Looking Outside

After looking into yourself your personal qualities, your interests, skills, experiences and hobbies and how these would orient you towards a business of your own, you may now look around. See if the environment is a conducive one for entrepreneurship.

Here are some questions to ask about the “outside world.”
1. How adequate is the infrastructure for business in your community, province or city? Are there enough provisions for basic requisites like roads and bridges, power and water, telephone, postal and internet facilities, as well as banking services?

2. Is the environment peaceful, safe and orderly? Investing hard-earned money is already a big risk. Operating in an unsafe environment makes it even more risky.

3. What are the incentives, assistance programs and other support that the national and local governments make available to business, especially to small, start-up businesses? Ask about tax exemptions and discounts,
low-interest financing, technical assistance, marketing and promotional services, training, etc.

4. How prepared is the government bureaucracy to serve the needs of businessmen? Are civil servants courteous and service-oriented? Are procedures and requirements for business registration, for example, clear
and simple?

5. Study national and local market trends, business growth and market share, purchasing power of the public, confidence in the economy.

6. Study imports. What goods does the country import from abroad? What goods and services does your particular community or town “import” from Manila and other big cities? Think whether you can provide these goods and services locally. This is known as “import substitution”.

7. Think of other possibilities: subcontracting, a promising way by which small firms can start supplying parts or services for bigger companies; public sector purchasing, which small businesses might explore because
government offices are required by law to purchase supplies from local producers; and franchising, dubbed as the “business with the least fears”.




Looking Outside

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