Ideas, without action, never become bigger than the brain cells they occupy
The key to how to start a small business is less about knowing the mechanical sequence of business idea, business plan, business finance etc and more about the way in which you think and how you manage your thoughts.
The key has to do with your own
- intention
- will
- persistence
- perseverance
- resilience
If you have a tendency to dwell on a negative thought or occurrence, this may very well prevent you from taking action to start your own business. You can learn how to manage your thoughts in a way that empowers you toward the accomplishment of your objectives. This ability is essential to start on the road to becoming your own boss.
How to start a small business – the mechanical part
When thinking about how to start a small business, the mechanical part is the easy part.
The mechanical steps are:
STEP 1 Business Ideas
STEP 2 Business Plan
STEP 3 Financing
STEP 4 Getting started
STEP 5 Opening the Doors (if it is an offline business)
It is easy to find advice about steps 2-5. Much has been written about them. There can be much to learn about getting business ideas, although it is much easier than you may think.
I have fully covered the subject of getting business ideas in a separate article entitled “How To Start A Home Business – Getting The Idea For your Business”
How to start a small business – your intention
The dilemma that many people face is:
should you carry on in your current job or should you leave it to start your own small business? The current job pays the mortgage and the other bills. But, you may be unhappy in the job. There may be stress. It may require long hours. There is always the risk of lay off. You must have a strong intention and desire to live life and earn your living on your own terms, to breakthrough and make the decision to start your own small business.
How to start a small business – your will to succeed
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt ~ William Shakespeare
It is human to experience doubt. We all have doubts running through our minds on all sorts of things. When you consider starting your own business, doubts will enter your mind. It is natural. You are entering an area that is unknown to you. Those who succeed in starting their own business will have a way of dealing with their doubts so that they do not dwell on them. Dwelling will lead to inaction. Inaction will lead to no business of your own.
The will to breakthrough on the doubts, and also to overcome other obstacles along the way, will come from your motivation to start your own small business. The level of strength of your will is comparable to the level of motivation you have to start your own business. To increase your will, you need to increase your self motivation.
How to start a small business – your persistence, perseverance and resilience
Your persistence, perseverance and resilience with also be down to your mindset – how you think and how you manage your thoughts. As with any endeavor, when going into business for yourself you will encounter difficult challenges and perhaps some disappointments. As you will likely be on your own, your mental approach to these things is important.
If you allow your attention to dwell on the negative, you will not have the ability to bounce back quickly. You must train yourself to do two things when you experience challenges
- learn from negative experiences quickly
- quickly re-frame those experiences in your mind in a way that empowers you to accomplish your objectives
I think that the most crucial and first element when considering how to start a small business is how you manage your own thinking process and your own thoughts.
I am going to close this article with a pertinent quote from Confucius.
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall”
As an executive coach and a life coach for the past 20 years, I have helped hundreds of people to make the transition from being employed to becoming their own boss.
A key element in the transition was providing them with tools to help them to improve the way in which they thought about the transition and their objectives.