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Starting Your Business

How Much Effort You Have Put In?

Should you start your business part time or full time? Even if you ultimately plan to go full time, many entrepreneurs and experts say starting part time can be a good idea. Starting part time reduces your risk because you can rely on income and benefits from your full-time job. It also allows your business to grow gradually.

Yet the part-time path isn't without its own dangers and disadvantages. Starting part time leaves you with less time to market your business, strategize and build a clientele. Since you won’t be available to answer calls or solve customers’ problems for most of the day, clients may feel you’re not offering adequate customer service or responding quickly enough to their needs.

Perhaps the biggest problem for part-time entrepreneurs is the risk of burnout. Holding down a full-time job while running a part-time business leaves you with little, if any, leisure time; as a result, your personal and family life may suffer.

That’s not to say a part-time business can’t work. It can, says Arnold Sanow, co-author of You Can Start Your Own Business—if you have excellent time management skills, strong self-discipline and support from family and friends.

Your plan of attack should start with a thorough assessment of your idea’s market potential. Often, this step alone will be enough to tell you whether you should start part time or full time. You can’t become so caught up in your love for what you’re doing that you overlook the business realities. If you find there's a huge unmet need for your product or service, no major competition and a ready supply of eager customers, then by all means go ahead and start full time. If, on the other hand, you find that the market won’t support a full-time business but might someday with proper marketing and business development, then it's probably best to start part time at first.

Investigate such factors as the competition in your industry, the economy in your area, the demographic breakdown of your client base and the availability of potential customers. If you're thinking of opening an upscale beauty salon, for example, evaluate the number of similar shops in operation, as well as the number of affluent women in the area and the fees they're willing to pay.

Once you've determined there's a need for your business, outline your goals and strategies in a comprehensive business plan. You should always conduct extensive research, make market projections for your business and set goals for yourself based on these findings. It gives you a tremendous view of the long-range possibilities and keeps the business on the right track. Don’t neglect writing a business plan even if you’re starting part time: A well-written business plan will help you take your business full time later on.

Source: entrepreneur

About LaraNet: We are a web design firm focused to help you to grow your business and communicate with your customers and prospects using two simple but powerful tools: 1) Interactive Website and 2) Internet Marketing Strategy on social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc… Whether you want to work with just a web page, or launch or improve your presence on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or communicate with your customers through newsletters, or improve the location of your business in the search engines through Search Engine Optimization, or start marketing your products or services online, in LaraNet we can help you.

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