Over the past few months, I’ve taken it upon myself to start a business with the small help of a few friends, but mainly by myself and if there is one lesson I’ve learned, it’s that starting a business from scratch is hard.
The hardest part of starting a business is attempting to find the time to dedicate toward your side gig or small business while still maintaining focus on your primary job and your two-week income. You don’t want to give up your two-week, consistent, and relatively high income while starting your small business because it will be able to provide some of the income necessary to get it off the ground, to begin with, pay for the fees licenses, and infrastructure you will need to start your project. Some of the infrastructures you will need to get things off the ground include your website and social media. It can get quite expensive to outsource it to a website designer and although it may save some time, I think the smart move is to initially create and manage your websites and once you get a few orders, you can begin to outsource marketing to agencies that will bring more clicks and views to your website and social media. If you have done that and could comment on the effectiveness that you’ve seen or strategies that you’ve implemented that would be very much appreciated!
Perhaps the most difficult part about starting a business has nothing to do with monetary issues and has everything to do with creating a community that rallies behind your project, ideas, and values. Once you can establish a community that supports you, then everything else falls into place. However, manifesting a community around your idea is the most difficult thing to do and one of the areas that our business has failed up to this point. Again, if you have any ideas on how to increase the community and values behind a project or experiences that you have been a part of where you’ve noticed a group of people rallying behind an idea then please share it in the comment section.
On top of finding the time and rallying the community behind your ideas, you have to figure out if what the business is doing is even profitable to begin with. More than likely, the business will not be making it in the beginning, but over time if you stick with it and continue to improve your processes by learning from others, I do believe that it's possible to be successful from having your own side hustle.
There are so many ways to make money in the world right now, it's hard to hone in and find something that you want to focus on. Do you believe its better to have multiple plates spinning at the same time? Or should you focus on one thing at a time and not move on until the first thing is complete. I think these are questions that you don’t really know the answer to until you put in the work and gain the experience from doing the thing that you said you were going to do.
Overall, I just wanted to pass the message on that starting a business by yourself is hard, however, it's not impossible. If you can create a board of directors, a referral group, and a community around your ideas then you are on your way to success, it's just a matter of having macro patience and micro efficiency. Work every day toward your goals and eventually they will come true.
If you could leave any comments on advice, tips, websites, software, etc that you think could help me on my journey please give me a comment below!
Also, take a look at our website. Cetustogether.com
Please feel free to reach out to me via email. [email protected]
