I was recently asked what are some tips I’d give my younger self about starting a business, knowing what I know now. Three main ideas came to mind as I reflected on it, and I figured if it could help my younger self, it’d probably help someone else so I’ve decided to share them.
1. Purpose over Passion
While it is true, the early years of your business will suck!
You will become very familiar with Murphy’s Law, you will struggle, and you’re guaranteed to question your sanity and your judgement a few times and at least ask yourself :
“Why am I doing this again?”
In these early times, having a real love and passion for what you do will most certainly help make these days much more bearable and may be just what you need to make it through the period.
But it’s been my personal experience, that sometimes, you need more than just passion.
Your ability to endure pain does not guarantee because you can stick it out you’d succeed.
You need to ensure that your business has a purpose bigger than just something you like or feel passionate about.
You need to build a business that solves a problem.
The bigger the problem the better,
The clearer you are on :
1. What is the problem?
2. Who exactly is affected by this problem and in what way?
3. Can I make money from solving this problem?
And you’re able to demonstrate that you can, in fact, solve that problem for them, it’s at that point, you become truly valuable.
The more valuable you are, the higher your chance of long term business success.
2. Entrepreneur or Self-Employed
If you take nothing else from this post, take this point, because understanding this concept will save you years of struggle.
Being self-employed, even though you work for yourself, you’d never have freedom.
Simply because, if you are not IN the business, there IS no business.
Everything revolves around you.
“If you want something done right, do it yourself” is usually the motto of the self-employed person, and with that, comes a lot of risk, and stunted growth.
If you really want to be an entrepreneur, you need to ask yourself,
“How do I replace myself in the most important parts of the business?”
If you’re involved in technical work, baking, hairdressing, photography etc, you may need to ask yourself:
- How do I get someone to do these tasks and I manage them?
- How do I get some to do the marketing and I manage them?
- How do I get someone to do the finances and I manage them?
That’s really the difference between being self-employed and being an entrepreneur and it’s important to remember, these two things are not the same.
3. Don’t Write a Business Plan.
This one is the one that gets the raised eyebrows, but when you’re now starting out, do yourself a huge favour and don’t waste your time.
The most important part of starting your business is the start.
If you have an idea of something you’d like to do, start by testing it.
You think you make the most awesome natural fruit juices, don’t take your family feedback as advice.
Try selling a few bottles, let people vote with their wallets, not their mouths.
After you’ve sold a few you’d get a real sense of what the market really wants.
Don’t go through the process of trying to write something until you have a tested concept. When you test, you will now have an idea of how your market is reacting and you gain some insights from feedback. With that exposure, you’d be much better prepared with a better context and broader knowledge, and a real understanding of what your market is willing to pay for.
***Bonus Skill
Learn Sales!
This is by far the one thing I wish I learned earlier!
Being an entrepreneur is about selling. If you think sales is a bad and dirty word, you may want to reconsider your life choices now.
No business, regardless of how great the product/service/solution is, will exist without sales. It is the most valuable skill, bar none.
Everything I mentioned above will be of no use to you if you can’t uncover the real problems your market faces, and present them with an adequate solution aka being able to sell.
I truly do wish you well on your business journey, and remember, if it were easy, everyone would do it.
