Global Trend and Small Business Idea

Watching the global trend is vital for a business owner, the more sensibly a business owner to the global trend, the more opportunities he/she can get and turn it to business which will bring them to success. It is subject to small business as well. Trying to figure out the global trend is a smart, yet intelligent way to find your dream small business to start.

Why?

Lets do a simple view and a bit analysis:

Making a business is all about matching supply vs demands. No matter how big the business is, no matter what type of business it is. Things that make them different are: the scale, the product/service provided, structure of the ownership, and where a business stand on (as a supplier, or mediator, or customer, or mixed). Supply and demand have the same level of urgency. Either a business lack of supply or lack of demand will cause a business suffered (if not dead).

Your mission is to match your potency to provide services or products to the globe’s demand.

Why global trend? Why not local trend?.
Global trend influence people’s habits and attitudes much everywhere on the earth. On this global era, everything go global.

Here are some hot trends that you can turn into a small business

a. Eco issue and small business opportunities

Eco is become more and more hot issue lately. This issue leaves a high awareness of eco everywhere on the globe. Providing services or products that support people’s awareness to the eco, or providing things that bring eco identity become more and more prospective on the 2008 and most likely will go on. Giving greener choice to the people well matches the demands. Practically, you may provide or distribute eco-products either in a storefront or online or even mixed.

b. Global Warming and Touring services and eco issue

You may have an excellent experience to operate a tour services on your previous and are trying to match with the global trend. Global warming is one of the hottest issue now onward. Antarctica, rain forest, north pole is become more and more popular tour destination, because of the issue.

c. Energy saving issue and small business opportunity

Now world’s people more and more care aware and care to do energy saving, more people are now willing to use solar even for the house. There is great potential of opportunity to provide solar panel installation for house’s equipments.

d. Baby boomer’s statistic and its opportunity

Number of senior aged individual is significantly increased on the 2008. You may want to explore, find out how it is in your country or region. Wide-range types of senior care services are waiting in the market: In-home care, home services for senior such as preparing the meal, running errand or even housekeeping for senior.

e. Disparity the poor and the rich


Disparity is growing and the middle class is shrinking. This make restaurant, car and even house ownerships will increase. Explore yourself more.

f. Traditional believe casting


This trend will make demand on books, CD’s or any other types of media that accommodate this trend are increasingly. It likely become a lucrative business opportunity going forward.

Try to explore more global trend to find small business idea that well matches your desire, skills, strengths and goals in the same time.

Happy exploring!

Choosing Right Small Business – Outline and check list

So, you decided to start a small business. The next step is choosing a right small business to be started. This is the second critical point that you should take carefully. Why? Once you start it, means you have invested in it; your time, focus, energy, even some monetary may has been spent out already. Of course you have always a choice whether to cancel it or to proceed.

What kind of business should you start?

To you who have a pretty good yet unique small business idea to start, that is great. Some of you may have such general idea only, while others don’t have any idea at all. So lets go further.

We all know millions (if not world) kinds of business out there for anyone who wants to start a small business. How can you possibly break them down to choose the kind of business that's right for you? This guideline may help.

Your desire, courage, strengths, skills and goals should be factors that always are your main consideration on every step you go. Choosing a right small business to meet your strength, skills and goals has two big component; Start from scratch OR buy existing business.

If you have strong desire, enough courage, sufficient strength, and great skills sets, yet in line with your goals, then go start from scratch. Otherwise buy existing one.

Before going to the details of each above possibilities, I would like to show you 3 common mistakes in choosing kind of business to start you should avoid, you may find them useful.

Mistake #1: Resisting the urge to ask for help.
Some people reluctant to ask others for help, somehow, either because of too high self-confident or just simple doesn’t know there are helps out there. As long as you search wisely, it won’t cost you much.

Mistake #2: Converting hobbies to a small business.
If you are going to convert interest or hobbies into a small business without doing enough research and study to know if significant demand is available to the services/product will be provided. Wrong move!

