Category: Entrepreneurship

Article Contributed by Kara Masterson

Planning to take that crucial first step towards becoming a new business owner? If you build your business properly, there’s no limit to how successful you could be. It’s unlikely that you’re going to “get rich quick,” but if you’re willing to put in the work and you know what you’re doing, it’s certainly possible to create the business of your dreams.

When you’re a budding entrepreneur, knowledge is power. It’s important to learn from both the successes and failures of previous business owners. Here are four pointers to get you started on the right track.

Find Your Unique Selling Proposition

Your unique selling proposition (USP) is how you differentiate your business from its competition. If you don’t have one, why would a customer choose you over all their other options?

Think about what you can offer to your customers that your competition doesn’t have. Maybe that’s a special product feature – M&M’s set themselves apart by using a hard sugar coating to prevent their chocolates from melting. Or it could be your pricing – Southwest Airlines did this by offering no fees on your first two checked bags at a time when all other airlines were going the opposite direction.

Take Your Time Putting Together Your Business Plan

Too many entrepreneurs are in a rush to get their businesses launched and spend minimal time on their business plans as a result. Then, they waste time and money on issues that could have been avoided with proper planning.

Your business plan should include your USP, your startup costs, your target market, your profitability estimates and your plans for the early stages of the business. You should spend at least a day putting this together, and you may want to spend a week putting it together and revising it.

Surround Yourself with the Right People

There’s a saying that you are the average of the five or six people you surround yourself with the most. If those people are ambitious and have positive mindsets, they will likely help you succeed. If they’re lazy and negative, they’ll only hold you back from achieving your dreams.

It’s especially important to find the right people in terms of business partners and employees. You want people who are just as driven as you are and who you can trust. When you’re launching a business, you also need to find people who have versatile skillsets and can fulfill many different roles.

Hone in on Your Target Market

Just like you need to know what your business offers that’s unique, you also need to know who exactly you’re targeting with your products or services. The more you narrow this down, the better, because it makes your marketing easier. You wouldn’t use the same marketing methods on teenagers that you would on senior citizens, which is why you need a precise target market.

An example of a target market that would be far too broad is “women ages 18 to 45.” You’d want to narrow that down to something like “women ages 24 to 32 with a bachelor’s degree or higher and annual income of $60,000 to $100,000,” which will give you a more specific profile to use as the focus of your marketing efforts.

You shouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes when it comes to starting a business, but you shouldn’t be eager to make them, either. Remember that even large and successful companies with a history of good customer service can have their names dragged through the mud, like during the supposed ACN scam, so a little adversity is to be expected. When you keep these four pointers in mind as you start your business, you can avoid some of the most common mistakes and have a far better chance at success.

Article Contributed by Aloukik Rathore,

Before talking about how to succeed really, I need to speak a bit about failure and its outcomes. In the Business Industry, failure is often praised, especially when you fail fast. One thing that our elders have teaching for centuries is that you learn from your mistakes.

Amusingly, most of the pioneers in the Silicon Valley with their successful businesses had no real history in the market and very less or negligible experience. Indeed, the ignorance of the potential pitfalls seemed to be the catalyst and what enabled them towards success. As well all know that Success isn’t a good teacher, it’s the failure that makes you humble.

Keeping that mind, here are some of the best tips for my fellow hustlers and entrepreneurs that would help you towards the road of success.

1. People are more prominent than strategy.

One simple way towards being successful is surrounding you with the people who are talented and like-minded. If you constantly are in the company of such people, chances are you’ll end up with great ideas together that will work for sure. If you are initiating with an idea and then try and find the required skills, chances are you’ll be putting a square peg in a round hole at the end.

2. Be the Customer and know what he wants.

All the MBAs and Business schools preach about the importance of listening to customers. That’s great if you know what to look for. Most of the times, customers don’t know what they need but can easily describe what they want or what they hate. You can simply sell a product if the masses don’t demand it. Whatever business you are in, it is steered by the ability to know what people want and not what they say they want.

3. Know about the size of your Market.

During my pitching and hustling times, most of the time when I was encountered by the VCs for investments, the first question that popped was to get the intel about the forecast of the potential market. Dominating a subtle market may take ten times the effort. Work out how big your opportunity is and what piece of that market you think you could own.

Most of the grooming and beauty startups initially target a particular kind of audience and knowing their potential growth, they expand, even to the different niche products as well. Remarkably, it works most of the time because of the investment in the market research.

4. It’s all about the Timing.

You can never sell an umbrella on a bright shiny day. One of the most crucial reasons businesses succeeds or fail decided by their timing. Entering the market at the right place and at the right time matters a lot. All of which leads to my first point about not fearing the failure in life because you don’t always know until you try. Before there was a Facebook, there were numerous other social media platforms. Anyone remember Orkut? It was quite big in its time. Then Facebook came, and the rest is history. Facebook didn’t create a dramatically better a social media as it was all the same, but Mark did create it at the right time.

