If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This famous saying couldn’t be any truer then when it comes to successfully building a business. If you want to become an entrepreneur, listen to what these “been-there done-that’s” have to say about getting ready:
1. Network Now To Sell Later
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: The most important thing you can do to succeed later as an entrepreneur is to build your professional network now.
Let the people in your industry get to know you as being “super nice.” Get everybody to like you and get a good reputation.
Then when you have a startup and you need to sell, members of your network will be more open to buying from you, referring you to other potential customers, and helping you out if you run into a bind.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Start reading blogs with a small business or micro business focus. This will start familiarizing you with required steps, useful sites, and small business trends.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Create a personal database separate from your current business. Keep detailed information including how you met, projects you worked together, common connections and other relevant personal information. When you start your business you have data already created to serve as an instant referral or client base.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Be very organized and plan out your personal marketing strategies in a timeline. Also, have all your email addresses and contacts updated with all the latest info. Be very pro active, organized, friendly, honest, and positive. This down economy is temporary…it will rebound!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: The key preperational activity one can do in order to begin to pursue and pave their entrepreneurial path is to network. Networking is one activity that any walk of life can engage in to prepare themselves for future needs. In beginning my own company at the age of 20 I needed to begin to network at an earlier age, forcing me to meet many people and gain further advice in my particular areas of interest. If I ad to give an additional tip it would be to seek out ways to help finance your venture.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: GET YOUR HEAD RIGHT! Most people spend countless hours on business plans, marketing strategies and production, for example, but little or no time on preparing themselves emotionally and mentally. Owning a business, requires a certain mindset and emotional stamina that is very different from being an employee. Understand your mental and emotional strengths and weakness; and take this time to build these core intangible muscles. Wendy Franklin Muhammad, The Authenticity Coach www.theAuthenticYouOnline.com
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Follow your passion, don’t chase the money. Most people fall into the trap of establishing a business in a niche that appears to be popular, a hot topic where other people are making money. That’s a recipe for disaster. Instead, think about your interests, hobbies, and passions. How can you share your knowledge in one of those areas to help other people? The money will come naturally.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Our favorite tool for helping people realize their new business dreams is to have them visualize what their business will be like in 3 years from now. Like the Steven Covey habit, Begin with the End in Mind, the 3rd year vision helps anchor what the individual wants to create. Then we go into a lot of detail to build the client’s vision. Aspects include: how many products and services, how many employees, who is your ideal customer, what is your ideal day at work, your office, etc.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: The budding entrepreneur should consider the name for their business now – and secure the URL for their website. People expect business websites to be a dot com and they also expect the name to be the same as the business. So start looking now – and consider “reverse engineering” your business name to a good available URL. Once you secure the web address, start building your site so that it’s ready to launch when you are.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Start a small business asap, now, today! It can be selling Mary Kay makeup, hustling products from your attic on eBay, or acting as an online affiliate for Amazon or Clickbank vendors. The experience you’ll gain in marketing, selling and servicing customers will be invaluable when you start your “real business” down the road.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Understand basic financial concepts: Inventory, Cash Flow, Assets and Liabilities, Return on Investment, Profit and Margin, Expenses (fixed and variable), Sales Revenue, Contract terms, Product Turns, Buy versus Lease. No matter what the product or service, it is critical that the fundamentals of finance be understood and practiced before any selling, marketing, production, or other work is undertaken. Failure to understand basic finance is the fastest way to lose the business.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Write your business plan. This one task will help you visualize and focus on what you want your business to be, how you will fund it, and where you want to take it. It takes the idea from your head and makes it tangible. If you wait to do this, you will be like a quarterback playing football while trying to sew the numbers on his jersey at the same time!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Start tracking how long it takes to do various tasks now, so you can have confidence in estimating and bidding on projects.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Begin now to gather a team of people who will help you set up and manage your new business. These will likely be people you have some history with, others may come by referral. Cover the areas of finance/accounting, strategy, operations, staffing and legal. Follow their advice in setting up the business and you’ll be off to a great start.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Develop an image and your expertise, and spread it around. Post on blogs, provide web and print articles, speak at non-profit affairs. You’re putting down bread crumbs that will lead people to you when you open the doors for your new venture. Be selective and consistent with the image you choose.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: I think the best thing a person can do to prepare for their own business is shift their thinking from “employee” style thinking to “entrepreneurial” style thinking.
