Читать книгу Start Your Own Transportation Service - Cheryl Kimball - Страница 9
ОглавлениеIs Transportation the Right Business for You?
It is likely that you drive a car. You probably have moved yourself or a friend using a large U-Haul truck or driven friends or elderly family members to doctor’s appointments. But does that translate into any of those things being the right way for you to make a living?
Deciding whether or not the transportation business is the right business for you is critical to your success once you do get into it. A lot of time and likely considerable expense goes into creating a thriving business of any magnitude. There may be a little bit of luck too, but if anyone tells you a lot of it is luck, don’t listen. A lot of the success in the transportation industry is from excellent, detailed planning and good old-fashioned hard work taking your plan from a concept on paper to a reality.
fun fact
Limousine drivers have great stories—and many of them can be found on the internet. Check out Lisa’s Limousine Stories (www.aclimos.ca). At www.thoughcatalog.com you can find “17 Limo Drivers Dish Out Their Best-Of, Craziest, Most Ridiculous Stories While on the Job.” Thirteen more stories can be found at www.mandatory.com. Apparently if you start a limo business you will never lack stories to tell! But don’t forget to keep names to yourself . . . Want quick info on getting started? Check out www.entrepreneur.com/businessideas/limousine-service.
One of the best ways to find out if a business fits your personality and lifestyle is to work in it for a while before plunging in and setting up your own shop. That may be harder if you already have a full-time job, but there are possibilities for part-time work. It can be insightful just to take a part-time temporary position during a particularly busy season for the segment of the industry you are interested in—driving limousines during prom season, for example—or pull a few weekend shifts in the scheduling office. Or use your free time to take passengers to their destination with a rideshare service like Uber or Lyft, using your own car. Plus you can earn a little extra cash while you are at it to add to the business startup piggy bank!
When you work in a similar job, or as you get started in planning your business, think about the following:
Do the typical hours mesh with your preferred lifestyle? If you are interested in starting a limousine service, do you need to be up late at night when being a night owl isn’t your usual style? Even if you aren’t doing the driving, if you are the boss you will need to be accessible in the event of a late-night call from a driver you employ.
If you have always been accustomed to taking off on a trip whenever the spirit moves you, you need to think about a business that will allow you to build it but not run the day-to-day operations.
Someone with a gregarious personality might not want to open a one-person business where you are by yourself all the time. Someone who is not fond of spontaneous interactions with strangers probably is not a good candidate to drive a taxi.
This is not to suggest that every possible aspect of the transportation business can be self-selected around your personal idiosyncrasies. But don’t set yourself up to get into a business type that is just going to make you regret your decision, dread going to work, or not feel like putting a 110 percent effort into your new business. That is a recipe for failure before you even begin.
Of course, all of this is moot if you have a business that can afford to hire employees to do everything you don’t particularly enjoy doing. But that is atypical of a startup business of any kind, which is more typically “all hands on deck”—including the owner’s—for a certain period of time.
warning
Don’t get a job to test the waters within the same market you plan to set up in. You don’t want an inside job spying on your potential competitors. While you will want to glean information about your competitors in your market research, your intention here is to get the inside experience to evaluate your interest in that aspect of the industry.
Small-Business Personality Traits
There are six traits that are conducive to small-business success according to a study by the Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute. These six traits are:
1. Being collaborative. Knowing when and how to delegate and motivate others on staff.
2. Curiosity. Having an interest in scouring the world for ways to improve their business.
3. Focusing on the future. Business owners that planned cash flow and succession planning did better.
4. Self-fulfilled. Those who would rather be in control of their own destiny than feeling secure in a corporate environment.
5. Tech-savvy. It’s here, it’s the world, use it to your advantage and make your business more efficient.
6. Action-oriented. Adversity actually makes strong business leaders work harder and motivates them.
One group (RingCentral) reporting on this study in a blog post actually pulled “desire to delegate” from the “being collaborative” trait and thought it was important enough to be a trait of its own. It is unlikely that any one person is strong in all these traits. But think them through and think about your own approach to any one of them. Then figure out how you might strengthen the ones you are weaker in, even if the solution is something like delegating “tech-savvy” to someone else!
tip
If your small business will have employees, now’s the time to start learning about leadership. “A good leader allows both employee responsibility and creativity to encourage growth and new ideas” (“5 Leadership Lessons from Successful Small-Business Owners” by Royale Scuderi, Open Forum, www.americanexpress.com).
Any business category is unique, and the transportation business is no exception. A lot will depend on the type of business you plan to start in this far-reaching category, but in general there is a lot to consider.
Transportation of goods and transport services is fully entangled with scheduling. Clients will expect to have themselves or their goods get from one place to the other on time. If you are shipping that just-in-time inventory of Christmas lights from a manufacturer in Indiana to dollar stores across the upper Midwest, the manufacturer won’t hire you again if the shipment gets there December 26 (or even August 26, for that matter). The point is, you agree to a schedule with your customer and you stick to it.
If you aren’t good at the scheduling itself, let alone being on time, this kind of pressure is going to keep you up all night every night, and you may not want to start a trucking business (not to mention if you are not able to schedule, you will not have customers). Or you may want to delegate that part of the business to someone for whom juggling schedules is a dream job come true.