Mistaker #3: Starting the business without adequate planning.
Finding a market opportunity just simply not a guarantee for you to success. There are many other considerations; more deeply market research, Skills and strengh, financial aspect (are you going to be able to rise enough money to get it started?, are you going to be able withstand periods on the little or even no revenue is coming in?), legal aspect, etc. Those all still need to be figured out more closely.

In other hand, here are things better you may do on the preparation periods:

Work for someone else who operate business similar or next to your small business idea for a while:

Get on—the—job training, get paycheck while you have not too busy yet, learn they way they/he/she operate the business. When scouting out potential "employer-trainers," it's best to look for one that is successful and well run. In the worst scenario that they/he/she is not a good trainer, not a good model in term how to operate the business; poorly managed, inefficient, even worst, they don’t even successful business person. Then; “see the mistake they did, don’t repeat the way they’ve been doing”. Learn the “don’t” to get know the “do”.

Go and talk to local small business association:

I know, getting insightful information from others who have been operating similar small business kind of not an easy task. But, you should try, consider that will be your best day for getting nice small business owner who willing to reveal and share his/her/their secret on how to operate the business. But if you are not that lucky, that is more than understandable for you will be their direct competitor potentially (they think, and you could be). Instead, go and talk to local small business association or commerce and trade department. If you don't make any headway by attending such meetings or by directly approaching business owners, you may wish to offer a business owner a consulting fee. If you are able to find out what you need to know about the day-to-day operation of your prospective business, this one-time expense will probably be money well spent.

Further, here is a raw check list. Sorry it looks messy, I wish I could do a screenshot on an excel sheet, unfortunately this blog scheme does not allow such long screenshot. When I pushed it, it became un-readable, that was even worst, so I get this messy check list posted here. Well, I hope it is more than its look.


Choosing Right Small Business - Check List

[1] Consider to make from scratch or buy existed one

(A). Make from scratch
If you make from scratch, then do :
Market Research
a Consider & Study Nice Marketing
b Consider & study Additional Social Trends

(B). Buy Existing One

1) Buy Existed Business
a Consider Why Buy a business
b Find & search Business to buy
c Decide : buy or not

2 ) Buy a Franchise
a Why Buy a Franchise
b Compare : Franchise Vs New Business
c Compare : Franchise Vs Existed Business
d Find a Franchise to buy
e Investigate a franchise to buy
f Decide: buy a franchise or not

[2] Choose type of small business you want to start
(a) Retail or Wholesale
(b) Product or services or mixed
(c) With store-front or without or mixed
(d) What Industry

[3] Get small business idea you want to start

[4] Choose form of ownership
(a). Sole Proprietorships
(b). Partnerships
(c). General Partnership
(d). Joint Venture
(e). Corporations
(f). S Corporations
(g). Limited Liability Company (LLC)
(h). C Corporation (Inc. or Ltd.)
(i). S Corporation (Inc. or Ltd.)
(j). Limited Liability Partnership (LLP)
(k). Professional Service Corporation (PS)
(l). Limited Partnership (LP)
(m). Non-Profit Corporations

[5] Choose Legal Structure
(a). Sole Proprietor
(b). Partnership
(c). Corporation

Once you've worked your way through these five steps, you will have a much better idea in choosing right small business to start and handsome stand point to start. Going forward, I will keep posting guidelines and tips to go more detail base on the above check list.

Responsibilities & Roles Of Small Business Owner

Understanding your responsibilities and Roles you are going to take as small business owner is another preparation session that you may not miss about. You don’t expect any surprises when you’re in, don’t you?

When you’re working for somebody else’s company, your responsibility and roles not more than for one division, or one department or some projects assigned to you. You may ever heard managers or executives moaned about wearing two or three hats in one company, it’s more than likely you are going to wear all hats in your own business.

As a business owner, you are responsible for all roles, all projects, and all employees you are going to occupy (if you plan to have some). You are the only one who responsible for the business operation and existence.

