So you’ve made the bold move of becoming an entrepreneur and launching your own business.
How exciting!
I don’t want to burst your bubble, but starting a business from scratch is much harder than it looks.
It calls for guts! And also extensive prep and organization.
All that happens before you even begin…
There are many factors to think about before launching your company.
As an entrepreneur, it’s safe to assume that you have a lot of hard work ahead of you.
Everybody doesn’t hit a home run on their first try.
However, if you go into it with the right assumptions, you’ll have a lot better shot at succeeding faster.
Safe Assumptions For New Entrepreneurs
1. Success is not guaranteed.
The most crucial assumption a new business owner must make is that they cannot guarantee success.
Successful business owners have systems in place to prevent passing up chances. In other words, they make their own luck.
Entrepreneurship is a challenging and risky profession.
How fruitful your endeavor will be is difficult to foretell.
Is there anything you can do to decrease risk?
Those starting businesses would do well to zero in on their target market and figure out how to design goods and services just for them.
You have to care about your target customers.
There’s also a lot of studying in your future.
Taking on big risks in business involves research and statistics.
After all, you can’t make informed decisions if you’re not willing to learn.
2. Business will take up a lot of your time.
It takes a lot of work to be an entrepreneur; thus, it stands to reason that entrepreneurs have to be industrious.
Naturally, you won’t get anywhere if you’re not willing to lift a finger.
Business necessitates a lot of time, effort, and commitment.
To be successful as an entrepreneur, you must be willing to test your limits and take calculated risks.
It ain’t no walk in the park!
Being an entrepreneur is about more than simply making money and gaining independence.
It’s also about experiencing all that the world has to offer.
Honestly, it can be tiring and depleting at times.
A business owner has a lot on their plate between marketing, sales, customer service, accounting, etc.
Focus on your strengths as an entrepreneur and outsource your weaknesses.
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3. You have to be okay with making sacrifices.
For a business to take off, an entrepreneur must be willing to give up certain comforts.
Loans can be difficult to secure, investors can be hard to track down, and client acquisition can be a struggle for some new businesses.
But by doing what they are truly enthusiastic about, these business owners make their dreams come true.
In order to succeed, entrepreneurs often have to give up a lot of things.
When all is said and done, there is only one individual who can’t be replaced, and that’s the founder.
They are the driving force behind their company, and for its sake, they must sacrifice a lot.
4. Failure is inevitable (but it’s alright).
The best entrepreneurs know the importance of learning from their mistakes.
You can count on failing a couple of times on the way to the top.
Entrepreneurs view setbacks as educational opportunities and continue working toward their goals.
I’d even say that failure is a crucial stepping stone on the road to success.
They highlight the areas in which entrepreneurs must improve in order to accomplish their ambitions.
As long as you know when and how to pick yourself up after a setback, failure may actually be a positive thing.
It could even provide you with a potentially faster path to success.
Many of us harbor dreams of starting our own businesses, but few of us are brave enough to really do it.
Most entrepreneurs try to avoid failure at all costs.
But you shouldn’t fear failure.
We all experience setbacks, and the lessons we take away from them help us develop into better people.
5. “Shortcuts” aren’t real.
Putting in long hours to establish a company is crucial to the success of an entrepreneur.
Progressing in a meaningful way in a short amount of time is next to impossible.
We can’t cheat or buy our way to success.
The most effective strategy is to put in long hours and study the successes and failures of others.
It takes a while to build up the knowledge, confidence, and contacts necessary to succeed as a business owner.
There may be breezier ways to accomplish your goals, but this is not always the case.
It’s important to measure success not just monetarily but also in terms of personal growth and development.
6. Confidence is super important.
Being confident is a crucial quality for any successful entrepreneur.
When launching a company, you need to count on this trait of yours.
You probably even have to develop it.
When you trust your abilities, you’re more likely to take the actions that bring you closer to your objectives.
Confidence is a feeling of satisfaction with oneself and one’s own potential.
Self-assured people tend to perform better in life and stand out more than their less confident peers.
