So you decided you want to be an Entrepreneur and start your own business – congrats on your decision!
While becoming an entrepreneur may seem easy, it certainly isn’t. It requires a lot of planning, thought and organization. And then you still need to execute.
There are a few key things that you will need to consider before you actually set up your business. The main thing that you, the entrepreneur, must assume when starting is it’ll be lots of hard work. Always preparing for the worst, but expecting the best. Non-stop work on the product, customers, and branding. When you start out, you’re going to also need to do it by yourself most likely.
The life of an entrepreneur is lonely. The majority of the time, it’ll be you working by yourself trying to plan and execute.
Be sure to also go read the How to be an Entrepreneur post here. I cover the top 5 rewards of entrepreneurship and 7 signs that you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur.
Work on the Product Idea, Branding, Business, and More
The first thing is to work on your business idea. Your business idea can be anything and come from anywhere. Maybe it’s a passion of yours or you see a big problem that others have and you want to fix.
Once you have an idea and know the problem it solves, the next step will be to start working out who your target customers are.
I write about creating Minimum Viable Products in this post to test your ideas with customers. You’ll want to continually iterate to fine tune your products and services to what customers want.
Once you’ve tested and know what products your customers want you can then start setting up the business.
You’ll start with things like finalizing your brand name and other things like domain URL and social media presence. I cover much of that information in the Picking Your Brand Name post. That article is part of the How to Start an Online Business series with blogging and affiliate marketing, but it’s still relevant. The information is the same.
After figuring out your branding, you then need to make your product at scale. Whatever product you are offering, you will need to make sure that you can fulfill consumer demand. Take your time to see where you can procure your supplies at a cost that is affordable for your business model.
You’ll also need to figure out the how you’re going to sell – online store and/or a brick-and-mortar store. The marketing side of driving traffic to your store. How you will accept payments, what payment processors.
There’s a lot to do and can’t be covered in just a few paragraphs.
Self Motivation
All the steps to starting a business do not matter if the entrepreneur is not motivated.
Motivation however needs to be there from the start. The level of motivation needed for an entrepreneur is quite high, because an entrepreneur is required to juggle multiple things at once, such as:
- Suppliers
- Accounting
- Legal
- Distribution
- Marketing
- Customers
- and much more …
The tasks can feel endless. Have a headache yet?
Many entrepreneurs get headaches trying to sort these questions out, which is why an entrepreneur needs to be highly motivated at all times.
Entrepreneurship will bring feelings of despair and hopelessness. It’s a given that you’ll feel it because you’re going to be working from home often. An entrepreneur is required to confront multiple challenges and therefore the entrepreneur needs to have the right attitude for the task.
If you are looking to set up your own business, then you need to remember the above. The journey is not going to be easy, so you will need to develop a mental attitude of tackling challenges and problems on a daily basis.
Surround yourself with people who are supportive, because you’ll need people to talk to for those times you need advice or just want to vent.
Doing the Hard Work
An entrepreneur has to be the most hardworking person in the whole team, for a number of reasons. Firstly, in order to set the tone from the top it is necessary for the entrepreneur to set the example for other team members to follow. Elon Musk once said that he worked around 18 hours per day in his PayPal days.
This is also where leadership comes in if you have a team. I talk about building teams in this post.
An entrepreneur needs to understand that he/she needs to give their all to the business. This is their idea and they know best how to make is succeed, the team is there to follow whatever example is set by the entrepreneur.
Expect the Best, Prepare for the Worst
Another important thing to keep in mind is to always expect the best and prepare for the worst.
Failure is inevitable in life, especially when you are an entrepreneur you need to be open to the possibility of failure or pitfalls.
One of the 8 key tips to discover the Producer in you is to Just Do It – don’t be afraid to fail. Fail fast and learn fast, so you succeed faster.
Running a business is not easy and you will do all you can to produce successful results. Unfortunately, there are other risks out of your control. A business at any given time is exposed political risks, interest rate risks, credit risks, market risks, etc. All of these things need to be considered and prepared for as best as possible, but even then the best entrepreneurs cannot prepare every risk.
Challenges and failures come to teach a lesson and successful entrepreneurs take these challenges head on. They turn the failures into opportunities.
Elon Musk failed 17 times in his SpaceX project before successfully landing a used rocket booster, and the company came close to bankruptcy, but he persisted with his idea. He funded it himself, so he would also be bankrupt if it didn’t work.
Pros and Cons of becoming an Entrepreneur
There are many pros and cons of being an entrepreneur. Let’s take a look at some of them.
You are your own boss.
An entrepreneur has the freedom of being his/her own boss. They do not need to answer to anybody and can set up their business the way they want. Read more about being an Entrepreneur vs Manager.
Follow your passions
Becoming an entrepreneur allows you to follow your dreams and passions in life by doing the work that you love to do. Compare this with a job where you may get paid good but you may end up spending 9 to 10 hours each day doing something you do not love.
Share of profit.
An entrepreneur in the end gets the biggest chunk of the profits of the business. This is the reward for all the hard work put in by the entrepreneur.
Responsibility of decisions
Responsibility for every decision rests with the entrepreneur. An employee only needs to complete the tasks they have been given without the added burden of having the responsibility of right or wrong decisions.
Share of loss
Entrepreneurs also have to share the loss when hard times fall upon the business. Just like they enjoy the benefit of profits, they also have to share in the losses when the business takes a hit.
Conclusion
I know I’m laying it on thick with all the hard work that will be needed, but I don’t just want to write how ‘rosy’ it is to be an entrepreneur. It’s not always rosy. It’s a lot of work and most people on the outside don’t see the hard work that entrepreneurs put in. But for an entrepreneur, the challenge is what they love and what drives them every day .
But if you’ve gotten this far in the post, congrats!
You’re proving that you’re willing to put in the hard work, because you just read through this post.