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Step 2: fine tuning the process

10 questions to ask yourself

Fine tuning the selection process

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Choose the right business before you go self-employed

If you have a specific idea in mind you need to ask yourself some key questions to help decide if this is really the business you should be in

• Is this something I will enjoy doing?
• Think about what your favourite activities are and what you like doing that is a service to other people?
• Will it serve an expanding need for which there is no close substitute?
• Can I be so good at a specialised, targeted need that customers will think there is no close substitute?
• Can I handle the capital requirements?
  
• Can I learn the business by working for someone else first?
  
• Could I operate as a ‘hollow’ operation, without a factory and with a minimum number of employees? (By ‘hollow’ `I mean a business where everything is outsourced, meaning you would subcontract manufacturing and packaging to outside sources.)
  
• Is this a product or service that I can test first?
  
• Should I consider a partner who has complementary skills to mine or who could help finance the business?

Written by Jim Green 

Earn Money in Retirement: How to draw on a lifetime of experience to supplement your pension by Jim Green. Published by howtobooks

This article was created: 20 July 2006.
This article was last edited: 14 November 2006.

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