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Turning your dream into a reality, starting your own business

The first article and chapter in our series of starting your own business

Asses yourself, would you make a good small business owner?

The first fundamental thing you need to consider and have absolutely certainty, confidence and belief in, is yourself and your desire to run a successful business.

During the first days, months and perhaps years of your business, you are the business. If you fail, it fails, if you succeed it succeeds, if you slack off... you get the idea.

There is no such thing as the perfect type of person to run a business. However there are things you need and there are things you can learn to succeed, if you lack in any area it will show in your results and ultimately your success or failure.

There are six key characteristics to a successful small business owner.

Ambition and drive

If you are going to a start a business, without the ambition and initial drive for it to do well, your not going to get anywhere. What's worse is, when things get tough you'll have nothing, no momentum to break through. You can't learn ambition, however you can get clear on your reasons and desires as to why your starting your business and what it will mean for you, which can reinforce your drive. Remember these reasons and get clear on them from the start, I suggest writing them down and reading them over regularly.

Vision, Planning and Goals

People who succeed in creating successful small businesses usually didn't just have dumb luck to stumble onto an idea and somehow make it work. They have a vision of a product or service, clear goals to work towards and more importantly clear plans on how to reach these goals, the more detail you go into on paper, the better off you will be. Successful people make plans and set goals. These are traits you can learn, research and build into your routine.

Risk

The people who succeed in business take a balanced approach to risk. They don't shy away from it but equally they don't embrace it recklessly. You have to weight up risk versus reward and take educated decisions, not unnecessary gambles and not avoiding risk altogether. As you might imagine this is much harder to 'learn' but it is still possible to begin to make your business decisions this way.

Working with others or delegating

Even the individual business owner who plans to always work alone has to be able to deal with people. You are never going to be able to do everything you could possibly want to do yourself, because if you try your spreading your own resources too thin and wasting time you could be putting to more effective use elsewhere. Effective business owners know how to delegate tasks they don't want to waste time on, they can work with others, even if they prefer to work alone.

Innovation and change

Businesses, especially small businesses, have to be willing to keep up with current trends, they have to be willing to adapt to gaps in the market or opportunities as they arise. As a small business owner, you need to be willing to adapt and change as your market does. It's important you can see this change as positive and can focus on the opportunities within it, rather than just the negatives of expense or inconvenience

Getting back on your feet

There will come a time when something doesn't work as it should, right through to the whole business seeming like it's about to fail. This is where a good small business owner will really stand out over someone who is unsuited to being one. Coping, focusing on the solutions and bouncing back twice as strong. If you can bounce back stronger from a serious failure, you can do anything.

This trait is very difficult to learn, its all about resolve. As a famous man I sometimes like to quote once said. 'Spend 10% of your time on the problem, 90% of your time on the solution'. Too many people have this the other way around and that is the real reason, they fail.

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Chapter 1 - Chapter 2

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