If you have spent many nights dreaming of starting your own home business and saying “bye-bye” to your “boss from hell”, you’re in luck. Starting a home business is one of the easiest businesses to begin. Here are 5 simple steps to starting your own business:
1. Get your home office setup.
If you’ve got a desk and laptop/computer with software installed, an internet connection, you’re ready to go. You’ll just need a few office supplies and a place to store files and work-in-progress for your clients. Get yourself organised.
2. Select your target market.
What kind of business are you comfortable with? Would you prefer working with retail businesses, contractors or nonprofit? Do you like bookkeeping for small corporations or proprietorships? Figure out what kind of companies you want to do business with and target those.
3. Figure out your hourly rate.
Do some research on pricing by calling around to different businesses in the same industry to find out what the going hourly rate is for your local area. This is important because you do not want to over-price or under-price your rates; you want to be competitive.
4. Setup a system for keeping track of your clients before you get too busy.
You need to have a system in place that will allow you to easily bounce between each client’s tasks so you know instantly where you left off and what needs to be done.
5. Start marketing your services.
Contact accountants for referrals, send out letters to potential clients and place classified ads in the “Work Wanted” section of your local newspaper.
The hardest part will be landing your first bookkeeping client. Once you have one client and you do a good job for them, you’ll find that word of mouth gets around and you’ll soon have clients lining up to do business with you.