Many of you may believe that success in business is entirely dependent on luck or that you simply aren’t cut out for it.
But if you have confidence in yourself, good things are likely to happen.
Successful entrepreneurs exude an air of unshakeable assurance.
If you don’t have this yet, then fake it till you make it!
7. You need money to make money.
Some people have the misguided impression that they can launch a business with no funds at all.
After all, it will start bringing in revenue and fulfilling your financial goals immediately.
I wish I could agree, but they’re sorely mistaken.
Let’s consider the big companies of today.
A lot of funds were spent on developing Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Tesla before they started turning a profit.
The only question is how they managed to keep going.
The only answer is investments.
When investors can anticipate future success, they are more likely to put money into a company.
Even Facebook’s founders, at the outset, were clueless about the company’s potential profitability.
Ads on Facebook didn’t debut until 2011, meaning the social media giant went without funding for three fiscal years.
Back in 2005, the company was saved by a slew of investors who provided funding while it searched for methods to charge customers.
After 12 years, Facebook has amassed a value of over $600 billion.
It is possible to launch a business and maintain its viability without the help of outside investors.
Still, you’ll want the advantage.
Without funding from investors, every sale is crucial to the survival of the company.
That won’t lead to long-term success in business because that simply isn’t sustainable.
You can either put up some of your own money (if you have it) or raise money from other people to get things rolling.
8. You will need to collaborate.
So many enterprises are run by a single individual, proving that one person can indeed make a difference in the business world.
However, each one-person operation faces a huge challenge, and the outcome is usually mediocrity.
Lost overhead is a major issue for one-person operations.
Self-employment is notorious for not providing adequate compensation.
No one understands the true operating costs because the overhead is obscured by the shroud of home-based businesses.
The bad news doesn’t end there, though.
It’s rare for a company run by a single person to have the potential to expand and beat its competitors.
What’s the solution here?
Well, with a business, you get the chance to work together with a partner or, even better, a team.
Sometimes, you will have to work with independent contractors.
When you express your views and ideas to others, you invite criticism.
In a solo operation, it would be impossible to generate as much new information or ideas as would be generated through feedback.
When there is only one person involved in a project, that person’s thoughts will be clouded by confirmation bias, resulting in subpar results.
9. Business and timing go hand-in-hand.
In the sphere of startups, time and timing are frequently misconstrued.
They are frequently confused with one another when in fact, they are not the same.
In business, timing is crucial, yet it can never be predicted or controlled.
You should be ready for your breakthrough business idea to arrive either too soon or too late.
Timing-related problems don’t usually get public because they never amount to anything.
For that reason, they are incredibly challenging to gain insight from.
Avoiding this issue can be done by studying the timing behind a successful startup’s design using the “reverse engineering” method.
As yourself, how your competitors succeeded and how you could replicate their methods.
When it comes to timing, though, you have a measure of influence.
However, it’s equally as easy to let things get out of hand.
It should come as no surprise that a new company has more control over its time.
A strong idea, investors, and a team effort can buy you time when it comes to launching your own company.
It’s possible that working hard under duress can help you out in the long run.
The stakes are higher when time is of the essence, and sales must be made to avoid financial ruin.
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10. You need to be a master planner.
To lay the course of a company’s future, it needs a solid business plan.
There is no way around this.
Putting together a strategy like this is a laborious process.
Sadly, after being written, most documents lay forgotten in a dusty drawer.
The business plan is the road map for your company, and proper planning is crucial to its success.
A road map lays out the steps that need to be taken and when they need to be taken.
Any new business venture has an element of risk, and an entrepreneur who takes on too much risk is setting themselves up for failure or mediocrity.
The company plan must incorporate room for trial and error to prevent this from happening.
You need a method for identifying successful and unsuccessful strategies.
Far too many new businesses base their inception on a rigid concept.
If startups fail, as they often do, iteration offers a way forward.
In a well-thought-out business plan, you’ll find a strategy that accounts for this, along with other methods that will let your company grow.
