| Starting your own business | ||
| As a small-business coach as well as a financial planner, I've seen hundreds of success stories and they all have three things in common. First, these entrepreneurs are absolutely passionate and knowledgeable about the business they've chosen. Second, they've spent the time necessary to create a business plan and a complete set of financials. And third, they have enough money to survive personally until the business is able to support them. For some businesses number three may be one year or as long as 5 years. Many folks meet the first two criteria for success. Its number three, being properly capitalized, that most often gets people into trouble. It's the business plan you write that will enable you to determine what amount of money you need to give yourself the best chance for success. Resources abound to help you through the business planning process. Unless you've written one before, I highly recommend that you seek a mentor, business coach, or accountability partner to help you through the process. Start off by reading books about business planning available from publishing companies such as Nolo Press, Dearborn Publishing, Oasis Press and others. You will find many of these companies have well structured workbooks. My all-time favorite book for business startups is "The E-Myth Revisited" by Michael Gerber. Utilize the services of the Small Business Development Center, a program of the Small Business Administration. This office provides workshops for start-up businesses at a nominal fee as well as one-on-one coaching when indicated. An additional resource you shouldn't ignore is the Small Business Administration web site www.sba.gov. It's vitally important that you recognize that any business can fail and that new businesses have the highest failure rate of all. Doing your homework before opening a business substantially lessens the failure rate. But knowing that a new business is a risk, you need to be able to sustain a loss of your startup capital if the business doesn't make it. Because of this it's almost never a good idea to use the money that you've set aside for retirement to start a new business. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, test your business idea by creating a business plan which will allow you to "run your business on paper" before you actually commit much money. Click here to read Financially Speaking Newsletter |
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