If you have decided to start up your own business or are exhausted from working for somebody, welcome on board. However, you need to be prepared to put in some extra time and effort to gain your long-term goals. You can choose a life of ease and comfort or you can choose a life of adventure, choose whatever makes you feel proud of yourself afterward.
As a new business owner, it can be challenging and crucial yet incredibly rewarding and exciting to navigate through your business venture. There are no ends to the several legal, financial, marketing, staffing, and customer issues that will arise once you launch your business. According to Small Business Administration (SBA) research on startups, almost 500% of new businesses fail within the first year whereas 95% fail during the five years of their launch. It is mostly because most new business owners are unsure of themselves and keep questioning what they do now/next, after launching their business. After working for several years for somebody, they believe they have enough expertise and motivation to make a mark in the business world. Nonetheless, the decision to enter the lucrative business world is only the first step.
There are other factors involved and immense hard work is required to become successful as a new businessman.
Advice to someone just starting a business
If you are planning to launch your startup and it is to be successful, it is useful to have some valuable advice and tips up your sleeve.
Here are some of the key tips that will help you navigate the startup landscape:
- Create a Business You Are Passionate About
The most common reason most people consider launching their own business is that they are not in love with the work they do. The first step in the business development process is to build an idea answering the following three important questions:
- What are you great at?
- What do you love doing?
- Which thing gives you a sense of fulfillment?
Some people are unsure what they love, while others think they are good at so many things and love to explore. This resonates with so many people. Inquisitive people specifically love to explore, and they may even have many passions. It can hard to pick one out of these options. However, it is advised not to spend another ten years figuring out what you want. Try and narrow down your options by following the below-given process.
Thusnew businesses can be pretty challenging; therefore, you must select a domain that not only excites you but also keeps you motivated. Stay away from the industries and businesses you are not well aware of, as learning a new field involves a steep learning curve that can lead to hiccups in your success.
- Select a Business Idea with Huge Market Opportunity
Make sure to thoroughly research if there is an available big market for the targeted service or product. Generally, investors will only invest in your company if they observe a huge market opportunity and the potential of the company to grow into something impactful. It is important to listen to as many people as possible who are currently in the industry. Always keep yourself current, keep yourself fresh
- Advertisement
Having a good website on social media or platform is the key as that is where you have seen and approached by people. You continuously need to attract, build, and even educate your target market. You need to ensure that your marketing strategy must include the following important factors:
- Create a professional and up-to-date website.
- Learn the basic concepts of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so that people seeking your service might discover you at the top of search results.
- Incorporate social media to boost your business (Facebook, Linked In, Pinterest, etc.).
- Commit to content marketing through writing guest articles for related websites.
- Publish press releases for your substantial and remarkable events.
- Get Feedback
Get the feedback from people and in terms of negative feedback find the root cause of the problem i.e., what went wrong deep inside the system, how did this happen, and get it fixed as soon as possible. Make sure that particular problem never happens again. Thus you have to fix the root cause not the symptoms
- Guard your time
We all have the same amount of work in the world. Nobody has more time than anybody else. A lot of things are a waste of your time so you have to focus on what is important. Especially when you are a successful person you are always over-scheduled, you have to be in meetings and give time to your family as well so in that case you have to guard your time by setting priorities. Try to be a little bit flexible as well like this particular duration is for me and that is not a waste of time. Everyone wants freedom of movement instead of every minute of every day being scheduled.
Most people have very high standards of how they want their work-life to be. But most important is that you should enjoy working for your dream at least half of that. Very few people can do that because everything comes with the overhead i.e., everything comes with pieces that you don’t like even if you are supreme court justice then there is still going to be pieces of your job you don’t like. In short, every job comes with some pieces that you don’t like and that’s how it is. You should not only resent these pieces but also try to minimize them. You have to figure out how to set up your life in such a way that you can minimize the stress.
- Your choices construct your life
You have to love your work, whatever you decide to choose you should be passionate about that. Every young person before starting their career should think about their choices, they should find something that they are passionate to do as it is very hard to do something that you don’t love to and you will never going to be great at it.
Everybody is gifted, and you can get very fixed on your gifts like you are extremely good at accounting. There are a lot of things that can give you more but these things confuse you because they are not the things that construct your life, your choices construct your life. You have to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation if you choose to do something not related to your gifts.
- Be customer-focused:
One of the most important things to consider while starting a new business is customer obsession. It is sometimes mistakenly taken as competitor-focused is just a completely different mentality. If all employees are competitors obsessed its kind of hard to stay energized and motivated if you are out in front whereas customers are always unsatisfied and discontent. They always want more so no matter how far you get out there in front of your competitors, you are still behind your customers so they are always pulling you along. So customer obsession is a deep principle that underlies everything we do
- Have a day one mentality
It is important to maintain a day one culture. It’s great to have the scale of your business in terms of financial resources, brilliant employees, having global scope, operations all over the world that makes you accomplish great things. But the downside of that is you can lose your nimbleness, you can lose your entrepreneurial spirit i.e., the will or heart to accomplish that most small companies have. So if you can have the entrepreneurial spirit and heart while at the same time having all the advantages that come with scale and scope then you can achieve wonders.
- Maintaining a positive mental attitude
It is very important to maintain a positive mental attitude. Through the experience you will find that the highs are the highest and the lows are the lowest, it’s really important to live in that middle ground. As a new businessman never believe your press clippings because you are never as good as they say and never as bad. So it is really important to live in the middle because you are going to experience extremes.
- Be confident and keep moving
No matter how good you are, you can still be better, you can always be better. You shall start yourself with competent people and it is just about stopping thinking and starting doing.
- Seek advice if required
Don’t do it alone, get advice and support like utilize people i.e. seek professional advice from colleagues. Suggestions from other entrepreneurs and business professionals (like accountants and lawyers) can be valuable. Consider putting together an advisory board. Read the industry newsletters and entrepreneurship publications like entrepreneur.com and allbusiness.com. Find mentors to advise on hiring, marketing, product development, and fundraising.