How to start your business

Step By Step guide to start your business 

If your job hunt isn’t going well, thoughts may occur to you in some moment of desperation, maybe I should stop trying to find job where I work for someone else. Maybe I should start my own business. When I started my business catering to Edtech industry, my focus was to connect best talent to the top Start-ups in India. I focussed on connecting top talent with top jobs in EdTech companies.

According to some surveys, upto 80% of all workers toy with the idea at some point in their lives. Maybe your idea is, I want to create a website and teach people to bake cake, or maybe you want to open an adventure company, or grow strawberries and open a processing unit  or a consultant to people who need my expertise. Or maybe you don’t have any idea. All you know is you don’t want to work for someone else. 

What to do when you have no idea what business you want to go into:

Write : 

Just write anything or any thought you have about business. First get an idea of who you are before you decide what you want to do.Write anything you have enjoyed doing in past, any skill set you always had. 

What you decide to do should flow from who you are. 

Get a piece of blank paper and jot down all the ideas coming to you. Keep the piece of paper along side as you do other steps. 

Write your resume, mention everything from community work, volunteer and unpaid work. Write the work, or internship you did during studying. Any committees you were part of. Did you win any award during study? Which subject you scored good. 

Sales or account management: Did you even do sales. If so, what were some of your key accounts. Have you crossed your targets often? Did you bring any major client to your company ? Did you ever manage to increase current business. Did you develop any successful promotional idea that increased sales? 

Customer Service

Have you ever been in customer service or happened to run a business unit? Did you assist in reducing customer complaint etc. 

Did you set up or improve any system or process? 

Responsibility :

Have you ever had any target, or responsibility? Were you responsible for any official training? Whom did you train?

While you write all this, read it all over. See if there is anything that gives you an idea. You might get an idea of doing something on your own? 

If nothing inspires you, make a list 

  1. Make a list of five things you are good at.
  2. Then make  a second list of five things you love to do?
  3. Then make a third list of where the first two overlaps 
  4. Then read that list, ask yourself will anyone pay me to do these things.

I believe you must have come up with a great idea which can make your own boss. 

READ 

Hopefully from all this thinking and tasks, you will have some ideas. It will be nice, if you see the possibilities of three different business ventures. 

Now step step is Read up on all the virtues and peels of running your own business. 

Look before you leap.

EXPLORE

Lets hope that now you have some idea for starting your own business. But you know that a lot of startups, online and offline. You want to know the experiences of others who have started the same kind of business, so you don’t make the same mistakes they did. 

A-B=C 

A= Skill, knowledge or experiences it takes to make the kind of business idea work. 

B= Make a list of skills, knowledge or experience you have. Then by subtracting B from A, you will arrive at a list of skills that are required for success in such business, that you don’t have. And then you must go out and hire or co=opt a friend or volunteer who has those skills you are lacking at the moment. 

Get Feedback 

So you are cut out for this sort of thing? Only you can answer that, in your innermost thoughts. But you can get some help. 

Discuss with your family, friends and mentors. Who can guide you unbiased on your strength and weakness. Who have known you for years and can answers few questions about you. 

If after all this feedback, you still decide to go ahead and create a job for yourself by starting this kind of business, go ahead and try. 

Just remember, it takes lot of guts to try anything new in today’s slowly recovering economy. It  is easier however if you keep these things in mind. 

There is always some risk, in trying something new. Your goal, I hope is not to avoid risk. There is no way to do that. But to make sure ahead of time that risks are manageable. 

2. After knowing experiences of others, then you evaluate whether or not you still want to go ahead and try it. 

3. Have a plan B laid out, before you start as to what you will do it , if it doesn’t work out. 

WRITE 

Self Inventory, Writing about oneself and preparing resume is not just for job. At times we ourselves need to know our skills. Starting one’s own business is some what similar to working for startup . My article how to find a startup job, can be helpful to get more deep insight . How to find a startup Job

You learn to describe yourself in at least six different ways and therefore you can approach multiple market. 

  1. I am a person with these experiences.
  2. I am a person who is skilled in doing these things 
  3. I am person who know a lot about this 
  4. I am a person who is unusual in this way or that. 

You an People : 

You can describe who you are in terms of kind of people you most prefer to work with or help. Age span, handicap, geographical location etc. 

You and workplace : You can describe who you are in terms of your favourite workplace, working condition, indoor or outdoor, small company, large company , because they enable you to work at your top form and greatest effectiveness . 

You and skill : Or you can describe who you are in terms of what you can do, and your favourite functional and transferable skills. For these are key to your being in top and greatest effectiveness. 

You and purpose in life – Describe yourself, who you are in terms of your goals. or sense of mission, and purpose for your life. 

You and the  knowledge you already have- 

Or you can describe who you are in terms of what you already know and what you and your favourite knowledge or interest are among all that stuff stored in your head. 

You and salary/ responsibilities: 

Or you can describe who you are in terms of your preferred salary and level of responsibilities- working by yourself or as a member of a team or supervising others winning the show. You should check all the scenarios which defines you. 

I believe by now you have read this whole document and have a mind boggling idea which is going to change your career in positive way. This is that one idea which will change the way you look at your work and responsibility. Next step comes to working on that idea, developing it in scalable project. 

Let’s connect and see how we can help you shape your idea and establish it in the market.  http://www.hirexl.in

You might also like to check my other blogs and answer on Quora . https://www.quora.com/profile/Swati-Sinha-5