How to Know If You're Ready to Start a Small Business

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Step 1: Interview others
Interview other entrepreneurs and honestly assess whether you have the drive, vision, and emotional strength to run a small business. If you are a motivated, resourceful, and flexible, you might be going in the right direction.

Step 2: Handle stress
Consider your ability to deal with adversity and work with antagonistic people under stressful circumstances that could result in litigation and worker conflicts.

Step 3: Ask if you're organized
Ask yourself if you're organized enough to run a business, control stock, pay taxes, and keep a lot of balls in the air at once.

Step 4: Define the business
Define the purpose of your business and create a mission statement as an exercise, before using the statement in your business plan to get a loan. Explain the purpose, function, and goals of the enterprise.

Step 5: Investigate need
Investigate whether there is a need for the business through market research, focusing on whether your product will fill a void or niche.

Step 6: Develop the plan
Develop plans for employee compensation, personnel policies, business insurance, accounting services, and management strategies. If the detail and work load is too daunting, you won't be ready to handle similar drudgery in a business.

Step 7: Plan balance
Plan for your work and life balance, limiting stress and managing time. This takes discipline, vision, sacrifice, and stamina.

Tip
Don't rely on positive thinking alone. Without a realistic plan, positive thinking is just dreaming.

Step 8: Make a decision
If you've determined you can persevere and jump through hoops under pressure, possibly forgoing a paycheck, you're ready!

Did You Know?
As of 2007, minorities owned 5.8 million non-farm U.S. businesses.