Starting a Business? Why You Need to Know the Basics of Business
Entrepreneurship is the Holy Grail of the American independent spirit. Working for yourself is the best (and for most of us, the only) way to take control of your work life and financial future. A good idea, an untapped market, and a lot of work can take you from a workaday lifestyle to a captain of industry. But first, it is critical to master not only the operations of your idea but also the fundamentals that apply to any and every successful venture.
There is a popular notion that, as long as you are an expert in the field of your idea, then all other aspects of the business can be conveniently outsourced to other professionals. An accountant can handle all the books and taxes, an attorney can deal with all things legal, a marketing company can manage the advertising, and an IT guy can work with the pesky internet stuff. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs learn the hard way that, as the owner, they are ultimately responsible for every facet of the venture, whether they personally handle the day-to-day or not.
On the other hand, the most successful serial entrepreneurs are able to find success in a variety of industries. By applying the fundamentals of business to just about any business idea, they manage to turn all sorts of ideas into profitable companies. Still, it is dangerous even for those business savants to assume the business side is all that matters. Going in to a field without experience results in a long learning curve, but one that is easier to fill with an expert than the rest.
The best option to ensure the long-term success of the organization is for the person in charge to understand every relevant competency from the start. This series of articles is designed to explain why you need to understand each area of your business from the beginning…and what can happen if you don’t. The areas discussed are:
• Operations: What your venture actually does
• Accounting: The financial history of your business
• Financial Planning: The financial future of your company
• Business Planning: If you don’t know where you are going, it doesn’t matter which path you take
• Marketing: One of the easiest ways to waste money
• Networking: It’s not what you know, it’s who you know
• Customer Management: Knowing all you can about the people who buy from you
• Technology: Using technology, including online resources, to build your business
• Legal Issues: Hire a lawyer, but know what they are doing
If you are planning to launch a business in 2010, get to work on the basics right away. None of these areas is particularly difficult to understand, but you need to know the fundamentals in order to effectively lead your company. This isn’t to say you should actually do everything yourself, in fact you probably should not. But when you choose to outsource the day-to-day tasks in some of these areas, you will be confident in selecting the right professional and monitoring their work. The startup is your business, and the full responsibility of everything that happens with it belongs to you.
About the Author: K. MacKillop, a serial entrepreneur with a J.D. from Duke University, is co-founder of LaunchX and authors a blog focused on starting a business. Visit LaunchX.com to learn more about the LaunchX System, a complete business startup kit that helps you learn the business basics while starting a business.

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