From Craft to Company: Starting Your Own Business
If you're looking to start your own business, there are key considerations to address, including defining your services, setting up your books, and building your team.
By Kate Stephenson - Published in Fine Homebuilding Issue 329 - Feb/Mar 2025
If you’re a designer, carpenter, or other trade professional and are feeling the itch to start your own business, you’re not alone. It’s a fairly common path in the building trades. After a few years of developing our craft, we start to feel like we have learned enough to find and manage our own jobs.
There are many scenarios that propel us in this direction: We want to be our own boss, we are dissatisfied in our current job, we see a market opportunity, or we think we can make more money running our own business. Some construction-business owners are serial entrepreneurs who love starting and running businesses.
But, in my experience as a business coach to construction professionals, most are accidental business owners who fell into working for themselves without putting together a comprehensive business plan. In many of these cases, the business struggles, not because the owner isn’t a great plumber or roofer, but because they haven’t put the same amount of time into learning the business as they have the trade skill.