Here are some responsibilities and roles you are going to take:

Law:
Although if you plan to have a lawyer, you still have to know about the law, moreover if you don’t plan to have one, you'll have to prepare contracts and other documents required during the business registration. Even when your business has been established, you still have to involve in the law roles; making a new contract, updating the existing contract, and understanding all of the employment laws if you have employees or want to hire someone.

Business planner:
Making and taking care of business plan and strategies is another role that you have to do constantly every time you set or change some new or existing goals. Making the plan and its execution, its follow-up, its controlling, all of those will be your responsibilities.

Researcher & analyst:
Before you start your business, you'll have to find who/what is your market segment, exploring and analyzing the market, you may also have to conduct market research at various times during the life of your business.

Marketing, advertising & sales executive:
Following up your marketing or advertising campaign, you'll be responsible to; write advertising copy, visit potential customers, and make sure existing customers on highest satisfaction, sales force and maintain marketing network.

Clerk/receptionist/secretary:
Until you have one, all clerical, reception and secretarial roles will be yours, at least at the beginning period of your business operation. Making and receiving phone calls, filing, mailing, even if you have clerical help, you'll inevitably do some of your filing, some of your typing, some of your mailing.

Tax collector:
If you sell goods at the retail level, you're responsible for collecting sales tax; also you're responsible for collecting payroll taxes from employees if you have, and for sure you need to calculate the tax amount, preparing ~ filling the form and submitting the tax files.

Accountant & Financial Controller:
You will be likely to do accountant and financial analyze constantly during your business life. Even if you have one, you still have to know a lot about accounting and data analyze to keep your financial healthy and on growth. If you don’t have accountant, at least you will need to construct financial statement for annual tax year purpose.

Tech expert:
Since the beginning of your plan to start your own business, you will probably come to depend upon your computer; developing website, making and submitting sales letter to the potential customers list, making online press. On the operation period, you'll have to fix your computer when it breaks, install upgrades, and load software; you'll also have to keep up with the newest products and the latest changes in technology.

Human Resource & Development:
Along with your business growth, you will keep adding more employees in, to make sure they will give best contribution for your business, you need to make sure your employee on the skill level required for the position you fill.

Looking at the responsibilities and roles of new small business owner, obviously you will spend much longer working hour than you have been doing as an employee. If you decided to start your own small business, I believe you are ready for those roles. If you have not ready yet, those will be some of your important aspect to be considered and addressed on your strategy and plan. Along with your business growth, you may plan to out source some (if not most) of those later on.

Goals Setting Before Business Establishment

This post will talk about why you should set goals before business establishment and what goals you should set. Also about how to quantify your goals to go the realization. Doing or making something without any goals just like you are going to go to un-defined destination. How can you go without knowing where you are going to go?. Starting a small business is not like you are going to go to supermarket, huge of energy, capital, time and effort you will devote on it. So, it is obviously impossible for you to start own small business while you don’t know what you expect to be achieved.

Yet, goals are more than a destination toward, they will be your lights sign you can notice when you’re missed in the middle of the way you are going.

For better illustration about goals—will lead you—to the right direction you want, let’s take one example:

You just hate your current job which been generating $40,000 for good reason, while you have a great skill in providing a good services for certain unique niche market which has no significant competitor, and you “think” you could be a good expert for that niche in 4 years effort. You analyze your idea and discover that you won’t be able to generate $40,000 income for at least the first year. But since you are sure that you will be a good expert and your income will grow exceeding $60,000 on the second year onward, you will be likely go and proceed your planning. Despite the cut in income on the first year, you decide to the risk are worth it, so you will start your own new small business.

I hope we make a good understanding about how important goals are. Now let’s define what your goals are.

Here are some natural goals human have:

Financial Goals

Of course, everyone want a business to be success. But what measurement of success you use, generating 3 times of your current income? Assuming you've been in the work force for a while, you know what kind of lifestyle you can afford on your current income, so you'd probably like to earn more. Many people feel that self-employment is the way to do make it so.

Here I short of some possibilities of financial goals:

Increase Incomes: Some people believe working as an employee in a corporate setting limits their earning potential, so they want to make own business to increase their earning.

