doesn t. Good workers will become average workers over time or be resentful. Remember, you are in it for the long haul helpers along with workers are there as long as it fits their demands.

It is a complete meritocracy whereby, no one is handing out benefits to you. There is no vacation or don t get high fives for lots of hard work. Your customers, honestly, could care less how hard you work (or don t). All they care about is that your product or service meets (and hopefully exceeds) their necessities.