You can develop this while you’re still working at a j-o-b by thinking of yourself as an independent contractor and the company as your client. How will you treat your clients? What type of vendor will you be? What kind of quality level will you set for yourself?
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Most people love the idea of entrepreneurship. You’re the boss, you get to call the shots and work whatever hours you want. What’s not to love? But the truth is, being an entrepreneur is hard work and requires a lot of knowledge in many areas of business. Even if you plan on hiring people to do these things for you, you still need to be educated in a wide range of business disciplines ranging from finance to marketing to human resources. No need to be an expert but have knowledge of it all.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Start writing down your thoughts. If an executive summary is too overwhelming for you, then begin with bullet points. Separate it in to vision for the company; operational business units and their function; and organizational culture. The first one goes into your executive summary for investors. The last two are how you want to organize your business and the culture you want to instill.
Don’t start without your Executive Summary. If you come across an investor interested in your verbal idea– early than you thought — what will you have to show him or her?
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Making the leap from steady 9-5er to full-fledged entrepreneur is a thought too daunting for most. Consider first taking a smaller leap into a commission-based sales position. You’ll have much of the freedom you would as an entrepreneur, along with some of the structure of a steady position. Your eventual transition to entrepreneur will then be less extreme, and you’ll be able to adjust more quickly/easily. Plus, you likely picked up some valuable selling skills along the way!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: In planning a new venture, developing a business plan is a crucial step to understanding the core business strategy and financial needs. Tap into key relationships such as friends, colleagues, and mentors in the early stages for advice and feedback on your business plan. Many of these people will become engaged in the business concept and become valued partners that can participate as an advisory board for your business in the future.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: My tip of how people can prepare now, so you can excel later as an entrepreneur is to save and learn to actually work the business yourself. Don’t expect to have others running or funding your business from the get-go. Expect to put long hours in and work and fund your own business. If you don’t have your own funds to start, then save to gain those funds. When your business starts to make a profit, put a lot of that profit back into the business to grow it.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: People sometimes underestimate the power of creating a vision.
You could even forego all the books and systems and gurus out there that tout tossing your goals and visions out into the universe. The most vital benefit of having a clear picture about what you’d like your business to be is that it allows you to make the decisions that need making about the steps that need taking in order to build a successful business.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: What many business owners don’t recognize is that a late mortgage, car, credit card or student loan payment will tank their credit card or student loan payment will tank their credit scores. If this happens they won’t qualify for most business loans which require a personal guarantee. If you want a business loan you need to organize your personal bills first!Find out what you spend now, pare that down to as little as possible and then automate your personal bills so you don’t hurt your credit.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Get out of “living one or two weeks at a time” thinking. When self-employed you have to think bigger to succeed and no one is going to hand you a paycheck or tell you when to work, how to work, or take time off. Start by hanging a full year calendar up where you can see it every day to start opening up your mind, planning, and visioning. If you’re really brave, create and hang a FIVE year calendar up! Your life will never be the same.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Get clear on what it is you really love to do and how you want to live your life. It’s important to create a business based on something you’ll be thrilled to live and breathe, that won’t feel like “work” because it’s so completely in alignment with who you are and the lifestyle you want to be living. Especially if you’re making the transition from employee to entrepeneur, you’re going to have to think differently about what’s possible. Get a mentor or coach to help you with the transition.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Visualize what your business will be like once it is successful: How will it work? Where will it be? What kind of people will be working for you? What would your business be famous for? What would your customers say about your business if asked by their friends? Imagine it already happened. Keep that picture in mind. If you really want it to come true and can’t wait to wake up every morning and work on it, you are truly ready. Everything else will fall into place.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Keep track of all of your expenses you pay as you start your business. Those expenses are start-up expenses that are not deductible now, but they will be deductible one day when you start your business. You will be happy you have all of those “saved expenses” & you have to start paying taxes. This includes miles for business which includes travel to seminars, meetings, etc.. and any expenses you pay to star your company like website fees, LLC fees, seminar, entertainment, travel, meals, etc..
