Why do you start your business?
Why do you start your business and what stage are you currently at?
This is the first piece in a series of blogs looking at how you can develop your business regardless of what stage you are at in it’s development. What stage are you at and what do you need to consider when looking for a better business and better life?
We start our business to give us freedom, financial freedom to not to have to worry about bills but also personal freedom to live the life that we want. Whatever stage of your business journey that you are on, these are the goals that we should look to.
We want our business to give us financial, creative and personal freedom
The business that you have should support the life that you want. It should give us financial and personal freedom. If you want creative freedom to do the work that you or if you want to have the financial freedom to enjoy life and not have to work all the time. These are yours to decide what you want. But the business that you have should give you the option to lead the life you want to on your terms.
But why should we want anything less? We are taking risks by giving the security of a full-time paid job to by an entrepreneur. Our life is never certain again, we need to get some benefit for the trade- off we are making. More money, more fun, More free time for less security and certainty.
Being in business is not easy, you will need to work hard.
The journey that you are on is not for the feint hearted, it will be difficult and you will have to work hard. But work hard and get your business on the right track, you will not want to go back to the mundane life of just being another employee working for a corporate company.
Why should you, you have personality and you want to make an impact on the world! Let’s make the world better and make your business a force for good and something to be proud of.
We generally categorise the stage of your business as three stages.
Freelancer – This is people working by themselves doing all the creative work and business work themselves.
At this stage you might just be starting off in business or you may be an experienced freelancer who enjoys the control that working for yourself gives. You may or may not have ambitions to grow your business. It’s okay there is no requirement to grow if you don’t want, small can be beautiful. Either way it is important to get the fundamentals right for your business from day one, so you are set up for growth or simply you can make the most of your free time and not spending all the weekend working doing paperwork.
Solopreneur – This is for people who are starting to build an agency and have between 1 – 4 staff working for them.
This is next level up when you are starting to grow your business and take on staff. At this point you will be starting to get more help but you will be in the in between stage of working in the business and working on the business. You will still be heavily involved in doing client work but also managing staff, trying to get more business and make sure that you can pay wages and bills on time. it is a time for juggling more responsibility and time management becomes crucial. You will need to start to develop more efficient systems and structures to cope with your business demands.
Small Agency – This is the for people who have between 5 – 10 people working for their business and are now a recognised small design agency.
At this stage you will be at the point of having more free time but it is also the time where if you do not get control the business can start to overwhelm you. You will have staff who can manage the work for you. The business will be getting bigger and you will need to spend more time to make sure you do not lose control of it. You can either be the one who guides the creative direction for your business whilst the staff do the work or you can step back and enjoy the freedom that you have and enjoy life.
Please keep a look out for the other article in this series or contact us to discuss the future growth planes for your business.