First reason you are reading this is because you own a business and want to be successful. Success must be a prefix to entrepreneur. Right? It’s worth the effort. If you believe in this, you would also want to read these 7 proven techniques that will guide you to be a successful entrepreneur.
1. Write Your Clear Business Plan –A Blueprint for your success.
For you to be successful, you need to answer following basic questions that will define your business strategy. It’s just like building a beautiful home. You need a blue print for your home. You need to have a strong foundation. The blue print laid down each specifics of the house – what will come where with exact dimensions, what ingredient will be used etc. All the people working on home refer to the blue print and if anyone forgets, may refer to it.
Your business plan is just like the blue print of your house. More detailed and specific your business strategy is, better it is. It will be your guide and keep you in the right place. Not only that it will help your team understand the business goals as well.
What’s Your Purpose? Why did you start your business? “I started to be my own boss or be independent” is a very vague personal statement, or something like “I joined my family business”. This must transcend to a much clear entrepreneurship goals.
44% of entrepreneurs started their business because they saw an opportunity to create something great. This looks like promising and not a passive statement.
a. What type of enterprise you want to build?
b. What are the risks and sacrifices involved? SWOT and market analysis.
c. How will you get there? – Business Strategy
What should your business strategy be like?
For being a successful entrepreneur, you need graduate from tactical or short-term decision maker to long term strategic orientation. Entrepreneurs who have specific goals have a better chance to do well.
What’s Your Purpose? Why did you start your business? “I started to be my own boss or be independent” is a very vague personal statement, or something like “I joined my family business”. This must transcend to a much clear entrepreneurship goals.
44% of entrepreneurs started their business because they saw an opportunity to create something great. This looks like promising and not a passive statement.
- What type of enterprise you want to build?
- What are the risks and sacrifices involved? SWOT and market analysis.
- How will you get there? – Business Strategy
What should your business strategy be like?
For being a successful entrepreneur, you need graduate from tactical or short-term decision maker to long term strategic orientation. Entrepreneurs who have specific goals have a better chance to do well.
Your business strategy should ideally define the following clearly –
What need you are wanting to satisfy? – Define your product or service. Entrepreneurs/businesses that specialise in an area of expertise do better than those offer anything to everything. Why McDonalds specialise in burger is not their compulsion but their strategy.
Who will buy from you? Define your target customer/market.
Why will they buy from you? Your USP- Unique selling proposition.
How much you want to make? – Your target sales/profit/reach.
How you will reach there? – Your SMART Goals
How will you finance your business? – Financial plan
How do you want to grow? Define your plan for 1st year, 5 year and 10 year plan.
Once you have defined your business plan, your next step is to build a team.
2. Hire Great Team or Partners
You need a super productive team in order to be successful. Even solopreneurs need a team. Look for the right tribe until you find them. Share your passion with the prospective team members and look for the same passion in their eyes. Passion and believe in what you are doing will boost them to go extra mile.
Finalise right packages that satisfy as well as motivate your team. If possible, make the use of Psychometric tests to have right people fulfilling your desired criteria.
Your team should complement you. Look for 2 type of people –
a- Those who can take off your burden
b- Those who have skills other than yours.
You can increase the chance of your success by getting some smart partners or co-founders.
Mind the following points before getting partners on board.
Ø You and your partners need to get along.
Ø Hire partners you respect.
Ø Partners with bad attitude make bad team.
Ø Make sure your partners have great character. They are honest and have integrity.
3. Manage Your Time like Successful Entrepreneurs Do
A successful entrepreneur values time. So, don’t spend your time doing something that someone else can do.
a. Use the support of your team to do jobs that you shouldn’t be spending time on.
b. Have least no of social media apps on your phone
c. Make us of google calendar or any other task management app. This really works.
d. Prioritise. Write the first three most important tasks for the day and assign time. When complete, move on the next three.
e. In case stuck at one job, don’t cling but move on to do next job.
f.Say ‘No’ to the phone gossip sessions
4. Plan your Finances
So, if you have started your business, you will need money to run it. Your success depends a lot on how you will fund your business and how you are going to utilise your funds. decide how you keep your business afloat.
Here are some finance techniques you can use –
A. Self-Funding – Your own savings, family and friends- This is the first option most of the entrepreneurs try. If you are asking your family members for money, you need to structure it if it will be loan with or without interest or you are offering them equity. Show them how long will it take you to return and be explicit about any risks involved.
B. Get Angel Investor – If you have it in you, there will be people ready to invest in your dream venture. All you need is –
- Track record to show – If you have already started up and showing a growth sign tells your investors that you are serious.
- A sharp Business Plan with clear timeline – to show to the investors that you mean business
- Your Team Experience – Angel investors look for more experienced team. So, it will pay off if you can get a good team of 3-4 on board
- Get advisors/mentors on board – This will help bring the investors’ fears down.
