By | Sheryl Wright
The working world is constantly expanding. Gone are the days of working 9 – 5’s and logging your weekend hours from a cubicle. With more people working from home than ever before, many employees are asking themselves, “What comes next?”
Becoming a CEO
If you’re tired of being an “employee”, it’s time to consider a career change. Becoming the CEO of your own business will change your life and career in ways you’ve only imagined. If you’re ready to take this next step in your life, read on for an incredible guide on how you can start your own business.
Choose Your Business
Becoming an entrepreneur starts with the simple decision to go into business for yourself. Wherever you may be in your path to entrepreneurship, you can find the right business for you. Not sure where to begin? Start with your hobbies and interests.
Reviewing your resume will give you a refresher on your work experience and qualifications. While your business idea can deviate from your past career choices, keeping this information in mind can help point you in the right direction.
As you research various business ideas online, explore ideas that take your professional history into consideration. Remember, your business should center around something that interests you that you also have experience in. Once you find a business idea you like, find a way to make it your own.
Start Your Business Plan
Planning is the first step in making your business idea a reality. Having a solid business plan will help you grow in focus, confidence, and clarity. When drafting your business plan, remember to keep things simple. This is the place to write out your strategies, goals, and action steps that will help you in realizing your new career.
Start your plan by asking questions like, “Who are my customers?”, “How will my business differ from others,” and “What will it take to achieve those goals?” Each answer will get you one step closer to making your business a successful one.
Know Your Demographic
While you will become the CEO of your company, your customers are the ones that will drive your business forward. As such, it’s essential that you carefully research your demographic as you prepare to launch your company. Your target audience is essentially the people you’re designing your services or products for.
In order to make sure there’s a market for your business idea, it’s necessary to make sure there’s a need in the market for your business. Do your research by reading through Census data, liking statistics, and learning more about your competitors and their customers. Ultimately, your goal is to create a customer persona that will help you to better tailor your brand to meet your customers’ needs.
Create a Customer Persona
Customer personas are an important part of building your new company. Just as you’ll need to research your audience, customer personas help you to better refine this information as you pinpoint key traits of your ideal customer. Your customer persona is your key to understanding your audience as well as what factors compel them to choose to support your business.
While customer personas are representative of a fictional, hypothetical customer, they’re based on real research. In your research of competitors and other brands, pay attention to their customers’ personal motivations, their preferred method of communication, as well as why they prefer one brand over another.
Get Real About Funding
Becoming the CEO of your own business doesn’t happen overnight. While you can launch your company as soon as you’re ready, it may be months or years before your business idea is profitable. That’s where funding comes in.
As you begin your entrepreneurial journey, it’s best to have an honest look at your funding. Whether you’re tapping into your savings account or thinking about applying for a loan, it’s essential that you’re clear about every aspect of your finances before launching your new business.
It’s time to go from working for someone else to working for yourself. By beginning this entrepreneurial journey, you’ll be able to take your earning abilities to the next level. Use this guide to get started in making the jump to becoming the CEO of your life.
