Although entrepreneurship is a promising career choice, starting a business is not as easy as most Millennials think. We live in a Startup Era, where most people believe that a good business idea is the only important factor for building a successful company. They forget about the money and the hard work that each entrepreneur needs to invest to build company’s infrastructure and initiate its development.
In this article, we will share some of the things you need to know before you decide to start a company. Most of these things you won’t find in inspirational articles for happy-go-lucky entrepreneurs.
Don’t have a business idea? Copy someone else’s!
This concept is probably the only shortcut you will be able to make during your entrepreneurship career. Having an original business idea is not essential for a successful company launch. You can also start from copying somebody else’s successful idea. Copy it and then try to adapt it to your local market, or even better try to find a way to improve it and make it more efficient by eliminating mistakes and bugs. Many businesses and products that are highly popular today are nothing but rip offs.
Get a mentor
If you think you can just walk into the desired market, guided by few entrepreneurship video tutorials and how-to articles, you have no idea how business works. In entrepreneurship, every step needs to be thoroughly calculated. The easiest way to avoid rookie mistakes is to ask more experienced entrepreneurs to give you advice and serve as your mentors. If you can’t find an expert mentor, you should start your company from your local business growth hub, and ask for their mentorship services.
Boost your credit score
Entrepreneurs who don’t want to borrow money from their friends and family usually need to take special loans from banks and credit unions. To take an appropriate amount, you will need to boost your credit score, which is not an easy thing to do. First, you should check your credit score in all three credit bureaus in order to see whether all three scores match. Then you should try to pay off all of your debt. Also, try to keep low balances on your credit cards and don’t open new credit accounts, before you finish negotiation with a desired bank or credit union.
Practice your presentation skills
No, you won’t need to present your products and services in TV jingles, like Mattress King from Friends or Dr. Oz, but you will definitely need to impress potential investors with your business idea presentation, if you want to collect enough funds to build an aspiring business. You should practice every part of your presentation in front of live audience, prepare easily understandable and colorful graphics and figure out the best answers for every question potential investors may ask you.
Conduct frequent competition analysis
Other than identifying your competitors, you should also evaluate strategies they use and determine their strengths and weaknesses. When doing large competitive analysis, you should share your rivals in several groups in accordance to how directly they compete with your company for a share of consumer’s dollar. Frequent competition analyses will give you a lot of ideas for features you can add to your own product or service.
Study labor law
United States’ federal acts that govern relations between employers, employees and labor unions are some of the most lenient laws of this kind (from employer’s point of view) in the whole world. For this reason, you should thoroughly study the U.S. labor law and ensure all employees’ rights that are guaranteed by these legal documents. Depending on the type of business you want to launch, you should focus on different federal acts. For example, if you are planning to open a production plant, you should focus on Occupational Safety and Health Act and learn about safe working conditions and procedures that should be taken in case some of your employees gets injured. Employees often hire work injury lawyerin cases like this, and you will need to know your own rights and obligations in order to avoid expensive lawsuits and settlements.
In spite of 24 hours a day working time and all other difficulties that beginner entrepreneurs are facing, starting your own company is definitely one of the most exciting things you can do with your life. Just don’t be fooled by thousands of inspirational articles that present entrepreneurship as child’s play. To build up a successful business scheme, you'll need to work your socks off.
