The idea of starting a home business can be both exciting and scary. Simply making the decision to venture out on your own is a huge step. There are several things you really, really must consider before laying out your hard earned cash to get the ball rolling. I thought it would be interesting to throw just a couple out there for starters. Please feel free to comment or add your own ideas!
Start With A Business Plan!
When I was going to school for my Doctorate a fair amount of our training (thankfully) was spent preparing us for private practice and starting our own businesses. One thing that was stressed time and time again was to develop a strong business plan. Even if you are not seeking outside financial support a business plan is a critical component in adequately determining what you need for start up and your long term goals. It is truly amazing once you really start diving into a business plan to see exactly how much money you will need and where it will be going. Once you think you have a strong business plan enlist the help of others knowledgeable in business to assess your plan and find the holes in it. The SBA is a great resource for this. Also don't get married to your business plan. It should be ever changing and evolving as your business grows. So many people get stuck on a single idea or mission for their business and miss the bigger picture. As part of developing a business plan you should be doing a great deal of research that supports the viability of your plan and sometimes shows how fallible it is as well. Take for instance my long range goal of a private audiology dispensing practice. After conducting a demographic study of the area where I wanted to start the practice I realized that the existing population simply could not support an additional practice. This didn't steer me from going into business but rather caused me to look more closely at existing practices that were on the market.
In summary, as painful as it is to put together a well thought out and researched business plan is like money in the bank. It can help guide you towards a profitable future or steer you away from certain failure. My favorite professor always said "There is really only one thing I can tell you that will drive success and that is plan and plan again and when you are done plan some more".
