In my quest to learn about creative entrepreneurship, I thought I should get clear on the steps one must take to start a business in North Carolina. I took a free seminar called “How to Start a Business” from the Small Business Center at Western Piedmont Community College (wpcc.edu/sbc). The SBC system is a great resource for small business owners throughout the state, so I will cover our local center in depth in an upcoming post.
The class was taught by Sharon Oxendine of TenBiz (tenbizinc.com), a consulting firm based in Sylva, North Carolina, that helps small businesses grow and thrive. Sharon is a business coach and consultant. She has more than 20 years’ experience as a former small business owner and lender, according to her biography.
As she spoke to the class, I realized this process would be far more complex than making an instructional “to do” list. She encouraged us to look within and answer several soul-searching questions before considering drafting a business plan.
“Being in the self-employed category requires a lot of emotional strength being able to handle the pressure that’s there,” Sharon said. “This is not to discourage you, but for you to begin to self-analyze and look at who you are. When I ask folks, ‘What are you willing to commit?’ for some people, it’s their time, energy, or money out of their savings. What are you willing to sacrifice? If you’ve been working for a company with good benefits, it’s hard to sacrifice those things in the beginning, until you can establish yourself as a business owner with profits that allow you to do that type of thing.”
So, as a rocket has to reach escape velocity to break through Earth’s gravity, launching a business requires a certain level of “escape clarity.” Sharon took us through a series of strategic questions to prompt honest answers people can use to either fuel their business rockets to success or realize that entrepreneurial space is really not for them.
Can you take your skills and put them into a business model?
People interested in starting a business must first have an idea that meets a need in the marketplace and has market potential.
“Think about the problem you’re going to solve for your customer and why they will buy from you – why you will do it better or faster than your competition,” Sharon said. “You’ve got to be able to show that demand is there.”
She highlighted other questions to help clarify this point:
· What business will you be in?
· What product or service will you provide?
· What problem will you solve for your customer?
· Why will your customer buy from you?
· How much will your customer pay for your product or service?
Do you have enough time to start a business?
Sharon said people should not only consider the time it would take to operate a business, but the time it will take to actually put it together.
“A lot of people do not have the money to quit the job they have and just step out and start a business,” she said. “If you’re going to start a business, what you’re going to have to do is manage your time very well. For a lot of folks, that means working on that business model and developing all the pieces in the evenings or on the weekends or holidays, which sometimes isn’t a lot of fun.”
Do you have enough money to start a business?
It can expensive to start a business. Sharon encouraged people to determine how much it will cost to start their business and then think long and hard about what they are willing to sacrifice. A couple of good practices she recommends are to create a shopping list for the business of everything that will have to be purchased to get it started and to identify areas in which financial assistance will be required.
Do you have the skills and experience to start a business?
Sharon noted that while it’s important to enjoy what you do in a business, you should expect to “apply your skills at 100 percent” while getting started, which could potentially lead to burnout.
“You’ve heard that phrase, ‘If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life,’” she said. “Well, it can be true, but it also can mean that when you’re starting up, you’re going to be working at your business a little bit harder than you would have to.”
Having skills is different from having business experience.
“Experience means not only the experience of the skill set you have, but the experience you have in operating a business day-to-day working with vendors, people and customers,” Sharon said.
Do you have the attributes to start a business?
She explained that this includes more intangible qualities such as leadership, teamwork, communication, interpersonal skills, analytical abilities, a strong work ethic, self-starting motivation, adaptability and flexibility.
If you answer all these questions and still feel like jumping into your business rocket, there’s a lengthy pre-flight checklist to complete that will give entrepreneurs the best shot at a successful journey:
We’ll get to these in the next blog post…until then, dig deep and ponder these questions, as well as this final thought from Sharon:
“Setting up a business is challenging,” she said. “There are lots of pieces to pull together. But there are some really good rewards to owning your own business. I never discourage anyone from getting started in this process.”
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