We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Starting a small business is difficult. Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart, to say the least. Not only do you have to rely on your own efforts to put food on the table and pay your bills, but you have to put in extremely long hours every week, sacrificing weekends and your social life until, ideally, your business takes off enough to where don’t have to be there 24/7.
At The Commercial Finance Group, we believe in empowering small business owners to achieve their business dreams by providing them with the proper capital and cash flow solutions that will enable their business to grow at an appropriate rate. In addition to a host of factoring and receivables financing services, The Commercial Finance Group offers asset-based lending services, a type of business financing that is secured by company assets, to give your business the capital it needs to grow when you’re otherwise low on funds.
While starting and growing a self-made business is indeed challenging, it’s not impossible. Many people have done it and will continue to be the backbone of the American economy. There are many myths surrounding small businesses and small business owners that often stigmatize the small business industry, or steer people away from wanting to act on a good idea. At The Commercial Finance Group, we believe that you should feel empowered and have the right tools to start your own business if you feel like that is the right thing to do. Read about these small business myths to make sure what you know about starting a business is actually true and not just hearsay.
You Have To Know What You’re Doing
Let’s face it: While most people who start a business might have a pretty good idea of what they’re doing, it’s only natural to make mistakes and even be clueless at times when it comes to starting up a business. To get started with your own small business, you actually don’t need to know exactly what you’re doing.
For many extremely successful small business starters, there was never a clear-cut plan for the course ahead, and yet, it worked out for them in the end. As long as you have a good general idea of what your business intentions are and what you’re bringing to the market, then success should follow after countless hours of hard work. Instead of falling into the myth that you have to know exactly what you’re doing to successfully start a small business, let your curiosity and motivation to bring something truly great to the market take over.
You’ll Have No One Above You
Sure, you’re the owner and founder of your esteemed business, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t have to answer to any higher authorities. You may not have an employer telling you what to do, but you’ll trade a traditional boss for multiple other bosses: customers, landlords, bankers, the IRS, regulators, and even your own employees.
Modern management, as it is understood these days, isn’t so much ‘bossing’ your staff around as it is leading and inspiring your team to achieve right things. In a small business that’s still in its early growing stages, everyone has to wear many hats and be a team player. In other words, the absolute ‘dominator’ management style doesn’t really work very well in a modern multi-tasking environment. In terms of small business management and growth, things have greatly changed in the past few decades.
You’ll Automatically Be Rich
This is probably a naive thing to believe when it comes to starting your own business. It’s going to take quite a bit of time before you’re making a good amount of money after starting your own business. Besides, if the only reason you want to own a business is to get rich, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, and you probably won’t be a happy owner. It’s a possibility that you very well could get rich, but it’s probably more realistic that you’re simply, at the very least, going to make a basic living out of it.
There Are Government Grants For All Small Businesses
We’re sure that many small business owners wish this was true. The reality is that most government grants for starting small businesses are rare, and the few government grants that do exist are earmarked for special groups of people or particular regions and economic areas of the country. In other words, there’s no such thing as a universal government grant for all small businesses.
Marketing Isn’t Required
Marketing is actually extremely important then it comes to growing a successful business. To paraphrase Bill Gates, he once explained that he would invest 90 percent of his starting capital for a business into marketing, and use the remaining 10 percent for everything else.
Small business owners might think that they don’t need to market their product or service because their product or service will sell itself. While occasionally that might be the case, it’s not a very good idea to rely on this. Like any good business, you need a plan for every aspect of your business, and that includes marketing. In fact, marketing is pretty much the most important area of any business. You specifically need to know how to effectively market your product, and you need to know how much it will cost and how to budget for a particular expense. Without a solid marketing outline, you business is, unfortunately, very likely to fail. Take the time to know your prospective customer!
A Website Means Instant Traffic
Yes, having a well-designed, easy to navigate and SEO (search engine optimization) rich website is absolutely essential for any business in the digital marketing age. Your website construction and SEO strategy should all be part of your comprehensive marketing game plan. Even if you do all of the above things, it will still take a good amount of time for your organic ranking to increase on search engines as traffic begins to pour to your site based on particular searches.
You Can Set Your Own Salary
While this might be the case well after your business has taken off and been successful, you cannot and should not set your own salary right away (unless it’s a very small number, of course). It is essential that you leave yourself plenty of money for business expenses and future growth, as having a solid cash cushion can help float you through the tougher times – a service that The Commercial Finance Group can help provide through our asset-based loans and other small business lending services.
You’ll See Instant Profits Because You’re An Expert
The majority of small business owners don’t see significant profits for well over a year. Even though you might be an expert in your particular industry or product, chances are that you’re not an expert in all things business-related. You will probably have to find ways to learn about what you might not know first hand, and that’s okay! That’s part of starting a small business.
As we’re sure you’re able to tell at this point, running a small business is no easy feat. Some myths surrounding small businesses make running a small business seem too good to be true, while others make it seem downright impossible. The reality is, if you’re passionate enough and work hard enough, then it is very possible to achieve your small business dreams.
When it comes to providing asset-based loans if your small business is taking off but is low on cash, then let the small business loan experts at The Commercial Finance Group help enable your small business to realize its full potential. Contact us today!
