What are the best SafeLists for my online business please?

Look at this if you own your own business please?

• If you could take some time out of your day to answer a few of these questions, that would be GREAT!! Thanks :) 1.What are the advantages and disadvantages of owning your own business? 2.Describe the business- What services or product if offered? 3.Is this your first business? If not, what happened? If the business failed, why do you think it did not succeed? 4.What is the target audience for the service/product. 5.How did the idea for the business come about? 6..What qualifications and skills were necessary to get the business started and to make it succeed? 7.What resources- people,money, equipment were needed to start up? 8. How was the product/service marketed/advertised? 9.What were the greatest challenges that you faced? 10. What lessons have you learned, if you had to do it all over again? 11.What is the greatest sacrifice you have made in owning your own business? 12.What is most rewarding about owning your own business?

• Answer:

  1. Advantages - autonomy, freedom, greater rewards both money and through creating your own personal success. Disadvantages - hmmm... personal cashflow can ebb and flow like the tides; from prince to pauper on a monthly basis particularly when starting out; there are no real disadvantages if you like risk, challenge and having to be tenacious/inventive; these would be disadvantages if you are lacking these attributes in your character. 2. Provide marketing, sales and business consultancy for a range of clients 3. I have always had various little business endeavours through my life; generally I thought of good ideas, threw myself into them and then thought of something else and threw myself into that - nothing 'failed' as such; I just get bored very easily! 4. Companies/organisations who require assistance in their marketing/sales/operations - I work with a lot of start-ups as well as being involved in a variety of long term, ongoing projects. 5. By accident! I quit my job in sales because my boss was a perv and a friend offered me some freelance work. I then realised that working full-time for myself in this facet would be a good way forward as I am headstrong anyway and not a good employee; actually, when working for other people, I probably put as much (if not more) effort into skiving/finding shortcuts as I did actually doing the work but I found that now I represent myself I work really hard as I am now motivated to apply myself 6. I have a 1st class degree in Commerce and this has helped open doors, although I would certainly say this alone means little. The main skills you need to grow a business is to have a clear vision and to be able to get people on your side; to build strong, friendly business relationships and to be able to confidently and successfully represent yourself through communication is absolutely the number one skill you need (will ensure that people will have faith in you, like you and most importantly WANT to work with you) - silver tongue definitely helps, but it does need to be back up with some substance at some point! 7. I had no real start-up costs, just needed internet and phone (which I already had) 8. I used my own contacts, word of mouth and searched online on various freelancing websites to quickly build up my database of clients 9. It sounds silly, but actually DOING the work! From a sales background, I just really enjoyed the buzz of winning new clients and was concentrating on acheiving this and before I knew it I had far too many to actually deal with myself, not enough hours in the day, the possibility of not being able fulfill promises I'd made as I was so overstretched with about 10 clients, all wanting me to do stuff at the same time - greatest challenge? Yes! But also was a fab opportunity to start employing/outsourcing the work which has meant the business has grown substantially and continues to do so. The biggest challenges are often thinly veiled opportunities 10. Don't make promises you can't keep, COMMUNICATE at all times - hiding/avoiding problems doesn't help any situation and I probably would have taken people on sooner rather than trying to cope myself with a ridiculous workload. Not too much though - it's totally worth it - even the sh*t days are better than being a slave for someone else 11. I don't think I have sacrificed anything personally; I have control of my own destiny, I love the challenges, I like having to do numerous roles on a daily basis, and the pay is soooo much better! Oh.. Well, specifically I did sacrifice all the benefits that come from employment ie fully expensed company car with unlimited petrol, company pension, work finishing at set time in the day etc etc - they are 'security' and 'routine' sacrifices, but seeing as I hate routine and security is less important to me than excitement/risk, the extent to which these are actual 'sacrifices' is negligible 12. Everything - particularly the way you directly affect it with every decision, the fact you are making decisions, the fact that the decisions you make directly affect you (and your bank balance), the autonomy, the need to be creative and adapt to clients/situations/people... The most important is having the freedom and belief in yourself to just go for it, and the autonomy to actually do it and the satisfaction when you pull it off (by hook or by crook) Hope this helps! Felt like therapy lol :-)