Suplement Incomes: You may require a second source of income, which translates into a part-time business.

Replace Income: Some people have been downsized or whatever it's called these days, and they need to replace their lost income.

Be realistic about how long it will be before your new business becomes an established and secure source of income. Most businesses don't immediately produce profits for the owner.


Personal Goal

There's a certain satisfaction in "doing it yourself" that may not be quantifiable, but which is nevertheless important. Typical reasons that people choose to start a business include:

Career change: Most people change jobs or even careers several times during the course of their lives.

Satisfaction: Some people feel trapped in a field they don't enjoy, and they want a chance to work at something they find more interesting.

Recognition: Being an expert or authority in a particular field is also an important factor for some people. So recognition is one of their goals.

Flexibility & Work/Life Balance: Work/life balance issue is become more and more significant in work fields recently, and self-employed people have more freedom to choose businesses allowing them to satisfy personal preferences.

Professional growth: Some people believe their ideas are being ignored or not being used properly in a corporate setting, and they want the chance to do it the "right" way on their own way.

Freedom: Owning your own business is a way to achieve personal freedom on many levels.

Goals won't just determine whether you start a small business, they'll also play a prominent role in just about every decision you make along the way, from how you structure your business, what strategy you are going to market your products or services.

Now that you have some idea of what your general goals are, goals will be a set of destinations that will warn you for any decision you are going to make on your way to establish and develop your business. The next step is to make those goals concrete by quantifying them.


Quantify Your Goals

Here are some guidelines you may follow when quantifying your goals:

[1]. Use numbers
Be specific and establish targets that can be easily measured, and use numbers as targets whenever and wherever part possible, i.e.: your goal is achieving $100,000 net earning, Or your goal is achieving 1000 customers a year. And always tie the specific number to a time frame.

[2]. Be realistic
Having high expectations is great, but establishing reasonable yet potentially achievable is a must. If you are going to produce computer software, and you set your goal to become bigger than Microsoft ® in one year, that is not realistic.

[3]. Be aggressive
Hey, you can be realistic and still target high. Setting something that too easily to be achieved won’t bring you to any successful story. The way to make that happened is by setting short and long term goals. Several short goals synergized and supports each other, continuously. If you keep in the right way and you think you could be bigger than Microsoft ® within 30 years, go for it.

[4]. Be consistent
Whatever your goals, no matter how realistic they are, no matter how aggressive they are, juggling one goals to another different un-related goals could jeopardize anything you are establishing. Consistence is never less important than other aspect.


How to Start It?

Setting your goals is just like making a birthday wish-list, the difference is on who will make it true. Birthday wish-list is a list of things you expect somebody else would give you on your birthday. Goals list is a list of things that you would expect to achieve on a certain period you set by doing some constant effort time by time till you get there.

Set your goals before establishment of your new small business and get lead to a right business and strategy.

New Business Ownership will Impact Your Life

New Small Business Ownership will impact your life, absolutely. It’s so much different than being employed. Let me show you some facts:

When you’re an employee:
*). If any problem arise at work, biggest part was company’s problem, or owner problem, and small part of it was yours because of mistakes you made.
**). Your source of income is salary

When you’re a business owner:
*). If any problem arise (just any problem whatever it is) in your business, that’s absolutely your problem, let say the problem is because of some mistakes made by one of your employee (when you occupy employee), that is still your problem.
**). Your source of income will be your own business

Any (just any) problem arise in your business is your problem that should solved by you. The problem will not go just because of you close the door. Such situation is always happened to any new small business owner.

Another change is the distinction between working time and personal time which is blur for you’re a new small business owner. There won’t be anybody complaining you if you come late to work or home early, you are the boss. But also there won’t be no concern if you always come early and home at late night no bonus, no incentive you will earn because of cleaning the mass situation at your business. Those all part of your consequences of being business owner.

Any decision you made for the business will just simple impact your personal life (you like it or not).

