I've had quite a few comments on steemit from people looking to start their own business in the future and so this is for you!

Over the past year i've met many people who speak about one day having their own business. A lot of them have solid ideas for what their business might be. Some have done extensive research and others just know they don't want to work for someone else forever. They all have one thing in common.. they still haven't started.

It won't be easy, but the entire journey of owning a business is forever on going and complex in so many different ways. Starting, is just step one and I feel many people put too much emphasis on this part.

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When I first started thinking about opening my own business it was back in 2014, although at that point I hadn't vocalised my plans. I felt owning a business was such a huge feat and so instead of doing anything, I spent 2 years over thinking it until I decided to actually do something about it in 2016.
Many people told me to 'just start', but listening to this advice was something else. How could I 'just start' something so serious?!

It doesn't have to feel so serious, or like a great sacrifice. You can start something on the side and take your time with it until you decide to focus more of your efforts into it. It doesn't have to be so drastic. If you can change the way you think about it, and stop seeing starting as such an epic challenge, you'll remove the worry and in turn be more likely to actually start something up.

If you think it sounds too challenging to start a business in your spare time, just remember you can take as much time as you need. You will spend that spare time on something else anyway, so it may as well be your own business, if that's something you want to achieve.
Also remember that you will probably always have more than one job if you have your own business, especially if you want to take the financial pressure off yourself. For more tips on that, read my previous article on taking the pressure off your start up here.

Being a small business owner, my friends circle is now made up of a lot of other small business owners and many of them too, like me, regret not starting sooner. I started my business in a bit of a non-conventional way. I didn't have an official business plan and I hadn't allocated funding for specific business aspects. It was a bit of a mess, but in starting I soon figured out how I would need to organise myself and which parts would be crucial to the survival of my business. 

My advice in life for anyone looking to move country, start a new business or take up a new challenge is always 'learn as you go'.  Whatever research and planning you may put in beforehand, it is never the same as actually experiencing it first hand.

Think of it like steemit! Before you joined steemit, you didn't sit down with a note book thinking,
'I want to know every single aspect of steemit before I sign up for an account and understand whether it will transform my life before investing my time into it'... Did you?
You probably just thought 'Let's see if this steemit thing really works!' - Hence 'learn as you go'.

Business is very much the same. I think we see business ownership as this huge, scary, milestone when actually it's just another avenue, another project that you will spend time working on and figuring out how to keep it alive.

If you have a good idea for a business and feel you have a time to start it up or at least are able to spend your spare time on it, then I would suggest...

Just start :-)

Yasmine

*if you have any advice for Small Business Owners, use the #sbo - let's build a community of like-minded thinkers!