The idea of being your own boss and running your own business excites you.The reasons might be you want to make more money, have more free time, have more control over your life, work from home, spend more time with family, or simply get out of rat race.
Whatever reason you have, all goals mentioned above can be achieved by building your own business. But you have to be ready to face all challenges ahead.
"Yes, I want to build a business but how do I start?" you ask.
If you're really interested in building a business, there are four main ways that you can start one.
1. BUILD YOUR OWN BUSINESS. This is most common way of building a business. You have a business idea and you have defined who your target market is. You can either setup your business by yourself or with partners. If you choose this method, everything is built from scratch. From setting up company to looking for suppliers, from hiring people to managing accounts. I would say this is hardest way of building a business. But it's best to gain knowledge in starting a business. Once successful, you feel extremely satisfied because your business is your 'baby'.
For additional resources on building your own business, goto http://www.toolkit.cch.com/
2. BUY AN EXISTING BUSINESS. The other way of building your business is to buy an existing business. Some businesses are for sale and you can find them in newspaper, trade magazines, or Internet. The advantage of buying an existing business is you skip startup phase of business. Once you buy over business, business is already running. Things you must not overlook if you buy an existing business include reason why existing owner is selling business and to make sure that business you're going to buy is in good financial condition. To achieve this, you can hire a business consultant to conduct a due diligence on business. This way can prevent you from buying a business with problems swept under carpet.
A site that deals with buying and selling of businesses is http://www.bizbuysell.com/
3. BUY A FRANCHISE BUSINESS. The third way is to buy a franchise business from franchisor. A good example of franchised business is McDonald's. When you buy a franchise business, you're buying into a business that is proven to be working and making money. A good franchise business will normally give you training on how to effectively run business. You do not need to worry about setting up of your outlet or office, advertising and promotions, equipment and other stuff you require to run business. Everything is outlined clearly by your franchisor in their operating procedures. A franchised business is very useful for people who do not want to take risk of building business from scratch. But investment cost for a franchised business is high.