12 Tips for Starting a Business That You Need to Know

By Mike Kelly
The Hartford Small Biz Ahead | Originally published: December 9, 2019
Updated: June 2, 2023

Even many long-time small business owners would agree with the line from the 1970’s song by the band Faces: “I wish that I knew what I know now.”

Over the years of running a small business, owners inevitably gather many lessons about how to grow and run a business more effectively. Thankfully, many of these owners are more than happy to share their insights.

Tips for Starting a Small Business

Why struggle alone when you can learn tips for starting a business from the experiences of others who are on your same path? Below we’ve compiled 12 tips from successful small business owners that can give you a good idea where to start with your business idea.

Small Business Tip 1: Keep Your Day Job Just a Little Longer

This is one of the top tips for starting a small business because it is a common trap: A person gets excited by a small business idea, quits his or her day job—and then runs out of money and fails.

As reported in Forbes, Spanx founder Sara Blakely credits her success to the fact that she kept her day job as an office equipment salesperson for two years, learning to work with minimal sleep as she got her form-fitting shapewear company off the ground. Blakely did not want to resign from her day job until she was absolutely sure her small business idea would work.

By the time Blakely resigned in 2000 from what was then office equipment supplier Danka, she had already spent countless nights and weekends studying pantyhose design and existing patents. She would drive from her Atlanta home to North Carolina, where she sought out hosiery mills willing to make the product.

“There were days that I’d be at Danka all day and the semi-trucks would drop boxes of Spanx outside my apartment … I resigned on October 14, 2000. I quit Danka and two and a half weeks later I was on the Oprah Winfrey Show,” Blakely says.

Small Business Tip 2: Avoid Distractions at All Costs

A few years ago, Seattle-based content marketing company AudienceBloom was operating so swimmingly that its founder and CEO Jayson DeMers decided he could get away with focusing on a second startup that he was intrigued with. DeMers would come to regret the decision.

“Running a company ‘just fine’ is not what an entrepreneur’s job is,” DeMers says. “Successful entrepreneurs don’t do the minimum for their company; they constantly work to grow it, evolve it, and prepare it for the future. Because I was splitting my team between the two startups, growth stalled at my first company, and I didn’t have enough time to dedicate to the new startup to make it successful.”

Eventually, the second venture failed. AudienceBloom was able to grow again once DeMers was able to focus his full attention on it. “I learned that a successful venture requires 100 percent attention, focus, and effort. Secondary ventures need a full-time manager or else they’ll just distract you and derail your existing efforts if you aren’t careful.”

Avoiding distractions is one of the most important small business tips and applies to managing yourself so you get stuff done on a day-to-day basis, too. “I know when I’m smart and when I’m dumb,” says Marks. “I save the big tasks for the morning when I’m smartest and do the monotonous ones when I’m dumb at the end of the day.” Keeping yourself organized and on task is the real key to small business success.

Small Business Tip 3: Legally Establish Your Business – Choose a Business Structure

Many businesses start out as sole proprietorships. This is an easy way to start selling goods and servicing clients. But there’s a lot of risk with being a sole proprietor. If somebody makes a legal claim against your business and wins the case, you could stand to lose a lot of your personal assets.

Another popular business structure is the LLC or limited liability company. When you register your business as an LLC, you help protect your personal assets from business liability and lawsuits. If your business gets sued, you may end up losing all your business assets in the case. But, because you are an LLC, you will not lose your personal assets…[MORE]

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To read the entire article by Mike Kelly at The Hartford Small Biz Ahead website, visit: 12 Tips for Starting a Business That You Need to Know