Deciding to have your own business can be a highly rewarding decision. As your own boss, you can be yourself and determine your value. Provided that you believe enough in yourself to strive for positive results, you’ll feel far more secure than an employee who needs to impress others to keep their job.However, some things stopping you from being an entrepreneur may be issues like not prioritizing your work or not feeling passionate about any particular business idea. Consequently, before you make the leap, it’s always a good idea to build up your confidence in your own ability to execute on an idea, get good at decision-making, learn how to prioritize, and find something that makes you passionate about overcoming all the challenges you’ll inevitably face when starting your own business.
Evaluating Pros & Cons
Like most things in business life, every new commercial venture has an upside and a downside. So, whether you decide to start your own business or research franchise opportunities, you’ll find both come with advantages and disadvantages.
Starting your own business allows you to be as innovative and creative as you like. If you’re a creative thinker, you can follow your urge to switch out the product line or change your vision about the layout of your office or the décor of your store. You’re free to run your business any way you want. However, it’s extremely difficult to start from scratch if you don’t have enough business knowledge and experience to accurately figure out how to do all the right things in the right order of importance
Conversely, buying a franchise will provide you a higher chance of success because you’ll be following a proven system, one that has significant brand recognition. However, there’ a price to pay for these benefits: entrance fees and fixed costs for using the brand name. You also have to abide by specific rules to follow the franchise system.
Challenges to Starting Your Own Business
When starting a business from scratch, you have to come up with a good business idea, raise capital, assemble a business team, and find the right location, employees, and customers. Additionally, you’ll need to get good at dealing with the competition, anticipating unforeseen business problems, overcoming unexpected expenses, and keeping up with market trends and changes in your industry.
When dealing with the many challenges you’ll face, you need to engage in critical thinking, face each problem bravely, and avoid procrastinating, doing what needs to be done with a sense of urgency. It will also help to start with enough capital to recover from any expensive mistakes you make and sustain a positive business cash flow. Finally, when coping with any setbacks or the consequences of any bad decisions, you need to take full responsibility. When the going gets tough, the only way to turn things around will be to stay on course and keep your focus.
Challenges to Owning A Franchise
Some of the big challenges you’ll face if you buy a franchise are finding the right staff, getting enough customers, and accidentally failing to coordinate with your franchisor.
When recruiting employees, hire people who show initiative when it comes to doing their jobs. When trying to increase your customer base, use the marketing support the franchisor offers you, which may include marketing materials, tips on recommended media, and even cooperative advertising opportunities. Additionally, you can build repeat business and referrals through excellent customer service. Finally, when it comes to lack of coordination with your franchisor, a simple conversation will resolve any confusion between the franchisor’s role and your own when it comes to effectively managing your franchise.
Making A Decision
It’s a good idea to start your own business if you feel passionate about your business idea and can support your plan with sufficient knowledge and experience, however, you must know what you’re doing to be successful. According to an Entrepreneur.com article that mentions small business success rates, “Statistics show that 25 percent of startup businesses fail within their first year, 50 percent of the remaining fail within five years and approximately 30 percent of the remaining last ten years.”
Owning your own franchise offers you a higher chance of success if you want to be in business but also need plenty of support to compensate for your lack of knowledge and experience. This business model will allow you to be your own boss and achieve a much greater income than working for a corporation.