The impact is even greater if your business involves working out of your home. You may experience conflicts over the use of space for business or personal purposes. The distinction between your personal life and business life is even further attenuated. Even when you're at home, you're also physically at work. On the upside, there's no commute and you can eat cheaper at home.

If you live with somebody else at home (parents, wife, or friends, kids, your family), it is a good way to always consider the impact to them as well, so having serious discussion with them prior to your decision to own business will be absolutely needed. Yet, some new business owner experiences emotional and physical strain post the changing between being employee and being business owner. That could impact the people surround you.

These monetary life aspects will be seriously influenced by your decision to open your own business with no doubt:


[1]. Source of income

Source of income is the biggest difference among all. When you’re an employee you can expect a certain day (date) to receive a paycheck from the company (employer), yet you can even predict the amount. As the owner of your own small business, you'll be paid only when and if the business generates enough money. As for the amount, that will be depend on the profit you can generate from the business. Considering the expense against the revenue is the critical point, I can assure you that you will keep spending money for the business in the beginning of establishing period, while no money you can expect as a return in the same period. So, do an accurate and careful calculation for this, how you are going to handle this.


[2]. Health & Insurance Coverage

When you’re an employee, your employer provides you health insurance. But when you’re the business owner, who will provide it for you?, yourself!. If you and your family has been covered by personal health insurance premium, that is great!. Yet, when you start to have employee who assist you for the new small business establishment, then you will be likely have to provide health insurance for them. There's no pool of employees that would allow you to negotiate a more favorable rate than you can get on an individual policy. You may be able to join an association of other small businesses so you can take advantage of cheaper group insurance rates.

For those covered under employer-provided health care plans who leave to start a business, there should be an option of continuing coverage through the former employer's plan, you may need to find out the detail information.


[3]. Retirement savings

If you don't have health insurance and experience a serious injury or disease, you may be wiped out. The impact of failing to save for your retirement can be even more damaging. A small business owner has to make a conscious decision to save, outside the framework of a plan administered by someone else. That decision often can be deferred or forgotten when you feel the cash coming in has to be put right back into the business.

Are you ready for the impacts as a new small business owner?

Things You should Have To Start Small Business

Do you know what things you should have to start small business? “Things” here means: Skills, strengths and straits. You don’t need to answer whether “yes” or no”. That is not the purpose of this short post. It's really just to help you to evaluate your skills, strengths and weaknesses, and your personal straits so that you'll be in a better position to make certain decisions that you'll have to make before you start a new small business.

There are two main different roles you will play while preparing to open and run your own small business on which requires specific skills.

[-]. You're the only one who will be responsible for providing products or services to your customers. This is true whether you have employees or not.

[-]. You also have to deal with all the activities that relate to running your business, promotion and marketing, administration roles, maintenance, phone call (unless if you have enough capital to pay some staff to do it).

They point is “you need to be able to handle both”. Are you ready for that?

To enable you to provide the best product or service, specific skill set needed. Of course it will be vary (it depends on what product or service you are trying to sell). Do your best to gauge the scope of activities that make up the business. Be particularly careful not to overlook the less-enjoyable aspects of the business. Regardless of your desire to go into business for yourself, if you lack needed skills, it's unlikely you'll succeed unless you find a way to compensate. Let me show you some examples: should you take on partners? Should you hire an accountant or just bookkeeper? Should you hire a production manager? Your answer to those questions (and many other questions) will depend in large part upon which skills you have and which skills you lack.

To begin the process of examining your strengths and weaknesses, select one of the following:

Make three lists. First list contains your skills, second list contains your strength and weakness, and the last list contains your personal straits of a successful business owner.

The next step is comparing the three lists and deciding what to do.

If you have the things (skill strength & straits) you can move straight to evaluating your chances for success to start a small business.

What It Takes To Start Small Business

As mentioned on my previous post (Very First Step To Do To Star A Small Business), having enough courage and desire is really the first thing you have to make sure before even starting anything else. But courage and desire just not bring you anywhere, except keeping you in your dream. You need to bring it into some systematic real action. So what does it takes to start a small business? To be successful — to stay in business — you need more than courage. You need a combination of hard work, discipline, skill, perseverance, and accumulate good sense of business over the time.

