Starting a business means you need to think about production, sales, data protection, accountancy, logistics, licenses, permits, online functionality and legal matters. Despite these being essentials, you do not need a team of lawyers, an accountancy department, or even a production line. You can strip things back to the “Essentials” when you start, and then scale up as your business grows.
There are plenty of different tools, both physical and mental, that you should be aware of in order to make sure that your business thrives in the best possible ways. Here are some things anyone thinking of becoming self-employment should consider. It’s an eclectic list to provide a flavor of the breadth of things you need to think about.
1. Good Time Management
When you are responsible for your own business, every single minute of the day counts. To get the most out of your self-employed experience, you need to develop really good time management skills. This doesn’t mean striving to work every hour of the day. It simply means being as productive as you can so that you don’t have to sacrifice your important leisure time outside of the business. Understanding the value of time is what separates wannabe entrepreneurs from successful self-employed people.
2. A Resourceful, Determined and Resolute Nature
As a self-employed boss you need to have a really good problem solving attitude. As the figurehead of your venture, your employees will look to you for guidance on a daily basis. Unsuccessful people endure a crisis by trying to reverse it, whereas successful businesspersons see a crisis and turn it to their favor.
3. A Dedicated Working Space
If you are finding that you have very little time for yourself and for non-work related things because your career is all over your home, then it might be time to look into renting a small office space to create some separation. The separation of work and home life is very important if you are going to maintain a productive, efficient, and motivated attitude. It is very easy to fall into a slump when you cannot separate home life from work life.
4. Fuel Cards
If you run the kind of business that requires vehicular travel, then fuel cards can be a really easy and efficient way of dealing with those specific expenses. A fuel card is an expense card that can be charged on visits to gas stations that occur as part of the working day, and the cost of the trip gets charged directly to the assigned business account. This saves your employees having to pay themselves and provide receipts for reimbursement. It’s just a much more efficient and professional way to handle that side of your business.
5. Enthusiasm for the Admin Side of Things
Many self-employed entrepreneurs make the mistake of skipping on the small admin, and that can have a domino effect that proves fatal to the entire business. Maintain an enthusiasm for all levels of your venture, and you will be good to go.
6. A Routine
Eager and excited newbies throw themselves into their work and end up burning out within a few months. You need to parcel out your time, and the best way to do this is to create a routine. To mix the hard work and less exciting things, with the dynamic and highly fulfilling stuff. You do this so that you stay efficient, but also and more importantly, you do it to maintain your motivation. If you do not mix up your day with the good and the bad, then the “Bad” slowly starts to drain your motivation until you spend your week dreading the “Chores” your new enterprise keeps turning up.
7. Outsource
You may furrow your brow at the idea of outsourcing because it is commonly viewed as a very expensive business element, but it really isn’t. For example, you need branded banners for your website. You know you can create them yourself and do a darn good job, but it is going to take three or four days that you could devote to something more pressing. Alternatively, you can go on Freelancer.com right now, and there are literally hundreds of new and intermediate professionals that will do the job for whatever budget you have on offer. You get what you pay for, but these freelancers do not have the sort of big overheads that consultancy and design firms do. Many of them are working from home, they have very low overheads, which means they can pass the savings on to you.
