Lots of people dream of starting their own business, but many do not actually do it. Of course, it is a risk but so is everything else. Many start-up businesses fail but one hopes that the ambitious entrepreneur has enough perseverance to try again. There are lots of skills that you need to succeed in business though, besides being able to acclimate setbacks. For instance, one of the first things that you’ll need to learn how to do is sell yourself. When you start a business of your own, you likely won’t have any employees or an office. Those things come later because you have to find the money to fund them initially. This could be savings that you’ve built up over a long time, or you might approach a potential investor and offer them equity in your firm in return. Trying to convince people to give money to charities which do good work all over the world can be difficult enough so convincing someone to take a chance on you is not going to be easy at all. You will also need to learn how to attract potential employees. You can not do everything on your own so taking on staff will be necessary at some point but it is not as easy as you might expect. You may be offering a well-paying position but you also have to provide job security and a healthy work environment (especially since the cost of replacing employees is so high). That is not to mention benefits such as healthcare as well as incentives like opportunities for advancement.
Once you’ve got your business up and running, you will find that you’re met with all sorts of other challenges. For instance, running a small business has a lot to do with charisma and the ability to actualise your vision but it also depends to a great degree on hard, cold, numbers. If you make a mistake in paying your employees’ wages, you could easily find yourself without a workforce, or even worse, facing them at a tribunal. Other numbers that you have to deal with are the ones that the IRS demand from you each year. If you make a mistake there, you will be in more trouble yet. An audit can debilitate your business because it takes so long to conduct and you have to spend time and resources to help facilitate it. If there is anything wrong, you could also face prosecution. Hiring a full-time accountant can be expensive and if you know enough about the numbers to know that you cannot afford it, you may want to consider taking some accountancy courses yourself. It might sound like a massive investment of time but if you study online (at http://online.maryville.edu/ for instance) you can fit it around your other obligations.
Unfortunately, running your own business does not get any easier once you become successful. In fact, the opposite happens because you now have to maintain everything you’ve been doing up to that point while also doing what you can to grow your business further. It is a hard job but a fulfilling one.