5. Growth should be your Power.

We have all wondered that what we’ll do if we win any lottery. When initiating your idea into a startup or business, you need to think about what happens if it rises exponentially. How will you ascend? Who would you hire? Would you franchise the business in other cities as well? There’s a saying that if you are trying to build the plane while flying it, don’t be astounded if you crash.

All in All, never stop innovating. If you’re nourishing in the right culture and you are hiring amazing people, and consistently putting yourself in your customer’s shoes, then as an entrepreneur you’ve built a company that should endure. I am raising this last point because I believe as a company, you have two choices: either you innovate, or you die. It’s that much simple.

Author – Aloukik Rathore, Content Marketer and a Hustler

Email – aloukik.r@gmail.com

Here’s the thing about sustainability that developing entrepreneurs need to keep in mind: Some of today’s most successful entrepreneurial brands achieved their size and reputation by weaving planet-friendly policies, practices and initiatives into the very fabric of their businesses.

Take Elon Musk, who has dedicated himself to leveraging technology to make the world a better and more environmentally healthy place. With Tesla Motors, he’s made electric cars cool and mainstream, even as he takes a deep dive into other commercial initiatives to vertically integrate clean energy.  Or Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard, who pioneered the idea and practical application of “circular economy,” as opposed to the linear economy standard – “make, use and dispose.”

However, entrepreneurs don’t have to cause green revolutions to reap the benefits of an environmentally friendly orientation.

One route to success is by integrating sustainable practices into the way business is done. It’s becoming the new norm in real estate development, for example, where entrepreneurs can strive to create buildings that meet such sustainability metrics as GRESB, or the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark. Others, like Toronto’s Mizrahi Developments, have demonstrated their commitment to green standards by including Energy Star technology in their developments and earning GreenHouse Certification.

Other entrepreneurs adopt a green focus that’s reflected in their operations. A sustainable model can improve profits and reduce costs by reducing waste and recycling. Making a practice of acquiring energy-efficient equipment can also yield returns in terms of overall business performance.

Consider the benefits to an entrepreneur of an emphasis on sustainability:

• A burnished brand. Increasingly, people base their decisions to purchase goods and services on a company’s sustainability practices and overall impact on the environment. A strong brand creates lifetime customers. It’s also an important competitive differentiator. It’s something that can solidly carry an entrepreneurial business into the future.
• An attractive posture for recruiting and retaining employees. Younger generations, especially, have been raised on a pretty steady diet of messages promoting environmental protection. They not only want to buy from sustainable companies, but want to work for those that walk the talk. Your sustainability practices will ensure people who share your values will want to work for you.
• Better productivity and reduced costs. Sustainable business operations create greater efficiencies. This streamlining conserves resources by reducing waste, which improves employee productivity. Ultimately, costs go down.
• Easier compliance with government regulations. Climate change, dwindling energy resource and a jeopardized environment are all in the sights of government regulators. Taking a proactive stance on your organization’s role in countering such impacts will put it in a better position to respond in a timely manner.
• Happy investors and shareholders. Ultimately, sustainable companies do better overall. Various studies have shown that high-sustainability businesses substantially outperform low-sustainability companies as well as the market in the medium and long terms.

Making sustainability and environmentally friendly practices a building block of an entrepreneurial business can be a challenge. Early stage companies, in particular, tend to cope with issues like a small customer base and high operating costs that can inhibit investment in a sustainability strategy. Those that can overcome such barriers, though, will make substantial contributions toward the greening of economic development.

Whether an entrepreneur is grappling with the inception of an idea or its execution, the significance of having a mentor for sound advice and proper guidance cannot be denied. A good mentor helps an entrepreneur think through the business idea, suggests various ways to generate capital for the business, offers the benefit of his experience, and makes up for the know-how that the entrepreneur may lack in the field.

A helpful mentor will be sincerely invested in your entrepreneurial success. Having a mentor who believes in your business idea is a great confidence booster. Finding a mentor who genuinely cares for your success is rare, and there’s nothing quite like actually having one by your side.

Here are five great ways in which mentors invaluably help inexperienced entrepreneurs.

1. They Impart Practical Knowledge Not Found in Books

There’s no doubt that motivational books help momentously in boosting the confidence of young entrepreneurs. Various autobiographies of business stalwarts also offer great insights into their experiences of running a successful business. But it is an unstated truth that most authors are not comfortable with revealing everything in their books. A mentor, on the other hand, is your guaranteed help in dealing with challenges during your entrepreneurial journey. He/she has practically dealt with the obstacles of running a business and fought through them, which is why he/she can offer you hands-on advice when you face dire situations.

The combination of motivational books and the comradeship of a mentor can prove to be great for your fascinating entrepreneurial journey and keep your entrepreneurial spirit high.

2. They Help Develop Connections within Industry

Starting from the bottom of the line and finally breaking into an important industry circle can be intimidating, especially if you do not have prior contacts. A successful mentor comes with an unlimited network of connections that can help a newbie enter the industry circle. Since a mentor already believes in your idea and is working with you for the success of your venture, he will introduce you to his connections in the industry and also recommend you.

