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The key elements of starting your own business are to have passion for your project, put extra effort into the legal and tax issues upfront to save you from any headache down the line, and focus a lot of energy into writing a business plan. For more information and advice on how to give your business the best possible start in life, keep reading.
Advice for Starting Your Own Business
1. Be passionate
You are going to be devoting a lot of time, energy and, initially, money to starting a business and building your empire so you need to have passion for whatever it is you are doing. If you lack passion or interest in what you do, then you will find yourself in a similar situation you were in when employed – trudging on in a joyless job just to get your income.
2. Start whilst you are still employed
A safe bet would be to start setting up your startup business whilst you are still in employment. Most businesses take a long time before they actually start turning a profit so staying employed for as long as you can is a great way to keep money coming in during the start-up process.
3. Do not go it alone
You are going to need a support system when you take the leap of starting your own business. This could be a business partner or investor or it could just be family members and friends to bounce ideas off and get advice from. Any crisis you face when setting up your business will be much harder to deal with if you do not have anyone to turn to or lean on.
4. Have customer or client lined up early
Do not wait until your business has started operating to get clients in. Do the networking and make connections before your business officially starts – you can even try selling or giving away products to draw people in before you open your doors.
5. Write a business plan
Writing a business plan is essential when launching a new business, you need a full picture of how much funding you need and how your business might perform in its first few years. It is also vital if you want to attract any investors or shareholders to help support your business.
6. Do your research
You need to be an expert on your industry, products, or services if you want to compete with bigger corporations. Do your research for your business plan but do even more research on top of this to truly understand your market and target audience. The best thing to do would be to work in the industry before you set up on your own.
7. Get the legal and tax issues right from the offset
It is much more difficult and expensive to rectify any legal or taxation problems after the mess has been made so get it right the first time. Do you need to register your business with HMRC? What kind of taxes do you need to pay? Do you need insurance? Check out the government website and make a plan for how you are going to pay any potential taxes.
