Starting and running a business is an incredible journey! Here are 10 things I wish I knew (or I wish someone had told me) before starting my business
- Don’t underestimate your idea! Discussing your business idea with friends or family can be your first wrong step in the search of your dreams. I remember hearing a very financially successful person who worked developing start-up businesses telling me he had given up explaining to his dad what he did for a living. People might not get it… If you believe in your idea and you know it has a market and potential to work, give it a try. There is always space for one more café, one more wedding photographer, one more graphic designing business. This is not the issue. The issue is: how do you start? You will read loads of entrepreneurial articles saying, just do it! Just do it today! But the truth is, you need to know what you will offer at what price, where, when and most importantly: how.
- Define your differential – What will you offer that other similar businesses don’t? What’s your differential? Why would people come to you rather than to any of your potential competitors?
- Get your finances right – Planning your business for at least the first 3 years of operations is essential for its financial health. How much money do you have to invest? How much money will you need to keep your business running weekly? Some specialists say that you should always have 2-3 months’ worth of expenses in your business bank account at all times. What happens to your finances if things don’t go as planned? How many clients do you need every week to have a profit? Which leads to the next point…
- Get your price right – This is probably one of the smartest business tips I had from a mentor. Defining your price has little to do with how much your competitors charge. How much of your time is required to complete a particular service or to dedicate to selling your products? Your time does have a price and you have to consider your volume of work versus how much your time is worth and the salary you would like to pay yourself and your employees when pricing your services. You would be surprised at how many business owners out there are generating 6-digit sales figures and still make no money for themselves.
- Understand your customers – Understanding what they need is paramount to the success of your business. It’s not really what you want to offer, but what they want and need. Talk to your customers, understand what they do and how you can help. Solve a problem for them.
- Have a plan, have a strategy! – You know what they say “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” Even worse, you might be taken nowhere. Having a strategy is what keeps you focused, what makes your vision break down into plans, strategy, targets. Your strategy may be changed along the way, adapting to the results you get. It is still very important to have plans, measurable goals and results.
- Be disciplined – I know very few people who are disciplined enough to work on their own. Out of these even fewer would be able to work from home, for instance. Being disciplined, starting and finishing work at certain times, having a calendar of activities you have to finalise by the end of the week (and making time to prepare this calendar) are a few of the things you can do to ensure you are a good employee (to yourself).
- Make mistakes and learn from them – Mistakes are inevitable. But it’s what you do when you make a mistake that will make you stand out from the crowd. It’s how you deal with it, not beating yourself up, but trying to find the best possible solution to fix it and apologise for it. The next step is to take measures to avoid the same mistake in the future and come to terms with the fact that others will come and you can deal with them.
- Have a mentor. Or more than one. – Sharing and talking about your business challenges with someone with business experience, who is probably a few years ahead of you in their career, is the best thing you can do for your business and your mental sanity. Venting to your grandmother might make you feel good, but she is probably not the one to give you the answer you are looking for. Have a mentor to go to when you don’t know how to deal with your staff. Someone who you admire for their business network, their kindness, grace and their communication skills. Allow yourself to have another mentor to go to for money issues, someone who is financially successful and whose advice you trust. Mentors are absolutely vital in the beginning of any business, and as you grow you will realise they may become even more essential!
- Hire people who are different from you and better than you. This is also true for outsourcing some of your work to people who have the expertise to do something you don’t. How much of your time will you need to spend learning about social media and digital marketing to manage your business social media accounts effectively? And even if you do spend all this time learning this, how long will it take you to get the results you would like? Now, do the maths: how much would it cost you to hire a part-time social media manager/content writer or outsource it to an agency? Remember your time has a price and think about the quality of work you would be able to do in comparison to what an expert could do. This is also true for bookkeeping, sales, web development, SEO and so many other things. Don’t think you have the budget? Talk to your mentor! I’m sure they will show you that you actually do!