Starting a business isn’t easy but is it impossible?

It’s often said that starting a business is one of the hardest things that you can do. Climbing Mt. Everest is nothing in comparison to getting a business up and running. That’s a bit of an exaggeration but it’s not entirely untrue either. 

Starting and growing a successful business is definitely not a walk in the park. That being said there are ways to make building your business easier and certain businesses are easier to start than others. 

We’ll be going over the ways you can make starting your business easier as well as some types of businesses that are easier and simpler to start.

Here’s some tips to make starting your business easier.

1. Start a business that works well for you and your life.

It’s a good idea to take a step back to look at yourself and your life before you start your business. You need to be realistic about what kind of business you can build with what you and your life can afford. If you’re not realistic about what you can and can’t do, your business is almost guaranteed to bomb. 

For example, do you want to start a family run restaurant? You better be realistic and make sure that your family members are completely on board with the idea. Don’t just assume that your whole family will be okay with dropping everything in their life to help you start and run a family business.

Also, if you want to open a restaurant, make sure you know how to cook.

2. Learn to think strategically and make good plans.

As an entrepreneur, you are in charge of your business. There’s no boss for you to turn to ask for directions. You’re going to be making all the decisions whether you like it or not. 

Because of this, it’s a good idea for you to learn how to think strategically. 

You really shouldn’t start a business without a strategy in place. A strategy, even a simple strategy, is one of the best tools you can use to start a successful business. If you don’t have a strategy in place, you’re just aimlessly feeling around in the dark without any direction.

Learn the basics of strategic thinking before you start a business and have at least a simple game plan in place before you do anything. This will help you immensely when you’re just starting out.

3. Do your best to have time outside of your business.

Starting a business will probably eat up a lot of your time and there’s no getting around that. That’s exactly why you need to make sure that you have at least a bit of time for yourself outside of your business.

You need that time away from your business to make sure your health is in check. You also need time outside your business to make sure that you’re thinking clearly and aren’t just going through the motions everyday. 

This is all easier said than done but it’s also worth keeping in mind when you first start out with your business.

Check out our article on How Many Hours Do Entrepreneurs Need to Work.

4. Figure out what the busy work of your business is and hire it out ASAP.

When you first start your business, you’ll probably be doing as much work as you can yourself. You should make a note of all the busy work you need to do that doesn’t really help your business grow. This busy work is the first thing that you need to outsource fast.

It’ll cost you money to get workers to help out with your business but the time and mental energy that you save can be used to grow your business instead. 

Bootstrapping your business and doing everything by yourself is fine at first. Eventually though, you want to be working on your business instead of in your business.

5. Make sure your customers love you and your business.

Here’s something that most aspiring entrepreneurs don’t realise. New customers are good but repeat customers are great.

Repeat customers are recurring revenue and recurring revenue is incredibly important for keeping your business alive. You need to do everything you can to make sure your customers love your business and want to come back for more again and again and again.  

Besides recurring revenue, another benefit of having customers that love your business is that they’ll get you even more customers by spreading good word of mouth. Customers that love your business can help you get even more customers via organic recommendations or glowing reviews or even written testimonials.

6. Make sure everything gets organised and stays organised.

Starting and running a business is hectic. Making sure that you get everything organised when you start your business will save you a lot of headaches while you’re running it. Having SOPs for everything that goes on in your business, keeping a schedule and making sure all your supplies are in order will help your business run as smoothly as possible.

Making sure everything is organised is one thing. Keeping everything organised as you go along is another thing altogether. 

Make sure your SOPs and schedules stay in place as you run your business! Things can definitely go off the rails sometimes but they should never stay off the rails.

7. Always be aware of your competition.

When you start your business, you should take a look at all your potential competitors. Take a look at what they’re doing and how well their business is going. Figure out what you can do better than them and how you can get more customers than them. 

Being aware of your competition before you start your business also helps prevent you from being blindsided when you open shop. You really don’t want to only realise that the business you chose to enter is highly competitive after you’ve already sunk a lot of time and money into it.

Here are some businesses that are easy to start.

1. Start a dropshipping business.

Starting a dropshipping business is simpler than most other conventional businesses. This is because you don’t need to produce any products, you don’t need to hold any inventory and you don’t need to handle the deliveries of your products to your customers. 

Dropshipping is when you sell products from a third-party vendor directly to customers without ever having any inventory of the product to begin with. You make a profit by adding on to the price that your vendor charges and pocketing the difference. 

Your main focus as a dropshipper is finding great products and then finding customers who want to buy those great products. You’ll be mainly doing product research and marketing when you start a dropshipping business. 

Dropshipping is easy to start since there’s not much upfront cost, you don’t need to handle shipment or deliveries and you have no stock to keep. If you’re just starting out and want to sell physical products, you should definitely consider dropshipping.

2. Start selling eBooks.

Selling eBooks is a simple business to start if you’re interested in making money writing. 

You don’t need a publisher to get your work out there. You just need to be a decent writer with something that people are willing to pay to read. Oh, and you also need a website to put it on. 

In that case, Amazon, Google Play and Gumroad  have you covered. 

Cookbooks, instructional eBooks, short fiction… the amount of eBooks you could write are pretty much endless. There are countless topics out there for you to write about and thanks to the reach of the internet, there’s also an almost infinite amount of readers out there for you to make money off of.

If you’re a competent writer, starting an eBook business is a great but simple business to start. There’s almost no overhead costs to speak of, you can work according to your own schedule and your profit margins are huge. 

That being said, if you’re selling eBooks by yourself, you can’t just be concerned with how good your writing is. You also need to learn how to market your eBooks to customers who are willing to pay for your writing.

3. Sell print on demand items.

If you’re good at making art and can make designs that people are willing to pay money for, you should consider selling print on demand items. Starting a print on demand business is simple and can be quick to start depending on how fast you can churn out designs. 

Basically, you make your design and put it online. If someone likes your design, you get a print on demand provider to put your design on a product and make them send it directly to your customer. Once you make a profit by selling your product for a price that’s higher than what the print on demand provider charges.

You could choose to put your design on a t-shirt, a mug, a blanket or maybe even a water bottle. You could also sell print on demand art prints, posters or wall scrolls.

The most well known print on demand provider out there is probably Redbubble. They’ve been around for ages and have a proven track record of being able to deliver quality goods with designs printed on pretty much anything.

4. Start a remote service providing business. 

A service providing business that you can do remotely is probably one of the simplest businesses that you can start. You find clients that need something done, do it remotely and then send it to them to collect your paycheck. As long as you’re already decently skilled at the service that you want to provide, starting a remote service providing business is pretty straightforward.

You can either get clients by looking on job boards online or by cold-calling people who you think might benefit from your services. 

The two most popular remote service providing businesses to start right now are writing businesses and programming businesses. Both of these are well suited to doing remotely, are scalable and pay well if you find the right clients. 

If you’re still working at a normal job, a remote service providing business is a great business to start on the side. It’ll help you gain valuable business experience and make a decent amount of money while you’re doing it. 

Check out our article on What Should You Do When You Don’t Want To Work Anymore.

Closing 

Starting a business is definitely hard but it’s also definitely not impossible. It’s also definitely worth all of the effort. The upsides of building a successful business will make all your blood, sweat and sacrifices absolutely worth it. 

Hopefully the tips we gave in this article will help your entrepreneurial journey go a little bit smoother and the list of business ideas we gave you will give you some inspiration. Whatever you choose to do after this, good luck!