I remember a few years ago when I started up my own business. Excitement and fear were two major emotions that I faced on a daily business. The excitement of starting my own business would give me chills thinking about all the possibilities. And then the fear at the thought of failure would bring it all back into reality. As I started in my real estate business, I quickly realized that fear wasn’t just a nagging emotion, it was a debilitating and toxic thought that crippled many peoples businesses. So what can you do to help kick the habit of fear out of your business life? A bit of careful planning and some luck can get you onto the right path to success.
If you are just getting started in business, it can sometimes be easy to let the little things take over. You make yourself FEEL busy because you are doing a lot of tasks. But it’s important that you stay focused on the important things. Take a step back and really look at what you want your company to focus on. You should decide what niche or segment of the market you want to focus on and this will allow you to make the planning easier. It will also increase your chances of success! If you take this step back to look at your business, it will give you the opportunity to better understand what products and services you should be offering to your clients.
To the inexperienced new business owner, it’s easy to see how this could come across as simple and not really worth spending a lot of time and energy on, but many people make the big mistake of trying to cater to way too big of an audience and sometimes too small of an audience. Chasing a big target audience may sound alluring and a better business strategy, but this can in fact be a complete killer to your business. This strategy can end up taking your business off focus and broke trying to reach EVERYONE! On the flip side, targeting too small of a market may result in you not being able to even pay your bills.
If you do find the right size of market to work, the next step I would take is to figure out the supply and demand for your product or service. Make sure you choose a field that is in high demand, but it under served. One way of ensuring success is to make sure your company either excels at what it does or has a very unique approach with what it does. A little luck never hurt either! Just remember, choosing a market that is largely in demand and short in supply will increase your chance of survival immensely. But on the flip side, a market that is over saturated and not in demand will almost guarantee failure.
Watch for trends so you can future pace your companies’ direction. This will allow you to see where your customers of the future will be and how to reach them. Knowing where the market is going will also help you track the long term viability of your market and whether it’s even worth working towards. The last thing you want to do is put your money, energy and time into a “fad” business! Anyone remember Pog’s?!
Once you have the general direction for your business, it’s time to think about your competition. How are you going to outperform them? What is your competitive edge? What makes you unique? Why will someone choose your product or service over anyone else’s? If you can’t answer these questions, it’s time to hit the drawing board. Your focus should now be entirely on what is going to separate you and make your business better, faster, cheaper, unique etc. I would spend your time and energy on this till you get it figured out!
And finally, once you have your business plan figured out, its time to think about how you will get the word out. Marketing and advertising are going to be critical in the growth and upkeep of your business so be sure you spend enough time and energy figuring this out.
If I were you, I would stick with reading great business books and learn from those who have done it before! (And of course, read THIS blog every week!)
So if you are just starting out and in the trenches, take peace in knowing that most successful business owners were where you are right now at some point in their career. Stay focused, stay strong and keep learning!
To you and your success,
Ryan Smith – Chief Content Creator