Beating The Middle Age Dread: Starting Your Own Business

As we get older we start to wonder if there’s anything else out there, have we found our purpose in life by sitting at a desk, incessantly inputting information and numbers to line somebody else’s pockets? It’s very unlikely, but if you are happy doing that, I applaud you. The reason that many people experience unhappiness later in life is due to the fact that we very rarely seem to be in control of what we do. That there is this feeling that life is happening to you, not for you. Your career is one of the ways in which you can start to reclaim some of that control. If you are not keen on switching careers because of the amount of retraining you would have to do, why don’t you really look at what your passion is in life, and create a business around it? Starting your own business is a path many people have taken, and some of it is due to workplace unhappiness, and some did it because they were pushed out of a job and had no choice, and it worked out well for many of them.

So what does it take to start a new business? The first thing to look at is you. What are your skills? What are your passions? What can you do better than anyone you know? Once you have figured that out, how can you promote that unique skill or trait to sell as a service to people? What you have figured out is your product. Once that is set in stone, you need to market your product. These are the two basic tools many businesses will spend years getting to the bottom of. While these businesses have teams of marketing “experts” that talk about things like the “brand” of your company, all they are doing is trying to get to the core of what the business is about and making it as appealing to as broad a spectrum as possible, also known as the unique selling point. So if you have figured out your product and then how best to market this product using your own unique selling point, you then need to figure out who this product best appeals to aka your target market. These are all ideas that feed into one another, so you may decide on your target market first, but the product should come from you. Like the best stand-up comedians who get laughs because the audience knows exactly where the comic is coming from, this is because the comedian is speaking from their own experiences, so their product is the jokes. It’s the same process. Finding your voice. Other aspects of setting up a business include finding the right location to do business, the licenses in order to practice, and the right documentation, such as public liability
insurance. That last one is essential because, for example, you are working with the public as a yoga teacher, you may be liable for any damage they sustain while in your place of business. It is an essential process of business and by doing your research, you can find out exactly what you need to do in order to trade properly.

Setting up your own business is an adventure like no other. If you have a passion for something and think you can make a living out of it, then why are you not doing it? Do something you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.