Starting your own Business - Part 2

In the last post we talked about what you sell. 

That's of course if you're selling a physical item. So you're wondering, "What if I'm not a 'sales' person.?" 

You're probably one of those people who --  even if they tried -- can't sell a diaper to a mother with four children below the age of 3! 

Believe me yes! these people do exist in the world. 

So you can't sell anything but you have a skill, a talent, a gift at doing something that you enjoy and will like to start earning something from that skill. 

If you think about it God gave us talents so we can live off them! 

Depending on what the output of your skill is, will determine how you go about starting this type of business. If you like to cook, bake or write - all these end up with a physical product that now needs to be sold. But we just said you can't sell a diaper to a mother with 4 babies. So how are you going to sell your cakes? 

There are two types of sales people; the ones who find customers to sell to (individual people), and then there's the sales person that goes to a distributor. The later option is very simple because you  only have to sell to one person, then they do the rest. Now all you  need to do is supply that one person with your product that you love to produce. 

The same principle would apply to writing - at least here your turnover doesn't have to be so high!  A book a year? two books a year? who knows?

Now what if your skill does not end in a tangible product? What do you do then? You're a service oriented type of person. You're a plumber, a carpenter, a painter, a consultant and you want to start a business but you know nothing about business.

You will be surprised to know that many people have skills but they only believe you can do something with them in an organization. This is a fallacy. If an organization can hire you to work then anyone can hire you to do the same work. 

The challenge here again is - does anyone need or want the skill sets that you have? 

No use trying to sell your skills as a painter when you entire market is into "DIY" home improvements. 

For consultants this gets even harder, because you're basically selling your degree, your knowledge, your work experience in a particular field. But isn't that what you got it for in the first place? A consultant needs to think about their consultant business the same way an organization thinks about job descriptions. Each J-O-B has a role to play that every organization needs. Larger organizations can afford to hire people to perform each job needed. Smaller organizations can't. 

So a consultant can be a person to fill the void. This will be the topic for the next blog! 

Stay tuned!