11. You need to get comfortable with legalities.
The prospect of starting a business can be a massive thrill.
Unfortunately, there are many steps involved in launching a company, and the prospect might quickly lose its appeal.
Top lawyers say that being aware of and prepared for the legal challenges that arise when starting a business is crucial to getting things done right and quickly.
As a bonus, it will lessen the odds that you’ll fumble through the startup process and waste time and money.
Establishing the company’s legal status or structure is one of the many crucial choices you’ll need to make while getting your company off the ground.
Only then can you establish a business model.
Your business operations will be influenced by the type of legal entity you establish.
It will also have an impact on your bookkeeping and tax filing processes.
The legal forms of businesses are:
- Partnership with limited liability
- One-person business
- Limited liability company (LLC)
- Corporation
- S-corporation
12. You must be aware of your weaknesses.
Every entrepreneur possesses unique strengths in areas such as talents, abilities, knowledge, and experience that they may leverage to their company’s advantage.
However, no entrepreneur is so competent that they can master every facet of launching a company.
You may need to wear multiple hats in the early stages of your company.
However, that doesn’t mean you should spend too much time on any one duty or try to tackle anything extremely difficult without proper preparation.
Learn to identify your strengths and areas that need improving.
Some humility is required to acknowledge your weaknesses.
Many entrepreneurs fail because they are too prideful.
This post offers an insightful glimpse into someone’s business journey, providing valuable lessons to learn from.
13. Passion will be your driving force.
Even if it’s not your preferred pastime or line of work, you can still have a passion for anything.
What it does imply, though, is that you will not rapidly grow weary of running that kind of enterprise.
Whether you’re running a small business or corporation, one of the keys to beginning a successful business is identifying a need in the market and filling it.
If you can meet that requirement while still pursuing your passion, you’ll find that your investment pays out in spades.
If you want to start a successful business, you need to give attention to your own interests and combine them with a solid business strategy.
14. You’ll need to learn to manage your stress.
It’s natural to assume that when you don’t answer to a superior, you’ll feel less pressure and more freedom to make decisions about your day.
How stressful could it be to be your own boss?
However, the data demonstrate such is not the case.
Sixty-four percent of workers surveyed said they hoped to feel less pressure after going into business for themselves.
Of those who started out in that manner, 55% succeeded.
Starting a company from scratch can be pretty stressful.
It’s possible that you’ll care more about the company’s success if you’re working for it than if you were employed by someone else.
There’s a chance that your personal life or mental health could suffer as a result.
For many first-time entrepreneurs, managing their own time is challenging enough, let alone the time of their employees.
Problems arise that are outside of your skills and experience that you have never had to think about before.
In fact, when asked what they did each day, 46% of the self-employed stated it was considerably more diverse than when they were worked by someone else.
That means you might have to take on the roles of CEO, head of marketing, head of human resources, and head of design all at once.
15. There might be lifestyle changes.
Many novice entrepreneurs hope to spend more time traveling as a result of the widespread availability of mobile business connectivity.
In reality, only a minority can actually do so.
Even though 70% of would-be company owners reported feeling healthier, just 54% indicated they truly were.
Going into a business will alter your way of life in some way, but it can be tricky to predict just how that could play out.
A large portion of those who wish to become self-employed do so because they hope to enhance their standard of living.
They would prefer to shape their careers according to their interests and preferences.
Truthfully, self-employment isn’t the remedy that many dreams it to be.
Don’t give up because things aren’t going as planned; it would be a terrible mistake for an entrepreneur.
Instead, maintain your motivation, enthusiasm, and mindful readiness for anything.
Only then can you face challenges as an entrepreneur.
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Final Thoughts
I don’t want to paint an unrealistic picture of how easy being an entrepreneur is by glossing over all the challenges it presents.
In other words, running a business isn’t always that great.
It takes a lot of effort, and most people on the outside don’t recognize it.
But for an entrepreneur, the challenge is what keeps them going each day.
The most successful entrepreneurs go into business with the proper assumptions in place.
