So, you are thinking about buying yourself a franchise and getting into business for yourself. Personally, I think that this is a great decision, as I have found that being in business for myself has been wonderful. I have really enjoyed it and find where I am today is purely because I started my own business.

But, I would also like to add some words of caution, as you need to be prepared for some challenges and tough times. A business will test you, mentally and physically, and is not easy at times. I have seen many business owners suffer at the hands of their business, resulting in failure and distress. With that in mind, I would like to give you some practical tips on how you can be prepared for the challenge of owning your own business.

Most of these you will have heard of before and that is because these strategies work! There is zero reason to try and reinvent the wheel when someone has already done it, so just mirror what others have done to make it much easier on yourself and your family!

Just Two Priority Tips for Running a Successful Business

I will keep these short and sharp, as really, this is all you need a business plan to be. In many cases, as long as you have something in place it is certainly better than nothing at all and just drifting along without a plan of approach as unfortunately, many owners do.

1. Prepare a business plan with daily success activates/actions.

I know that you would have heard this before, but it is just so damn important. I like to put a little twist on my business plans and work out what daily activities I need to do to reach my revenue and profit goals. I call these success activities. To put it another way, what daily actions do I need to take for me to reach my goals? For example, I may set my success activities to be that I need to call 5 new business prospects each day, 5 days a week. This means I have contacted 25 new potential clients each week. Or, I need to set my sales add-on rate if I had a retail business to 2 items sold to a customer per sale.

Success activities is a way to measure if what I am doing daily is heading my business in the right direction.

2. Marketing.

For some reason this is the first thing a business owner drops off when they get the business up and running (busy) or cash flow tightens up. Once this happens the business is on a downward trajectory that will take a heap of work or money to turn around. So, the golden rule here is have a marketing plan set so, you are consistently marketing your business every day. Yes! - everyday. You need to ask yourself, “What am I doing to market my business consistently 24/7?”

This is actually easier than it sounds, as we live in a digital world now and we have social media, websites search ranking, Google AdWords, YouTube and the list just goes on and on. Most business owners I talk too think of traditional marketing campaigns and yes these still work, but think outside the box as well and get yourself a marketing mix that works. Set a marketing plan that will market your business everyday and measure it to ensure it is working. Then work on setting up your marketing strategies so they run on auto pilot and work consistently without your constant input.

Like I said, short and sharp. Just get these things set up when you get into business and you will be ahead of 90% of all other small business owners. Plus, you will get your business off on the right foot and heading in the right direction.

A last thought - always have fun with your business and embrace the challenges that will be coming, as it’s darn hard to thrive when you dread what you do!