Going Solo: Personal Checklist
So, you think you’re ready to go solo, say adios to your 9-to-5, and start your own business? Then go for it. But before you give HR your two-weeks, make sure you come packing with these five must-haves for your trip to occupational independence, courtesy of Duy Linh Tu. Duy is a co-founder and the Creative Director of Resolution Seven. He is a writer, videographer, motion graphics designer, and photographer. Prior to forming Resolution Seven, Duy founded and was the Chief Operations Officer of Missing Pixel, an award-winning interactive production company. At Missing Pixel, Duy managed the production of videos, Web sites, DVDs, CD-ROMs, and multimedia installations.
1. Passion. Everyone has fantasies about starting a business, but more often than not, only people with good ideas and the passion to work at them succeed. Whether it is publishing a magazine or starting a bakery, the only thing that is going to get you through 20-hour days (and, yes, there will be many), will be your passion for your idea and your faith in yourself. Passion separates those working for themselves from those talking about doing it.
2. Patience. As the cliché goes, nothing happens overnight. In terms of a successful business, nothing really happens for at least three to five years. Yes, YEARS. After setting up the company, developing your product or service, marketing your company, making huge mistakes, and then hopefully earning a buck, you will have had celebrated at least a fistful of birthdays. If you’re not ready for the long-haul, starting a business is not for you. It takes minutes to print a business card; it takes much, much longer to start a company.
3. Caffeine. This one’s self-explanatory. Just because you’re the boss doesn’t mean you get more vacation days. Depending on the type of business, you can expect to work somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 hours a week (or more) when you’re starting your business. And weekends? Ha!
4. A Sense of Humor. Laughter is one helluva painkiller, and your can bet there will be agony galore when you start your own shop. Here’s a Whitman’s sampler of what you can expect to face in your first year of business: rejection for a bank loan; rejection for a lease on commercial office space; at least one of your clients threatening to sue you; going absolutely, positively flat broke; having your boyfriend or girlfriend dump or threaten to dump you; having your parents ask you why it was again that you went to college. So, get ready to laugh it off, because on most days, there’s not much else you can do.
5. A Good Partner. It may be incredibly counter-intuitive for anyone with entrepreneurial instincts to want to work with a business partner. You’re ready to go on your own, so the last thing you want is someone to slow you down, right? Maybe.
A good partner, presuming he or she also possess items one through four, provides important support in many ways: financially (it’s easier having two people pay rent for the office), emotionally (very few will understand why you can’t roll to the bar like you used to), and physically (when you start out, you do everything from set up desks to take out the trash, champ). There will be days when you will freak out and have Dear-God-What-Am-I-Doing? moments, and there will be only one person who can talk you off the ledge. Also, a good partner will call you on your bull – because as good as your marketing copy might be, someone needs to be there to make sure you bust your ass everyday to live up to your own hype.
Want to learn more about taking the plunge? Take Duy’s mediabistro course, Going Solo: How to Start Your Own Media Business.
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