It is also a well-known fact that investors trust a start-up that is recommended by a successful connection or friend. So, having a mentor helps both ways – building network connections and establishing credibility in the industry circle.

3. They Assist in Better Financial Management

One of the hardest parts of maintaining the start-up course is to monitor its cash flow and stick to the business plan. More often than not, business execution does not go exactly as planned on paper. Numerous practical situations are responsible for the drift from the initial plans for your business. Only a mentor who has faced such situations and dealt with them can help a budding entrepreneur with the practical know-how of dealing with complex financial and maintaining a sustained cash flow.

From hiring employees to investing in business development, a mentor helps in better utilization of financial resources and provides a good understanding of business management.

4. They Can Develop Better EQ and Reassurance

Implementing decisions with an emotional mind-set can prove fatal for a business. There’s no doubt that emotional maturity is crucial for the success of a business, but passion for your dream can often bring emotions into the picture. Having a mentor will help you keep emotions aside and think practically when taking critical decisions.

During the initial stages of the business, inexperienced entrepreneurs may need mental reassurance that their chosen path will lead them to success. A mentor helps the entrepreneur in dealing with inhibitions, worries, uncertainties, and promotes self-confidence that reassures a bright future.

5. They Aid Longer Business Sustenance

As per statistics, more than 30% of new ventures do not survive for more than twenty four months, and 50% don’t make it past five years. An entrepreneur with a mentor should consider himself lucky. It is a proven fact that more than 70% of businesses guided by a knowledgeable mentor survive for more than five years. One of the biggest reasons for this success is that a mentor is invested in your business right from the start. He helps you design a good business model, and improves your skills through constructive criticism and positive mentor-ship.

With the help of a mentor, entrepreneurs can build businesses that are more organized, and grow their professional and personal skills through the mentor’s experience.

As a young entrepreneur, there may be several occasions when doubts about achieving success come to your mind. Having a mentor gives the encouragement to run the business with refined intellect. Mentors are essential to the success of a business and if you don’t have one yet, it’s time to be proactive and find a mentor who believes in you and your dream.

About the Author

Article Contributed by Dan Razak

While some new business owners are more modest when it comes to their expectations than others, the end goal that they all share is the success of their young company. Some aspire to make their brand as popular as much as Coca-Cola or McDonald’s, and that way, create a legacy that will stand a test of time, while others are merely content with the idea of being their own boss. However, in order to get there, one must first reach some minor milestones along the way. With this in mind, here are five easily reachable goals that every new business owner should set their mind to.

1.      Keep your employees

What makes people fall in love with their workplace? Well, there are several factors. Some are driven by ambition and chances of vertical mobility. Others are motivated by greed. Then, there is a number of people who feel some sort of loyalty towards your brand or their boss. This final part is particularly important since there is a study that shows that people are more likely to quit because of the manager rather than the company. Be that as it may, as your employees start gaining more knowledge and start delivering promising results, your competitors might decide to try and poach them.

2.      Develop a sense of community

An ideal team model in the 21^st century puts a heavy emphasis on diversity. Even though this may bring better results, this also means that you are supposed to put people coming from different backgrounds side by side and expect them to just get along. Well, this is actually not impossible, as long as you are there to give them a little push. Try to turn your teams into homogenous communities by exercising teambuilding activities and making interactive meetings where they will be able to share their ideas with each other.

3.      Develop a better tax strategy

In order to keep your business profitable, you need to pay attention to both your income and your expenses. One of the ways you can become more efficient in the latter is by developing a better tax strategy. However, this would require you to have a better understanding of tax structures, which would in turn give you a much more reliable succession planning. The best way to get a grasp of this would be to find a reputable tax accountant in Sydney area and consult them about this issue.

4.      Learn how to say no

One of the biggest mistakes new owners make is believing that saying no to a business offer is a bad practice. While there is some sense to this claim, it is even worse to agree to a project you know you can’t finish in time. This way, you will get a bad reputation and probably be forced to pay some penal fees for failing to follow up on your promise. Sure, it may be difficult, but for the sake of your business you must learn how to say no to your clients. Still, you’ll need to be quite delicate about it. Luckily, there are more than a few good ways to say no to a customer or a business partner.

5.      Diversify

Finally, keep in mind that putting all your hopes in a single product or service seems more like gambling than running a business. This is why, in 2017, you need to try and diversify a bit. Try to make another source of income for your business, even if it means advertising or retailing products made by other companies. Once you manage to secure at least a few streams of revenue, your business will become more independent and you will get into a position from which you can make some riskier moves.

Conclusion

While on their own, each one of these goals may not make that much of a difference, together they can completely revolutionize your business model. Apart from improving your income and making your company’s future more predictable, they are also making your business more flexible. This means that no matter what happens in the future, your business will adapt much easier.

About the Author

Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is a coauthor on several websites and regular contributor to BizzMark Blog. Currently, he is working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies.