4 Myths About Starting A Business You Can Safely Ignore

Maybe ignore is too strong a word for these myths about starting a small business since you may want to do your part to extinguish them.

But these are certainly all concerns that you can set aside if they have been making you hesitate about taking the leap into starting your own company.

Your Chances of Success Are Small

If you’re lucky, there will only be one or two people out there who are eager to cite some statistic to you about how many businesses fail in the first year, but if you’re like most people, there will be several. They come from all over the place: your work colleagues, your family, your friends, people online. People say this for all kinds of reasons, one of them being so that they can make themselves feel better about not taking a chance themselves. Businesses succeed or fail for all kinds of reasons, but many do succeed, and there is no reason to assume that you will not be among those.

Getting a Loan is Time Consuming and Difficult

Getting a loan can be time-consuming and difficult, but the secret to avoiding that is not to apply with those particular lenders. Many lenders truly want to help small businesses and one option is Accion Opportunity Fund small business loans, which along with financial help, can connect you with support networks that operate in both English and Spanish and can offer coaching and educational resources.

You Need a Lot of Money

Yes, having some money can make starting your business easier than having very little. However, rolling in cash does not guarantee success, and it can actually create or mask problems. It can be all too easy to convince yourself that if you keep throwing money at an issue, you’ll fix it rather than looking for an innovative solution. A big investment of cash at an early stage has been the undoing of many a startup. That’s not to say that it’s a bad thing if you have plenty of money at the start, but the idea that you’ll fail without that resource is untrue. Plus, no matter how much you have, you should be using technology to save money and watching where every penny goes from the beginning.

A Great Idea is All It Takes

One reason there is not a single formula for small business success is because so many different factors go into what makes any one company succeed. You need a lot more than a great idea. You need a marketing plan, insight into your potential customers or clients and a roadmap for how you will deliver your product or service in an efficient and cost-effective manner. You need vision, perseverance, hard work, and determination. You need to be unafraid of failure because not everything you try will work, and you must see this as an inevitable result of risk taking and not a sign that you should hang up the closed sign and go home. You also need to not go it alone. Other people in your industry, colleagues, and even family and friends will all form a support system in different ways.