Whatever you do, you need to figure out if you can handle the pressure that comes with schedules that must be met and if you have the organizational and planning to skills to ensure you have satisfied customers.
stat fact
According to the Census Bureau, women own 36 percent of all U.S. businesses, and of those, 89 percent have no employees.
You may plan to actually be a driver in your transport business. Again, depending on what kind of transport business you start, you may find yourself on the road a lot. Make sure that suits not only your but your family’s lifestyle. This is the kind of thing that shouldn’t have to take you by surprise after setting up shop—you should be able to glean these details from your early investigations before ever starting a business. And when you do, think through how they will impact your life.
Some basic trends mentioned in the article “Finding the Right Small Business for You” from www.Bizfilings.com that are worth keeping in mind as you make decisions about your business are:
1. Both husbands and wives are wage earners in today’s market. This means that tasks that were once commonly performed by a stay-at-home wife/mom (like caring for aging parents, getting them to medical appointments, etc.) are often now delegated. Is this a service you can provide?
2. Outsourcing is popular in today’s businesses. Employees have been laid off and outsourced replacements brought in. Is there something in this trend that you can capitalize on? Being creative is the name of the game.
3. Is there a technological approach to your business? As a new business with no jobs behind you to show for success, perhaps you could have a virtual replica of how you pack the contents of a house into a moving van. Even technology is creative!
fun fact
The five best states for women-owned businesses, according to Thumbtack, are:
1. New Hampshire
2. Texas
3. Kansas
4. Oklahoma
5. Colorado
Choose the Right Business for You
In the online article “Finding the Right Small Business for You,” Bizfilings’ Business Owner’s Toolkit (www.bizfilings.com) offers the following three common mistakes that people make in choosing a business (and reasons that often result in business failure):
1. Not doing the right amount of market research on demand for a product or service that is currently your hobby that you “think would make a good business”
2. Not planning enough
3. Not asking for help
Don’t succumb to these pitfalls. There is plenty of information out there on small-business startups in general, on specific types of businesses, and certainly on all aspects of the transportation industry. Read everything you can get your hands on, call people, and network—then actually contact the people that come as a result of your networking, and ask for help from those who have been there and from the professionals who are in the business of helping small businesses.
warning
Don’t plan to sit around waiting for the phone to ring. Business owners at all times should be making business happen. Take the results of your networking and pick up the phone. Offer to move someone for the cost of gas in order to get experience and perhaps a testimonial. Be a rainmaker and make your business a success.
Don’t assume that just because your business does not rely on local customers you don’t need to interact with your local community. Any business will rely on local government and local politics when it comes to regulations, taxes, policies, and much more. For instance, if you are a long-haul trucking business you will likely need to take local roads to get to the highway. You will want to keep abreast of things like spring load posting limits (in northern climates when the soil is thawing, the heavy loads can damage the road surface) and if/when legislation arises to change those limits.
Attend chamber of commerce events and offer to host a “business after hours” if your office is large enough. Join the local Rotary Club and interact with business leaders who can bring business your way. If this kind of thing just doesn’t interest you, then you need to be sure to hire someone who can do this. Sponsor the local middle school Little League team, and show the community you care about the place in which you do business. And you want them to care about your business.
The Factory Model versus the Fruit Stand Model
George Horrigan, business planner and founder of Fountainhead Consulting Group, talks about the “factory model versus the fruit stand model” of growing a business. Almost all businesses start out in the “fruit stand model” where the owner is highly involved, opens the doors in the morning, and if the owner is not there the business does not make money. And some businesses are naturally in the fruit stand mode longer than others. But for those business owners with the goal of expanding or eventually having their business work for them, Horrigan encourages establishing your businesses with the intention of quickly moving to the “factory model” where the owner is dealing with the bigger-picture issues that lead to a thriving business and sets up processes where day-to-day business can be delegated to others. This is what Horrigan feels leads to a thriving business that is set up to grow from the beginning.
After thinking through all of these things about the business you are considering starting, do you still feel as good about the idea as before? Don’t ignore those nagging feelings—this is a huge life-changing step you are about to take! If something is bothering you about any aspect of what you thought you had decided for your niche in the transportation market, it doesn’t mean you have to think of something else—think through what it would take to address that particular thing. Enlist help if you need to, because there is always a workaround, even if you can’t come up with what it is yourself. Then you can begin to create your business knowing that you are headed in the right direction for you, your family, and your lifestyle.
stat fact
Each year, Thumbtack (an online service matchmaker) rates U.S. cities for their small-business friendliness. The five worst for 2015 were:
1. Hartford, CT
2. Albuquerque, NM
3. Buffalo, NY
4. New Haven, CT
5. Winston-Salem, NC
aha!
The most important question to answer when you are choosing a business model is “How do I prefer to spend my day?” Of course, everyone deals with things that they don’t particularly like to do, but your chosen business should, for the most part, let you spend your day the way you like best. Inside, outside, at a desk, on the road, on the phone creating business—whatever it is for you.
