Thinking about Starting your Own Business? My 8 Top Tips

Are you thinking about starting your own business? Perhaps you have already taken the plunge and left your old job and now you are wondering where to start?
Being a mum and owning your own business can be rewarding in so many ways, you can work round your children’s school hours and it means that the stress of childcare is no longer a worry when it comes to school holidays. You can actually spend quality time with your children instead of being sat at work feeling guilty (some days I would prefer to be in work away from my child though)

Here are my 8 top tips on starting your own business;

Love What You Do

It is no good setting up a business you aren’t passionate about – you need to love what you do. Loving and being passionate about your business will keep you fighting to succeed when times get tough. Starting your own business isn’t always as easy as you think.

I personally could have given up so many times but I love my business far too much to ever to that, I can still see me running MyBump2Baby’s family directory when I am in a care home.

 Check out Competition

It is healthy to have a bit of competition. Before you make any big decisions about your new business, I strongly advise that you check out your competition, see what they do right and see what you could do better. Have a look at the prices that your competitors are charging and price your services accordingly. You may find that you will need to offer your services a little cheaper than your competitors at first to build up some clients and gain some testimonials that you can add to your website.

Research Costs

Make sure you have a good idea of how much it will cost you to set your business up. The last thing you want to do is commit to a launch date before making sure you can afford it. Starting your own business can be very expensive, there are so many different things to consider; from registering your domain, creating your perfect logo to designing your website to showcase your talents. Don’t forget about ongoing costs after the business has been set up from advertising costs, telephone bills, to annual returns for your business.

Create an Online Presence

Once you have registered your business name, start social media for your business immediately. Interact with potential customers or people that can help push your business for example if your prime audience is mum’s perhaps you could start interacting with mummy bloggers, you can build up excellent friendships on social media and perhaps you could work together in promoting each other’s businesses.

It is also important your website has an online presence. Once you are ready, if you have the budget speak to a local SEO and marketing agency to ascertain targets and costs.

Networking events

There are a lot of networking events up and down the country that you could go to. It is great to get together with other business owners, they leave you feeling inspired, motivated and it is great way to build up your contacts and look at ways you can work together to help each other’s business.

Create a Realistic Schedule

Work out a realistic plan of how many hours you can put in to your business each week, how many clients you can manage comfortably and make sure you also schedule a little time for the dreaded paperwork.

Don’t be Afraid to Ask for Help

Over 300,000 businesses are set up by mum’s in the UK which means there are tons of Mumpreneurs to follow on social media and get advice from. We all had to start somewhere and we all have questions sometimes and things we can just not get our head round, NEVER be afraid to ask another Mumpreneur for help, I personally take it as a huge compliment being asked sometimes.
Google is also a great resource for information (apart from Googling sickness symptoms – NEVER do that, I had hours to live last week)

Podcasts

Get inspired, learn and get motivated about starting your own business and start listening to podcasts in your spare time, there is literally a podcast for everything.

I am not a fan of silence at all (apart from nap time)  and when I am on my own I used to spend a lot of time on the phone or with televisions on in every room of the house. I then started to think about how much time I was wasting on unnecessary things and I now choose to learn, get motivated and feel inspired whilst I am on the go with my favourite podcasts.

 

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