How to launch your own business

how to launch your own business

The last few weeks we’ve been talking about money, both getting into the right mindset and managing your money properly by setting up your personal and business accounts and defining your financial goals. Money is one of the biggest concerns for people as they think about making any kind of change in their career and it’s particularly important in the context of launching your own business. But it’s not the only consideration! Launching your own business requires a lot of thinking, planning and preparation, it puts high demands on you as an individual… and it’s simply not for everyone.

Running own business is an incredibly attractive proposition, promising freedom and economic independence for those who succeed.

And that last bit is pretty important: for those who succeed.

There are various statistics floating around about how many businesses fail in their first year. Although there’s no one figure, the point here is that starting a business is inherently risky and a lot of people will fail in their attempts.

There are different reasons for failure of course. But they can include:

  • failing to validate the business idea
  • a lack of understanding of the customer or the market
  • missing a clear value proposition and differentiation versus competition
  • not finding a viable business model.

You may have heard of the lean startup model and the essence of this is that you don’t need pages and pages of formal business plans. Instead you need a starting point and then you’ll learn as you go, ‘pivoting’ and evolving as you get actual results from the real world.

But that doesn’t mean that you don’t need a plan at all.

In my experience failure can also be the result of less obvious aspects:

  • not preparing yourself mentally, in terms of your mindset
  • a lack of commitment and willingness to do the work
  • not getting external help when you need it
  • not creating a working schedule and environment to support you.

A lot of people simply give up too soon, when things get tough, and so persistence and resilience are two important attributes if you want to succeed.

In fact, there are quite a few personality traits that are key to being an entrepreneur and the truth is that some people are more suited to it than others.

Entrepreneurs need passion and a belief that what they are doing is really important; a high tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity; tenacity as they meet with failure after failure; flexibility to learn and adapt as they go; and a knack for networking and communicating their ideas. Some of these traits come naturally and some can be developed.

So how do you know if launching your own business is the right decision for you and how can you give yourself the best chances of success?

Well, it won’t surprise you if you know me at all that the first step I’ll emphasise when setting out to launch your own business is to define success.

When you’re thinking about launching your own business, it’s easy to get lost in all your day-to-day tasks or get caught up in worrying about money and making the financials work. The first step, however, has to be understanding what’s important to you, what your vision is for the business overall and how that fits into your personal lifestyle and priorities.

If you understand your ‘why’ you can make sure that you set up your business so that it gives you what you’re looking for, and this will also ensure that you have the motivation and commitment to stay the course. If you know what you want to accomplish, then you can design strategies to reach those goals. And if you know how the new business needs to fit into the rest of your life – family, friends, social life, free time, travel – then you can make sure that you end up with the right balance for you.

Defining success is the first pillar as you move forwards with a possible business idea; based on my experience in my own business and advising others I’ve identified four additional pillars:

Pillar 1: Defining what ‘success’ looks like for you
Pillar 2: Building your confidence and resilience
Pillar 3: Choosing the right business model
Pillar 4: Building an effective personal brand
Pillar 5: Designing flexible work-life integration

I’ll be elaborating on each of the different pillars in the coming weeks but in the meantime, you can explore where you are in the process with this free scorecard:

Get the free scorecard>>

The 5 pillars scorecard consists of 50 statements that will help you discover where you are on each pillar, give you an indication of specific areas to focus on, and offer you clear next steps for how to improve your score.

You’ll also get access to a free masterclass that will take you through the 5 pillars, and corresponding action steps, in more detail, as well as the option to discuss your results with me personally on the phone.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

You might also be interested in these articles

“Everything you’ve ever
wanted is one step outside
your comfort zone.”

Book a free consultation

Get on the phone with Anna to discuss your unique goals and situation to determine the best programme for you, so you can start taking action towards creating the business and lifestyle you desire.

Get a free assessment of your business

Download this scorecard to review where you are on each of the 5 pillars of building a life outside of the 9 to 5, and get clear action steps to help you fill the gaps.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Looking to grow your expert business?

Download this FREE Business Assessment to identify the gaps that are preventing your growth so that you can take actionable steps towards building a more successful and sustainable business.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Outside of the 9 to 5

Anna continues the journey in her new book, where she details what’s needed to sustain your initial escape from the 9 to 5 in a guide to designing and building a profitable business that gives you more freedom, flexibility and fulfilment.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy

This privacy policy sets out how One Step Outside uses and protects any information that you give One Step Outside when you use this website (https://onestepoutside.com/).

One Step Outside is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

One Step Outside may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes.

What information we collect and why

We only ever collect the information that we need in order to serve you.

Generally, this just means collecting your first name and email address that you enter, for example, when you request a resource, register for a webinar, or submit a message via a contact form.

If you are a paying customer, we also collect your billing information including your last name and your postal address.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Contact forms

We use Gravity Forms to allow you to contact us via the website. We will use the information you submit for the sole purpose of that specific form and will explicitly ask you to provide your consent to allow us to do so.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Advertising and Analytics

Google

We use Google Analytics to track and optimise performance on this site as well as embedding video content from YouTube, and this means that your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google. This includes the URL of the page that you’re visiting and your IP address. Google may also set cookies on your browser or read cookies that are already there. Apps that use Google advertising services also share information with Google, such as the name of the app and a unique identifier for advertising.

Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse and personalise content and ads that you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps. See their Privacy Policy to learn more about how they process data for each of these purposes, and their Advertising page for more about Google ads, how your information is used in the context of advertising and how long Google stores this information.

Facebook

We use the conversion tracking and custom audiences via the Facebook pixel on our website. This allows user behaviour to be tracked after they have been redirected to our website by clicking on a Facebook ad and enables us to measure the effectiveness of our Facebook ads. The data collected in this way is anonymous to us, i.e. we do not see the personal data of individual users. However, this data is stored and processed by Facebook, who may link this information to your Facebook account and also use it for its own promotional purposes, in accordance with Facebook’s Data Usage Policy https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/.

You can allow Facebook and its partners to place ads on and off Facebook. A cookie may also be stored on your computer for these purposes. You can revoke your permission directly on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen. For more guidance on opting out you can also consult http://www.aboutads.info/choices.

Who we share your data with

We use a number of third parties to provide us with services which are necessary to run our business or to assist us with running our business and who process your information for us on our behalf. These include a hosting and email provider (Siteground), mailing list provider (GetResponse), and a payment provider (Stripe).

Your information will be shared with these service providers only where necessary to enable us to run our business.

How long we maintain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

The main reason for collecting this information is to be able to send you resources, updates and, sometimes, information and products and services, as well as for internal record keeping.

The rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

How we protect your data

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password that lets you access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential and we ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. Initially created on 18th November 2016, it was last updated on 23rd May 2018 to be compliant with GDPR.

Contact information

If you have any questions or concerns related to your privacy, you can get in touch here >>