5 Rules for Starting a Business
- Jesse Snyder BSkin, NASM CES, Dotfit, KIEP, AFPA
- Jun 27, 2019
- 2 min read
Start Small. Dream big, visualize your massively successful corporation, but when starting; keep it small. This serves two purposes. One, it gives you the freedom to make mistakes and learn lessons. Two, it will relieve the pressure of potentially being overleveraged by, say, investors or employees. It’s okay to disappoint yourself, but that dynamic changes when others have a stake.
Know your margins. What are your finances going to look like? How much money do you want to make? What kind of tax breaks can you utilize? Can your business scale enough to make you the dollar amount that you want? Being a sole proprietor or business owner is great, in that you can choose the number of hours you want to work. But this can be a blessing and a curse. If you charge $30 an hour for direct client work, but the backend work took 2 hours. You’re only making $10 an hour. That doesn’t sound like a very good return on your investment.
Play to your strengths. Are you intrinsically motivated to start your business or are you doing it for something extrinsic like money? Trust me, I’m in the heart of technology businesses. If that suited my fancy there are so many ways to make great businesses that throw off a lot of money that deal with technology. But for me, technology does nothing! It doesn’t excite me, I’m not an avid user, and I have zero want to learn to program. I’m actually pretty anti-tech! Follow your strengths, while they may change and morph over time you’ll need that firey intrinsic motivation to get you through the troughs and perform when it counts.
Can you scale? Early on you’ll be ecstatic to see your sole proprietorship thrive, but if you’re a true blooded entrepreneur you’re probably going to want to build something new after you’ve mastered this segment. Can you step back from your business and still have it run? Let’s give a personal example from personal training. If I wanted to scale my business I need to know why my clients come to me. When it all boils down, my clients come for me and my personality. Can I train this into an employee? I’d take a gander that it would be quite challenging. Always keep growth in mind to ensure you don’t get stuck!
Experiment early with no pressure. The average successful CEO is 41 years old. When you’re a young ambitious entrepreneur it can be easy to put too much stress on yourself to have it all. Now I don’t like the fail early and often mantra, but use your youth to learn how you can best be great! Perfectionism is the enemy of greatness and, remember, it’s a long life.