Retirement Your Way: Living the Small Business Dream

How many people do you know work at a job they hate, just for the paycheck? How many people, do you think, do this their entire life just because they want reliable income? What about you? Are you truly happy doing what you’re doing? If you’re like most people, you’re not happy. You long for something more – something better. You’re on the horizon of retirement, but this isn’t the end for you. No, you’ve got one good business in you. Here’s how to bring those dreams into reality.

Decide What You Really Want to Do

This is probably the hardest part about starting a business. Even when you know what you want to do, it’s not always easy to get those ideas out into a concrete form. And, that’s what’s absolutely necessary to make your business function properly.

For example, let’s say you’ve always wanted to be a piano teacher. You love the piano. You love teaching, and you love students. What do you do with that? If you want to start a business around this idea, then you need to have a statement of purpose.

Most businesses lack this, and it’s one of the major reasons why people fail when first starting out.

A statement of purpose goes something like this: “I want to ____________” and then you fill in the blank with an action-oriented statement. So, for example, you might say, “I want to teach young children to play the piano.”

That would be a great start for a piano tutoring business. You might expand on that statement a bit too, over time, to include something like, “I want to teach children to be the best possible piano players in the world” or, “I want to teach children to play the piano and become independent learners.”

Always include an action statement like “teach,” “play,” “build,” “read,” or “drive.” Why? Because this is what business is all about – solving problems and doing something. Stay away from “to be” action statements. “To be” is not a business-mode. “To do” is.

This action statement should be something you can refer back to frequently if you feel yourself losing focus or confused about where to take the business. It should guide you in all aspects of your operations.

Write a Really Good Business Plan

You’ll need a good business plan to start your own company. The Small Business Administration has an excellent guide to help you out. But, the long and short of it is that you will want to focus heavily on your executive summary, how you will finance operations, and how you will manage the business.

An executive summary is a snapshot of your business plan. It tells others (as well as yourself) what your company does, what its goals are, and what the management is like. Sales and marketing plans are the other parts of your plan you want to focus heavily on as these map out how you will actually make money.

Get Funding

Getting funding might just be the hardest part of getting your business up and running. If you’re like most people, you don’t have the best credit on the block. Even if you do pay all of your bills on time, you may still lack enough good credit to get a small business loan.

Companies that offer small business funding may be able to help. These companies specialize in offering funding solutions to people who are in your exact situation – helping more than 250,000 businesses.

But why would you need a company like this to help you? Simple – you, like most people, eschew credit cards and debt. It’s sensible. It’s responsible. But, it does nothing for your credit history. Once you establish credit history by taking out finance, you’ll quickly find your good spending and saving behaviors rewarded.

Jason Taylor has started a few small businesses of his own over the years and is always on the lookout for better ways to be successful. When he finds them, he likes to share them online. You can find his informative posts on a number of today’s top websites and blogs.