Which kind of small busi­ness is right for you?

Before you launch a busi­ness because it may make you the most money, remem­ber this is a major life deci­sion. From the age of 21 to retire­ment at 65, you could spend upward of 90,000 hours work­ing for your new busi­ness. Select­ing the wrong busi­ness at the start could cause a finan­cial belly flop. So think hard before your dive in. Make a wise choice now, and you may find hap­pi­ness, a more ful­fill­ing lifestyle, and earn enough of money for success.

1. List your inter­ests. This will help you focus on busi­nesses that will pro­vide the great­est prob­a­bil­ity for suc­cess and elim­i­nate pos­si­ble failures.
2. List your skills. No one can be all things. If any aspect of busi­ness does not fit within your skill range these are the areas where you will need to get help or con­sider tak­ing in a partner.
3. Assess your per­son­al­ity. Are you a peo­ple per­son, or do you enjoy work­ing alone? Do you love to serve oth­ers, or do you find peo­ple a pain? What age groups do you enjoy serv­ing? One ingre­di­ent that is sure to lead to fail­ure is a reclu­sive or abra­sive per­son­al­ity. Think about the peo­ple that you have met in busi­ness. Who were the ones that you wanted to give repeat busi­ness to?
4. Deter­mine how much risk you can tol­er­ate. Going into busi­ness can be scary; espe­cially the first cou­ple of years. Some busi­nesses are scarier than oth­ers. If you lie awake nights won­der­ing how large loans are going to be paid, or if you’re going to be sued, maybe a busi­ness with less upfront cap­i­tal or prob­a­bil­ity of law­suit is more for you.
5. Deter­mine how much time your busi­ness will require, and ask your­self if you are will­ing to com­mit the time. Many busi­nesses require a huge time invest­ment. Can you and your fam­ily tol­er­ate a twelve or four­teen hour day schedule?
6. Take some classes. An excel­lent place to start is SCORE (Ser­vice Corps of Retired Exec­u­tives), an orga­ni­za­tion that helps edu­cate indi­vid­u­als con­sid­er­ing start­ing a small busi­ness. After tak­ing some SCORE classes some peo­ple are con­vinced that start­ing a small busi­ness is for them, while oth­ers are con­vinced it is not.
7. Develop a plan. As the old say­ing goes, if you aim at noth­ing, you will hit it.
8. Include an exit strat­egy. Do you plan to sell it once estab­lished, use it to sup­port you for life, pass it on to your heirs or part­ners? know­ing your goal helps you decide the right legal struc­ture for the busi­ness and can dodge many tax pit­falls along the way.

Tips:

If rais­ing money and court­ing investors isn’t for you, try start­ing small and finance your busi­ness growth from its rev­enues. Some busi­nesses require less cap­i­tal to start up than oth­ers. For exam­ple, online busi­nesses cost less to set up. Once estab­lished, they can lead to con­crete store­fronts.

If you are con­sid­er­ing an online pres­ence, see how we can help you get things rolling. We build blogs like this one, CMS sites you can main­tain for your­self, and stan­dard web­sites for those who per­fer to spend their time work­ing on their busi­nesses. We’re Sketch­Pad Pub­li­ca­tion. Click here to learn more.

How did you decide which type of busi­ness to open? Please tell us about it with a com­ment or email