Let's take a look at the steps that lead to this independence, the advantages ofentrepreneurship, but also the pitfalls to avoid and the different types of support available to help you set up your own business.
There are five steps to setting up a business:
- Find a profitable business idea,
- Preparing the entrepreneurial project,
- Know the administrative procedures,
- Find customers,
- Managing your business.
Let's take a look at each of them.
1. Find a profitable business idea
It's the mantra of every entrepreneurial influencer: come up with a profitable business idea. The reality can be more complex than that. Depending on the business you intend to develop, profitability may only be achieved after several years of hard work, and is therefore a gamble on the future.
For proof of this, just take a look at some of the companies listed on the stock exchange, which are making substantial annual losses, but which are still of interest to investors because they are in promising sectors. If you want examples, take companies producing electric semi-trailers, for example.
What this means is that the easiest way to start a business is to look for a niche. In other words, a very specific sector of a market, with little competition, where you can specialize.
Attacking the cosmetics market, held by strong leaders, is not the best of business ideas, for example, unless you're an influencer and sell products thanks to your fame, monetizing your audience.
2. Preparing the business plan
Once you've come up with a business idea, you need to prepare your project, i.e. take an interest in the main principles that guide the activity you've chosen to carry out, or the sector in which this activity is carried out.
You should always bear in mind that there are only two ways to win the competition against your rivals:
- Work harder,
- Work better.
Preparing your entrepreneurial project doesn't necessarily mean drawing up a business plan, which encourages you to make plans with a lot of economic and accounting data you don't know.
Preparing your project means above all preparing a precise schedule, which will often have to enable you to combine your new entrepreneurial activity with your salaried activity. In other words, you need to be able to work an average of 100 hours a week.
Preparing your entrepreneurial project means getting ready to start your day at 6 a.m. and finish it at 6 p.m., every day from Monday to Sunday, for at least a year. At that price, you can hope to be profitable, and gain market share over the competition.
And if you don't think you're going to make it on your own, don't worry! There are plenty of companies and tools to help entrepreneurs get started.
3. Administrative procedures
Once you're clear about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, it's time to look at the administrative procedures involved in setting up a business.
It's a question of choosing the most appropriate legal form for the business you're going to run. The two main types of company are partnerships and corporations. Each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages, and depends directly on your business and the income you hope to generate from it.
Centers de formalités des entreprises (CFE) are there to help you set up your business. They will tell you what documents you need to provide, and what you need to do, such as draw up your company's articles of association.
Although there are ready-made articles of association on the Internet for every type of company, it's sometimes better to use the services of a professional, so that your articles of association enable you to manage your business properly.
Because they are the main principles you need to follow when making important decisions, for example, poorly drafted ones can lead to deadlocks, particularly between partners. So pay close attention to them.
4. Find customers
To find customers, the method is as follows:
- List your competitors,
- Find their customers.
Your competitors already have the customers you're looking for. Develop a more attractive offer, or superior product quality, by analyzing customer reviews, and you'll gradually take customers directly from your competitors.
Why? Because customers can't be invented. Because customers can't be invented. You have to look for them where they are. That means your competitors. Because customers represent profitability, and money is the sinews of war, no holds are barred.
5. Managing the company
Setting up a company and starting to sell products or services is one thing. Being able to sustain the business is another matter altogether. It requires regular, precise monitoring of the state of your accounts.
You need to be able to make projections for six to twelve months, in order to know exactly :
- The amount of your cash outflow,
- The profitability you need to achieve,
- The money you need to inject on a monthly basis.
It's rare for a business to be profitable right from the start. You'll need to be able to invest money in your company on a monthly basis, to keep the books balanced.
Your unit of measurement should then be your order book. If your order book remains hopelessly empty, you need to change something. Sometimes, you may even need to change your product or service.
Your first business idea may be the wrong one.Entrepreneurship also means not getting bogged down in a direction that isn't ultimately yours.
There are four main advantages to becoming an entrepreneur:
- Being a digital nomad,
- Time management,
- Apply your own strategy,
- Self-confidence.
Entrepreneurship can enable you to be this new type of entrepreneur, made possible by digital technology: the digital nomad. In other words, an entrepreneur who can work from anywhere in the world, from a beach in Florida to a flat-share in a Paris suburb.
Entrepreneurship allows you to manage your time better, even though your schedule is not very flexible due to the wide range of hours you'll have to work.
However, if you're more of a morning person, you can choose to start work early. If you're more of an evening person, you can sleep in. And if one day you don't want to work, you don't have to.
Setting up your own company gives you the opportunity to follow your own strategy and work according to your own ideals. You won't have to put up with a boss or a team whose group dynamics or mentality don't suit you.
To succeed, you'll need to develop a high level of self-confidence . Confidence gives your customers the confidence to do business with you. If you lack confidence, your customers, your suppliers and all your partners will think you're not being honest, or will feel insecure about contracting with your company.
There are five major pitfalls to avoid if you want to succeed in your entrepreneurial adventure:
- Don't prepare your project,
- Choosing the wrong legal status,
- Choosing the wrong company name,
- Being impressionable,
- Not knowing how to deal with failure.
1. Prepare your project and know your target
To succeed, you need to know where you want to go. Without a relatively clear idea of the path you need to take to succeed, you're bound to go bankrupt.
Don't forget that it's in these moments that the best money-making ideas will come to you. It's during these tense moments that you'll best analyze your target customers and their needs.
2. Choose the right legal status
Choosing the right legal status can save your business, especially when it comes to the tax advantages that accompany the creation of certain businesses.
Make sure you get the right information from the outset, so you can choose the one best suited to the activities you intend to develop.
3. Choose the right name for your company
This is where you need to be very careful. Some entrepreneurs choose the name of their company based on the activity they intend to develop. However, just because your neighbor has succeeded in selling toothpaste doesn't mean you will.
It's possible that your flagship product is selling irons. In other words, don 't use a name that refers to a specific product as your company name.
Loréal, Garnier, Adidas and Nike are all companies that could very well be selling trailers or wigs. Their names mean nothing in particular, and do not reflect the sector in which they operate. From the outset, you need to be able to find your own way out, and to change your business model if necessary.
4. Don't be influenced by those around you
Don't make decisions about your future under the influence of family or friends. Family and friends often think in terms of security, but entrepreneurship is a risky business. So, unless they're entrepreneurs themselves, they're more likely to discourage you than encourage you.
As for your friends, some will talk like your family, others out of jealousy. So know how to chart your own course. Maybe you, too, will send rockets to Mars.
5. Learn to deal with failure
Before that, you need to know how to deal with failure. The road to entrepreneurship is paved with failures. If the slightest bump in the road sends you into a tailspin, don't go for it.
You're bound to fail in certain areas. So learn from your failures, and become even better at your new job.
When you set up your first business, you're not alone. TheState is there to help you develop your business through social, financial and tax assistance tailored to your situation. These are known as
- ARCE (aid for taking over or creating a business),
- ACRE (aid for starting up or taking over a business),
- ARE (back-to-work assistance)
- ADIE (association for the right to economic initiative),
- NACRE (nouvel accompagnement pour la création ou la reprise d'entreprise),
- The Réseau entreprendre honor loan,
- Honor loans from local Initiative platforms
- BPI (public investment bank)
- ZFU (zones franches urbaines),
- ZAFRs (regional aid zones).
All these schemes enable you to benefit from cash payments, financial loans and tax exemptions, all of which will enable you to devote funds to developing your business.
Knowing how to take advantage of this means being more competitive in managing your business than your competitors. This will have a direct impact on your ability to invest, and therefore on your competitiveness.
