Qualities Required to Start Your Own Business

A lack of skill, ability and experience in certain business areas need not be a barrier to success and starting your own business. The personal qualities exerted by a small business owner overcoming deficiencies over and over again are vital and present in many entrepreneurs much more so that specific technical knowledge.

Not everyone is a master of all business attributes in fact very few are. Certainly being a master of all is a fantastic position but unrealistic while certain personal qualities are essential to fight the inevitable battles to come. Business battles the successful entrepreneur wins.

Businesses that have grown and become medium sized and bigger are not reliant on the business owner entirely. Employees are engaged with specialist skills and abilities to develop and grow the business. A sole trader just starting out has to settle for a comfortable living or have the ability to grow the business to the point where more specialist abilities can be added to the business.

Most small business owners who start a new business do so in an area where that small business owner has some knowledge, experience and skill. It is a natural progression having acquired the business knowledge and experience to use those abilities to build the business under self employment rules rather than earn profits for an employer.

The personal qualities a small business owner possesses are more likely to determine the level of success. Abilities such as hard work, determination, persistence, intuition, tolerance and aggression can be the bedrock of success. But the road to success is not all slam wham bang for the entrepreneur.

Small business owners invariably work longer and harder than employees. An employee works for wages and an adequate work performance is enough. A small business owner is more likely to be on the job at first light, miss the coffee and dinner break and twelve hours later announce he has to finish off for the day because he has to go home and do the business accounting books that he started on Sunday.

Determination and persistence go hand in glove with success. Every new business runs into problems at some time or reaches a stage where the business owner needs to be completely focused and stick with a strategy to make the plans work. Things go wrong from time to time; its normal, determination and persistence are valuable qualities to see through these times.

Aggression in forcing through a business plan may sometimes be the only viable option. Not physical violence but the heightened state of anxiety to push through the plan and make it work with controlled aggression and passion. On the other side of the coin there will be times when the small business owner has to exercise tolerance and just go with the flow.

Many small start up businesses go out of business within 2 to 3 years of starting a new business. A major cause is under capitalisation which basically means they run out of money. Liquidity is a major area of concern for every small business entrepreneur and a cautious approach to a new business can be of considerable value.

There is a strong tendency for a new business start up to borrow money and buy new equipment just to get started. Such businesses are taking a major risk the plans will work. Some plans do work but rarely it is a smooth path and a better option is to build the business and reinvest profits made.

A more cautious approach would be to start a new business without borrowing substantial funds because if the small business owner has the ability to make a success of the business and make money then they can usually do so without external funding and use the profits made to build the business in the future. The sound reason for a small business or a start up business to borrow money is to already be showing a good financial performance and use extra funds to speed up future success while borrowing funds with no track record is a gamble.

Here is a good source for accounting and payroll!

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Terry Cartwright, DIY Accounting qualified accountant designs Small Business Accounting Software on excel spreadsheets and Payroll Software for small to medium sized business providing a complete accounting and bookkeeping solution and also supplies Company Formation packages for new limited liability companies

Shipping Ports

Who knows what kind of readers that heading will pull in. Organized crime bosses, kingpins, oh hey, maybe first time manufacturers struggling to make sense of it all.

I was scared to death of importing when I got started. How was I supposed to master the container shipping industry and import tariffs and dockside management and and and... I just want to design baby clothes!

DELEGATE - and I don't mean the presidential kind... find someone who knows how to do a specialized service you need and PAY THEM to do it for you. You actually save money by spending it. With that attitude I should work for the Federal Reserve. I'm not republican but at first glance, I kinda like Huckabee's idea of doing away with income tax and replacing it with a 23% national sales tax. Tax on what you spend, not what you earn. I'm sure there is a way to easily corrupt it and the rich get richer and poor get the shaft, just like any idea that starts out as a nice thing... oh that's just me being an optimist...

But I digress... FedEx holds my import bond and they do everything for me, door to door. It's lovely. The reason for this shipping port post, quickly before I endure the masses of Los Angeles County at Costco, which is an unfortunate but necessary trip I must make this morning, is because I was in Long Beach yesterday and I saw where my goods come in when they arrive from China. Grizzly shipping dock by day, seedy shipping dock by night but awfully pretty at sunset.

So they make their way here via LCL in a 20' container shared with who knows what else. LCL meaning Less Than Container Load. It's much more cost effective but more risky because if someone else's goods, with whom you are sharing the container, runs into problems, your shipment can be held up indefinitely. And you generally can't pick your container roommates. Logistically it's complicated.

Then the goods get off loaded and put on a train and rail across the US to Detroit where they are put on a truck that takes them to the warehouse in MI. And all that happens with one phone call. Then an e-mail that tells me the goods have been checked in. Ahhhh efficiency. It's yummy!

Even though we are now out in Los Angeles... 35 minutes from where the goods arrive, it is more cost effective to truck them around, house them and drop ship from the Midwest.

But why, you ask? But how? Well insurance is very reasonable as there are no natural disasters there. The zip code they reside in is a benefit because there is virtually no crime. And they are centrally located so it is cheaper to ship to all places from the middle than to every place from one coast or another. Plus we have a house in the dreamy little town where the warehouse is and we can write off our visits... SO THERE.



The container cranes through a porthole cause I'm artsy-fartsy.

The lovely town of Long Beach... home of the Queen Mary

And NO Time Life Magazine, you may not use this picture without paying me huge royalties that will help fund my company... You can look at it but you can't have it. :-) It made me all patriotic and stuff.


Off to Costco... Wish me luck.