Negosentro | Starting a business is an exciting prospect and the drive and passion people feel can quickly blind aspiring entrepreneurs to the realities of working for themselves. If you’ve suddenly found yourself with a brilliant business idea and are chomping at the bit to get started, we want to advise you to slow down for a second and think about what you are getting into here. A lot of entrepreneurs jump head over heels into an idea and leave out a lot of important details about how they are going to make all of their great ideas work. If you are a budding entrepreneur, don’t forget about these four things when starting your business.
Marketing
One of the first things people think about when starting a business is how to market it, but make sure you sit down and do the math on what marketing looks like. You can’t fall into the trap of thinking that marketing your dispensary, or spreading the word about your accessory shop is going to be easy. It takes a lot of work and dedicated consistency to build a marketing plan that delivers. A lot of first-time entrepreneurs think that they’ll just “use Facebook” or social media to spread the word, but marketing is about so much more than buying ads to let people know you are starting a business. Do your homework on marketing to ensure a strong start to your entrepreneurial adventures.
Financing
As with marketing, financing is one of those important aspects of business start-up that actually doesn’t get as much attention as it needs. When it comes to starting a business, you should plan for about 20-30% over your original budget. The reason for such high numbers is that you are going to forget a lot of things. People who have done this more than once will tell you that you need a much bigger budget than you originally planned. And, in case you are thinking of bootstrapping your enterprise, think again: you can’t approach business ownership with a willy nilly approach that has no plan underfoot.
Timelines
Most people overshoot on delivery timelines for getting a business up and running. A lot of people think it takes less time that it does and that is one of the main reasons why the financial pieces fall apart so quickly after starting the business. When your runway is only so big and there’s no room for error, your plans need to be concrete. Every day that your business isn’t making money, it’s spending money and you can’t start a business like that. You need to know with some level of certainty when money and cash are going to flow into your business – at least to help you with the basic operations. You may never turn a profit, but you can run a business drawing a decent salary and paying your employees with your operation costs.
Support
One thing many entrepreneurs overlook is the importance of support when you first start out. While wearing many hats sounds like a fun prospect for do-it-yourselfer in the group, trying to plan and execute on every facet of a business operation is exhausting and difficult. Some people fall down at this point and decide they can’t move forward until they have the help they need. If they’ve already blown through their budget trying to figure things out on their own, hiring someone might not be in the cards as the finances are pulled tighter and tighter.
Starting a business is not always worth it for some people, but if you keep these four things in mind and are focused on the long-game, you can go far and wide with your business. Leave the pride and arrogance at home and ask for the help you need, give yourself enough time to succeed, figure out your finances, and get a strong marketing plan in place that makes sense for you and your brand.
