What You Need to Know Before Starting a Business: Entrepreneurs Speak Out
As business growth coaches, we’ve worked with some truly inspirational entrepreneurs and business owners - and we believe there is huge value in sharing their experiences and feedback around the opportunities, watchouts, and pitfalls that starting and running a new business inevitably entails.
Be prepared!
One theme that comes through very strongly in the experiences our clients have of working with us is the importance of proper preparation for the realities of the highly competitive environment in which startups operate. Luck, courage, and confidence on their own just don’t cut it!
One entrepreneur we coached emphasises the importance of conducting thorough market research, understanding the local competition, and investigating labour supply. After all, learning who you’re playing against and whose offerings you might complement is critical - but you’re also going to need to recruit, because you can’t do it all yourself – something many entrepreneurs need help remembering.
Seek critical input
A bold business idea can quickly assume a momentum all of its own, but the reality is that entrepreneurs often need critical insight from an impartial adviser to validate whether their idea is genuinely likely to fly – or needs adjustment.
An entrepreneur we worked with recently stressed the importance of examining whether the business idea truly solved a problem within its chosen sector, as a solution in search of a problem is not a viable business model.
Another new business owner fed back that one of the most useful elements of the coaching they received was the insistence on developing a clear idea of how they could distinguish themselves from their competitors - not only in terms of their offering, but in terms of their approach and what they stand for. Involved conversations, considering all the different factors, resulted in the owner focusing on and having confidence in why they were doing what they were doing and how they could make it deliver unique value.
Get on top of your costs
Many new entrepreneurs underestimate start-up costs, and this is an issue that can rapidly sink a burgeoning business if it isn’t addressed early.
Premises, for example, can be unexpectedly costly, with rents, commercial insurance, power and energy (particularly in the current geopolitical climate), and service charges, all poised to bite deeply into revenues.
This is before you’ve even begun to consider ongoing operating costs like equipment, software licences and cloud subscriptions, marketing, supplies, stock, and recruitment, salaries, and staffing.
All this puts pressure on the business owner to not only maximise revenues, but to strengthen processes like billing and cash collection, to ensure the money is coming through quickly enough.
By working with an adviser outside the business, you are able to build up an objective view of costs from the outset and be guided on how to manage your business to minimise their impact.
Demonstrate value
In a crowded marketplace, communicating the unique value of your product or service can be a challenge, but it’s important to remember that “show” often works better than “tell” for articulating your differentiators and establishing credibility.
So, offering free trials or a free tier for your products or services is one way of engaging prospects early, accelerating your offering’s initial reach, and getting the market to buy in to what you provide.
Once you’ve done this, you can then upsell by introducing additional, paid value that capitalises on the experience of trust you’ve built with your prospects – and repeat the process. Only by properly understanding who your customers and prospects are, what their pain points look like, and how you can demonstrate value that overcomes their objections, will you effectively move them down the sales funnel.
Be accountable for failures (and successes)
Lastly – and we can’t emphasise this enough – be prepared to fail, fall over, stand back up, and go again. Episodic failure of one kind or another is an inevitable part of the high-risk process that is building a business from the ground up.
But it is critical to understand from the outset that whilst there’s plenty of advice on offer from business coach programmes, entrepreneur support groups, small business mentors, and similar, even we, as business coaches, would be first to say that advice on its own is not enough.
Only advice coupled with accountability – holding you to specific actions and outcomes to enable you to learn from mistakes, minimise the risk of failure in future, and grow the business – is truly effective.
To find out more about how we can help you prepare for, and manage, the challenges of starting and running a business, get in touch today.