Part 1. A twisted tale of a blossoming

Entrepreneur Blossoming Entrepreneur

Have I always wanted to own my own business? No. When I was younger, I held to the ideal that my UAW-founding grandparents had instilled in me. Work hard for a good company and you will have a job for life along with retirement benefits when you get older. Then, at 40, I changed. I started to see people that had decades of knowledge fall by the wayside as the workplace restructured.

I lost some of that loyalty that kept me just plugging along and I just had to branch out. I had been with a major automotive supplier for almost 20 years and I wanted something different and personally fulfilling. I had a good job, a modest salary, and was working in my chosen area of IT. So I started to do a little thinking and researching. Here are some bullet points outlining my thought processes during the earliest of days.

Each point is important and worth in its own way!

1. What really motivates me? I will enjoy and also gain personal happiness in doing what I want and get paid well too? I knew it had to involve small businesses. My target initially were Mom and Pops with 3-4 other workers .

2. In what way could I help these businesses ? As so many businesses didn't have website at that time , so I decided to start web development only.

3. How was I going to structure my new company? I also decided that inorder to form corporation I had to keep my personal and business finances separate More precisely can be said as "S-corp". This may or may not be the best model for you, it's worked well for me but research is needed.

4. I also knew that to start with I would need to do the bulk of the accounting work. Instead of just jumping in to my financial software, I decided to hire an analyst for an hour and a half to walk me through the basics. With 2 years of college-level accounting I was sure I would be ok as long as I got started out correctly. This was money well spent.

5. Later I even hired attorney. She drafted up some basic documents for me, cleaned up minor details that I had missed thus far, and although more money was spent here, I knew that this was an area that I needed expertise in. I hired best what I could afford, keeping in mind that she didn't require any much fee.

6. What should have been my cost? I had ko keep some affordable cost. Though I also wanted to make money of my time. I came up with client necessities and decided the cost about $15 per hour, this made me realise that I should deliver product well without undercharging.

7. Branding. I came up with a logo design and then had some inexpensive business cards printed and I made some tri-fold handouts. I even added my brand on my portfolio too.

8. Will I need other office too? The work could be carried out easily from my home office too, hence - there was no point to to load my new company with office and equipment leases.

9. Should I give up my job? In my case I was able to say firmly NO. I managed working with my job in beginning and also prevented me from failing badly!

But that is a tale for next time in Part 2 of our series.