An entrepreneur’s journey is all about advice on businesses that comes from different places. The entrepreneurs sometimes learn the lessons from their own experience or even sometimes directly from their business leaders and mentors. Some of this advice even impact the entrepreneur’s business course to a large extent. For example, many Young Entrepreneur Council experts have discovered tips for building your business drawn from their own experience. Below are the nine best lessons or advice these experts have learnt throughout their journey and want to convey to their companion business owners.
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Always have a Plan B
To have a plan B for your every move is a very important thing and is one of the best tips for a business. When it comes to setting up a business successfully, many factors play a major role during the process. You need to invest your precious time, hard work, money, and a dash of luck. One always needs to be prepared for the challenges to come on their way as it will be full of ups and downs. Sometimes, the things you have planned for may not turn out to be the way you wished them to. For such situations, you always need to be prepared with a backup plan which will save you from any damage. A backup plan is very helpful, especially when you have just started.
Niche Down and Focus
When one starts with a new business in the market, the aim is to reach their targeted audiences, but when you work to deliver everything to all your audiences, you might end up reaching no one. For example, John Murphy (eBike Generation) sells electric bikes to its customers. He found it extremely difficult to compete with the other e-Bike stores that put equal and even more effort into reaching out to their audiences. He then made his mind to only focus on the hunters, which helped him serve quality service, and also, the hunters who were looking for e-bikes fetched him every time. When it comes to advertising, website content and email marketing will help you reach your targeted audience.
Become good at a particular thing and then venture out into different avenues
It becomes extremely important to first focus on just one product and establish it before branching out. Having several ideas is fine but pick the most developed or the best one first. This will help you develop a stable foundation which is essential for the future of your business.
Look into making Right Connections
Every business journey is truly based on the right connections that one makes during their journey. When you make connections with the right kind of people, there is a greater chance to achieve the success you are aiming for. This will help you to understand the demand, audiences, and market.
Initiate Now and Fine Tune As You Go
We need to start. Making a pitch-perfect service or product right at the start is quite difficult. It is rare to hear of such a situation. To make it competitive and viable, one needs to fine-tune the product over time, which comes with experience. So, one needs to make the first step and make alterations and adjustments side by side as per the market needs. So the motto should be to adapt continuously after the start.
Focus to be Memorable
Being memorable is the key to get success in business. Just imagine if no one remembers who you are; getting hired, selling, or purchasing your inventory from time to time becomes problematic. Out of the box, thinking is needed to get out of comfort zones. The old meetings and sales tactics are not giving the required outcome. That can be something as gimmicky as bringing sweets for the customers which they had the previous night. This is just a gist to show that the slides may not be enough. Creating a connection with the customer may make the bond authentic and memorable, thereby, making the customer feel special.
Own Your Building and Operate the Business
Owning your building can be quite a game-changer. There are several benefits from having your building, especially related to tax, such as income tax deductions, interest expense tax deductions, depreciation, and increased equity things. There is another benefit of owning your building: creating a fresh, better ecosystem for the working people. Revamping and remodeling to consider what the employers and employees need is gold as it improves the morale to a great extent which makes owning your building worth it.
Be Picky About Your Mentors
When we are on the initial phase of setting up a business, people with little success on the entrepreneur front looks good for being a mentor, but we should take our time and see them as potential employees. They might have a huge fan following social media, but they don’t have the IRL clout to support it. It gets difficult sometimes to make out from the social media presence with cheap graphics, snappy content, and fake followers doing the rounds. So, one needs to aware and follow only those who have a proven track record of followers, companies, and million-dollar ideas. It is better to follow Elon Musk and Warren Buffet rather than getting swayed by coaches with no business sense and poor dialogue.
Enjoy the Journey
The main tip about business is that the journey to success must be enjoyed. We might skip little milestones after a small high and strive to achieve the next set goal. Humans are hardwired to always desire more after reaching a particular milestone. The process should be enjoyed, and happiness and joy will also increase side by side. This will make you more aware of your journey and make you more prepared for future success.