C. Try Crowdfunding –You can try crowdfunding platforms like Ketto, Wishberry FuelADream and the likes to fund a project or a cause. Many people who connect with your dream will pledge their funds without any expectations of returns. Many of these platforms charge small commission fee. But remember that this can’t be your long-term funding solution.
D. Get an SME Loan – There are several banks that offer loan for SME under the MSME scheme. Eg. If you are a SME, you can apply for Rs. 10 lack of loan under Mudra scheme at comfortable payback module. You can connect with your CA or go to MSME site to know more about these loans.
E. Borrow from P2P Digital Platform – If you are not able to secure loan from the bank and time is running out you can try P2Ps. Digital Peer to Peer Lending platforms like Faircent and i2ifunding that connect individual lenders and borrowers allow you to borrow funds at low cost.
F. Take it easy with your funds – Be conservative in your business spending. Put a ceiling on how much you want to spend and accordingly decide to spend on your various operations. For example – Decide you will spend X percentage on marketing, Y on salaries, Z on infrastructure and travel, so on and so forth. Not seeing too money in your expense column will add to your confidence.
5. Try These Marketing Mantras for Success –
Find out, define, target your customer– You may have great product or service, but it is equally important to validate your client base. When you know who will pay you, there are chances that you will be successful.
Target the easy customer first- Try to identify the easy customers who you don’t have to try hard to sell. They are important to make your business viable and to give you the much-needed doze of encouragement. Later you develop strategy to target tougher customers.
Treat Your Customer Like King: If you want to be successful, be customer centric.
“The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customers. Our goal is to be the world’s most customer-centric company”- Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, places his customers above everything. This is one reason due to which his wealth has surpassed that of Bill gates’.
Pay attention to your unhappy customers, advises Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft, urges entrepreneurs in his famous quote. They are a great source of learning.
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”, Bill Gates.
Hear them out. A successful entrepreneur will always be interested in the gaps and flaws and use that knowledge to come up with better products and services. They are the ones who never allow you to be complacent. In fact, if you convert an unhappy customer into happy customer, he/she can be a great marketing channel for you.
Build Your Personal Brand
To be a successful entrepreneur, you must start working on creating a strong personal brand. This means develop yourself as a brand the world sees and relates to. In other words, how you want the world to perceive you..That doesn’t mean you fake things. Its just that you need to work on your strong points and create impact on people who meet you.
Five important characteristics of a powerful personal brand are –
a. A personal brand is positive
b. A personal brand is consistent
c. A personal brand is honest to oneself and to others
d. A personal brand has a unique identity, different from others.
e. A personal brand supports one’s career goals
Five important personal branding techniques –
a. Write down three words you want people to say about you in your absence?
b. What are your biggest strengths? Write down your version and ask some honest friends’ version and compare.
c. Write down names of people who are brands in your niche. And, why you admire them? Eg. if you are a digital marketer, who are the brand that you aspire to be like. For me it would be Neil Patel.
d. “What is my USP?” – Write down clearly what makes you different from others.
e. Act and build your reputation online and offline, both
Building your personal brand is very a cost-effective technique that supports your business even if you don’t have much funds to market.
6. Network with right people
In order to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be in the right network, create your network and make your network work for you. By networking here, we mean physical on ground networking. Only investment you need is time. Invest time regularly to meet the right people. People who will add value and you add value to them. People are more likely to buy your offering if either they know you personally or someone in your network refers you. “The important rule of networking is be ready to give before you expect a return. In some time, your network will start working for you”, says Paritosh Pathak, strategic networking guru. There are n numbers of networking platforms like TIE, BNI, wannapreneur2Entrepreneur, WomenOnOwn (WOO for women entrepreneurs)
that specifically designed for hand holding, mentoring and marketing for entrepreneur.
The richest people in the world look for building networks. Everyone else looks for work.—
Robert Kiyosaki(American businessman and best-selling author)
7. Act and Grow
Successful entrepreneurs act rest procrastinate. Planning is done already, goals are laid out, it’s time to act.
There is nothing called overnight success, viral popularity, millionaire success. If study their lives from a closer lens, you will find sleepless nights, hard work, long working hours, dedication, struggles and failures. They went through it all as they acted. Everyday.
Yes, that’s the key. You need to achieve every day. In order to grow, you need to move. And, one day…BOOM! you crack. In fact, Mark Zukerberg, tells entrepreneurs to move fast.
“Most companies mess up by moving too slowly and trying to be too precise. When you are moving quickly or doing anything like this, you want to make mistakes evenly on both sides. We wanted to set up a culture so that we were equally messing up by moving too quickly and by moving too slowly some of the time. So that way, we’d know that we were in the middle.” – Mark Zukerberg, Founder of Facebook
Summing Up
Success doesn’t come easy. There are many ways you can learn and apply in your businesses to be successful. Learn from the success and failures of legendary business tycoons imitate their success. So, just follow your passion, create a product that people love. Plan well and never over spend. Make profitable partnerships and ventures.