The number one mistake professionals make, when contemplating starting a business.

They think small and start big.

SMALL thinking is:

1. The feeling that they cannot charge too much money for their product and/or service, because they're not as experienced in self-employment as others in their market. Which diminishes the profit margin, reducing the business idea to a hobby rather than a business. Or, they overcharge using the benchmark from when they were employed.
2. The need to have everything perfect before going public.
3. Expecting friends and family to support your idea from the word go and/or buy from you.
4. Not believing in themselves. Comparisonitis.
5. Old beliefs and conditionings on how an entrepreneur or self-employment should look like.
6. Creating Products and/or Services that are generic and not aligned with the big idea.
7. Not knowing what to sell when what they wanted to sell isn't selling.
8. Getting lost in the rabbit hole when starting to research their market, audience, and selling and seeing just how many of the same professions they are competing with and then getting overwhelmed, resorting to point #4.

STARTING Big?

Applying employee knowledge in a self-employment world, thinking that, what worked for the goose, will work for the gander.

#1 Different Department Hats: Taking on all different organisational tasks, without knowing how to do them effectively. As an employee, you know that there are different departments in a company, but you yourself have not worked and managed each department. For self-employment, you need to wear all the hats in the beginning, it gives you perspective, however, many entrepreneurs overlook the organisational structure and dive straight into executing tasks that they don't know anything about.

#2 Your profession is not your business idea: As an employee, you are your profession, you are hired and defined by how you perform your profession within a company to achieve goals and financial goals. With self-employment, your core foundation for your brand, that is; your values, why, purpose, vision, mission, audience, and business idea/solutions are what set you apart from anyone else in the market, not your profession.

#3 Product and/or Personal Brand: As an employee, you've never had to brand yourself with something visual other than your outer appearance or your home, car, and other materialistic things that set you apart. With self-employment, your visual branding does this for you, however, new entrepreneurs have their visual branding (logo, colours, fonts, moodboards), created from how the market stands, fancy company names, and what you currently like in terms of colours, shapes, patterns and more. A brand is long-term, which means, your taste will change over time and building a look 'n feel on how you feel today is costly and time-consuming.

How then, do you think BIG and start small?

Build your foundation first, for YOUR brand and business idea - customise it towards YOU. Then start to chunk down the tasks in order to achieve:

a) Business Growth (Sales)

b) Brand Awareness (Visual Branding)

c) Plan-of-Action Strategy (Communicating your message, vision, and mission)

d) Not just doing it for the money (Value-added Brand)

What does your foundation need to include?

1. Your Purpose
2. Your Why
3. Your Values
4. Your Vision
5. Your Mission
6. Your Audience
7. Your Product/Service that solves a problem for your audience
8. Have a personal plan-of-action strategy for the next few months to get started achieving the BIG idea with SMALL steps. You don't need the big website now, nor the elaborate visual branding. Learn to sell your idea and the results you offer FIRST. If you cannot sell, you have a hobby and not a business.