OK! Now what?

So you decided to get your business going. Great! No more boss to answer to. No departmental conflicts and no supervisors wondering why you didn't get more done. You know what you want to do because you've done so much of it. How do you make it run?


Start with some structure. Decide what hours you need to work. When will your customers be available? What time will you need to get ready to work? To do this, you'll need to plan how your day will be spent. So much for getting ready for the day, then it's off to do the business. When the day's done, it'll be time for the paperwork. What facilities will you need to run your business? Your basement, den, back yard or garage? A new building? Rented shop space? Storefront in a location that will be available to plenty of customers?


More structure comes with budgeting. This is big because it impacts everything else. You'll determine where you work and how you build your business and how quickly you can expect it to grow. Remember: one important thing of building a business is to build value into the business which comes back to build value for you. When you budget, you don't limit yourself as is often the concern of a lot of people. Ideally, budgeting gives you a profit target to reach so you have money to take out of the business to live by and also to leave in the business to buy equipment or to use in other ways to enhance or expand the business. The trick to budgeting is figuring out realistic cost and sales projections so you can know ahead of time what profit you will end up with so you can feed your family and buy your own store instead of renting from someone else.

Many business owners aim for a sales target but don't know where their expenses are going to come in. As a result, they don't know if they will have extra money until after the end of the month.

Thanks for reading. Watch for the next entry.