In General, people who want to start their own businesses can be grouped into two categories:

[-]. The first group:
They are who know exactly what they want to do and are merely looking for the opportunity or resources to do it. These people have already developed many of the skills necessary to succeed in their chosen field. They are also likely to be familiar with industry customs and practices, which can help during the startup phase of a new business.

[-]. The second group:
They are who want to start their own business, but don't have any real definite ideas about what they'd like to do.

How you proceed will depend, in large part, on which group you're in. For those who know what they want to do, the can skip the business—idea—and—opportunity—research to get the most suitable small business to start. Instead, these folks can jump right in and assess their chances for success in the type of business they've selected.

While the first group likely to be able to jump right into their chance, the second group won’t. They still need to do some research to get the most suitable small business to be established. If you fall on to the second group, don't worry, we will talk this more detail later on the "Planning & Outlining Your Small Business Idea".

Next, lets take a closer look at just how much hard work, skill, and perseverance you'll need if you're to be successful on your way.

To evaluate your own aptitude for small business ownership, you need to:

Figure out if you have the right things.
How can you evaluate your own skills and make judgments about whether you're ready to own your own business? This is a good place to start if you already know that you want to own a business

Estimate the impact on your everyday life.
How will your life change when you become a business owner? Many of the more "secure" aspects of employee life will vanish when you open up your own business

Set your goals.
What do you want from your business? If you want to "succeed," how will you know if you get there? Knowing what you want from your business permeates all of the other decisions you'll have to make in starting a new business. It will affect which business you choose, how you evaluate your chances for success, and how you determine if you have the right skills.

Realize and understand the responsibilities of ownership.

What's involved in owning a business and what are the roles you'll have to play if you own one? This is a good place to start if you're considering starting your own business but haven't owned one before.

I will keep adding "Starting Small Business" section until you really fully armed to really start it.

Very First Step To Do To Start A Small Business

Starting something new is always tend to be not easy, moreover it is about starting own business, even for a small business. Huge (if not tons) of questions in your heart; How to kick start it, what very first step to do, what I should have, where I should go (for sourcing), and a lot more questions spinning in your head .The hardest part is deeply in your own heart not your neighbor’s, nor your friend, nor anybody else’s, where most of beginner missed about, the really—very first step to do before anything else, 2 fundamental questions you should ask yourself: why starting own business?, do I have enough desire and courage to go with my way to success?.

When you are reading this short article, I know you are searching some information about how to start own business, looking for some information or even encouragement to make sure your desire is strong enough. If that’s the purpose of why you’re here, I would say, you are on the right track so far.

It’s not because of you read my short posts here that I said you’re on the right track, but the purpose: gathering information and sources on how to start your first own business as much as you can before you actually start it.


Why Starting Own Small Business?

This question obviously asking for you reason why you want to start your own small business. Your answers probably fall on to the following reasons:

[-]. Being sick of become an employee, who been working hard for the boss, not for yourself.

[-]. Look for more flexible work/life balance.

[-]. Want to make your biggest dream come true, that you think it’s impossible to make it so by working 5 to 9, 5 days a week.

But do you ever think about “how If I got failed?”, that could bring you to worse.


Do I have enough desire and courage to go my way to success?

This question is in term to answer the previous question. The main quality that you have to have to start your own small business is a burning desire to do it. Running a small business isn’t for the ambivalent or indifferent. You have to really, really want to be your own boss, transform your dream into reality, or market your product or service.

If you have answered “no” to any of these, you’re probably not ready to start your own business. Short success stories are just stories. The reality is that success is won through hard work and self discipline over time. That is successful entrepreneur way you need to learn. You may like to know about what set of characteristic entrepreneur have, go and read on here: Entrepreneur Characteristic.

So your answer to the above two main question are positively yes and definitely want to start your small business, next step you should know is “What It takes to start small business”. This is another thing you should know after passing your very first step to do to start your own small business.