How To Start Your Own Business
As a kid, you grow up thinking any and every business owner is a billionaire bathing in Ben Frank’s. Soon after, you realize that this is far from the truth, yet a lot of us still love to be entrepreneurs. We work longer hours, we’re always learning, always doing something else working within a time constraint, and we make less money… so why?
It’s the idea of doing something that only you are capable of doing. The idea of not filling the shoes that another ten million people could easily fill if they were taught the skills that you were. It’s the idea of creating something of your own, and fulfilling your vision your way.
Though some may still disagree with the idea of entrepreneurship because “it’s too risky”, or “it’s not a real job”, it seems as though bunches of young professionals are still passionate about starting their own business — they just don’t know where to start.
Most of the time, people are caught up on building, or incorporating, or patenting, or hiring, or something else that is not where your focus should be. All of that stuff comes later down the road. Look down at your feet, this is where you are. You’re not the CEO of a billion dollar company, you’re the CEO of an idea right now. Before you build a company (doing all of the aforementioned), you must have a business.
You probably think you have the most flawless solution to a problem that everyone in the world faces, and you just want to go out and make some big bucks — we all do. Well here’s some news; not everyone faces the exact same problems as you. Go out, and talk to them about the problems that you’re currently facing. Literally, get up off your couch, walk in the middle of the street, and talk to people who look like they would fit your target market. Track their responses, then go back home at night, and see how you can adapt your idea.
After surveying a thousand customers, you’ll probably realize that your first idea wasn’t indeed the best way to address the problem at hand — and that’s a good thing, because you’re better off with the idea you have now than with the idea you had before. At the end of the day, you’re serving your customers, so make sure you’re giving them what they want, not what you want.
Though it’s frustrating to know that what you thought was the best solution to everyone’s problem is not, and you may see it as a failure; finding out that what you wanted to create has little demand in the market, in your first stages of building your company, is a blessing. Would you rather invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on building something to perfection before realizing nobody wants it, or discover it early on when you have nothing invested? Probably the latter.
Next, stop focusing on building a platform. You don’t have thousands of customers to service that you need to organize them all through an app or website, so just do all the work you can with your resources at hand. If you’re connecting influencers to small companies, then do it yourself. If you’re offering to price swap someone’s newly bought furniture, do it yourself. Just like we wanted to connect our drivers to our riders, we began doing it ourselves. Entrepreneurship should not be broken down to a science. Running a business is not easy, but there’s no need to overcomplicate it with specifics, especially at such an early stage. Simply take your idea, make sure there’s a demand for it, and start building your clientele by doing all that you can do on your own. The marketing campaigns, employees, platforms, and big bucks come later.
Nobody said that being an entrepreneur was easy, but it’s one of the most rewarding things you’ll ever do.