Starting and running your own business is hard to imagine for some people because simply it is hard. It seems easy for people who have the willingness to take it all the way.
A company incorporation is often one of the first things in the to-do-list that you would go through. On legal terms in Hong Kong, if you start doing a business, then you should register your business/company, and you should have a physical business address.
Whether you’re going to incorporate a limited company or a sole proprietorship business in Hong Kong, it is up to your own preference.
One of the most common problems in anyone’s entrepreneurship journey is that their business would run out of capital. You initially expected to make it a successful business, but before that you must prepare for the long term. Often you may get a business load or get an investor who could provide you with your initial funds. The less ideal case is you would spend your 1-2 years of saving on the first year of your business. But things may not go according to any of your plans after the first year. Sometimes it takes you all the way to 3-4 years, and your business still returns without any profit margin.
The best choice is not to start a business in the first place when you were not ready. What does it mean to be ready? If you are only sick of your current job working for someone else, then do not start your own business. The best is while working for someone else and you are still receiving a stable paycheck every month, start your own business. This is the best time. Put aside the evening hours (and even the mid-night hours), and your weekend hours. Very often you will have to start researching your markets, your target customers, and more. Then immediately you will have to build your product according to the information you have researched about your market and target customers.
It could have taken you 2-3 months of preparation while you were building your first product. And now it’s time to test your product in the market of your choice. Test your product thoroughly and do not mind about spending some effort, time and money. You can test your product with relatively low budget. Launch your product on online platforms such as Amazon, eBay, etsy, Aliexpress, etc. The objective of testing is to figure out whether your product is a good fit for your target customer. You will get one of the two outcomes: The product is a good fit, or the product has failed. When the product fails, it simply means you will need to keep fine-tuning it in the direction how your target customers want it.
If your product is a good fit, you are at that point of the cross-road. You need to make a decision whether you are going to quit your day time job, or you continue working after hours. But when this moment comes, you already know both you and your first product are ready to move forward.