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: My one best tip is to take the hurdle of fear. Starting your own business is always scary. Time is not going to change that. Take the hurdle and don’t look back; you’re already halfway in becoming an entrepreneur.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Establish a strong support system.
Many people who start new businesses have come from corporate environments. Although the environment may have been driving you crazy, it did support you with having an easily accessible group of people if you needed to get a second opinion on an idea, vent about a tough phone call or borrow resources. Since over half of all new businesses are home-based–which for many is synonymous with being isolated–creating a strong support system is essential to success.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Your future potential customers have a problem. Determine how you can solve that problem, and how you can do it better than the guy that is already trying to. Are you faster? Nicer? Cheaper? More effective? Smell Better? Or do you have a whole new answer no one has ever thought of?
Whatever it is that makes you unique – grab on to that and don’t let people forget that it is a prime benefit of working with you.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Start saving immediately. This will help you have a little breathing room when you are waiting for payments to come in. It will also reduce your stress level considerably.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Your business can only be as healthy as you are.
Every single thing that is dysfunctional about you will show up in neon in your business. You can work on right creating healthy boundaries right now! Learning to create healthy boundaries makes you a happier person and a way more successful entrepreneur.
If you don’t know how to create and maintain healthy boundaries you could find yourself doing everything but your work!
Hey! Close that door! Can’t you see I’m working?
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: One of the most powerful ways to succeed as an aspiring entrepreneur is to interview at least 3 individuals who are doing now, what you would like to do, later.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Most self-employeds struggle with structuring time, and self-motivation to do the “not-fun” aspects of the job, and keep work from taking over all of life. It’s easy to do what you love, but cold-calling to bring in work is tough. Be prepared to sacrifice a lot.
Start now by scheduling your time — use a PDA or a calendar to schedule the time to develop your business, and stick to your schedule.
Make sure your spouse and family are onboard., Everyone must sacrifice to build a new business.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: It is true: it takes money to make money. Building a business takes cash. So before you start your business, get used to living ‘beneath your means’. Stop going out to dinner and get used to eating Ramen Noodles instead. That way, when your business takes longer to get off the ground than you expected (because it always does!), you won’t feel like you’re missing anything.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: 1) Learn about accounting, business taxes, remitting taxes, hiring employees, remitting employment taxes, legalities and liability insurances for your industry before you start business. 2) Take a business course. 3) Start the business while you are still employed and save the extra money you make. 4) Save 6 mos – 1yrs salary before you quit your job. This will be your salary until the company starts making money. 5) Look into government small business grants and loans to help you get going.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Continually and persistently conduct a mental self-inventory of interests, background, experiences, networks, and potential market niches;
Periodically (or at designated times), apply to paper for review, modification, and comparison to previous self-analysis.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: You are going to be busy. You may not have the time or you may not want to take the time away from your business. Take a nice vacation with those that you care about.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: 1. Increase your savings rate! Build your reserves. YOU WILL NEED THEM.
2. Separate your “musts” from your “mights.” You can do your musts in advance. But resist the urge to work on things that may not be necessary. You could well be spending time, effort and money needlessly. This is a key principle in Just-in-Time production.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Understand that you have to work both in your business and on your business. The business won’t be successful if you spend too much time in one area or the other. In the beginning you will probably have to be everything: owner, bookkeeper, admin, marketer, etc. It is easy to get caught up in the daily “make money” tasks rather than to work “on” the business: developing a one or two year plan, creating products or services, etc. Dedicate time “on” the business so that you can stay in business!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Leverage your 9-5 as a learning environment by working your current job as if you are a consultant: watch for and identify team dynamics and the leadership styles that work and don’t work, look for ways to innovate and increase efficiency, get really good at pinpointing customer and employee needs, practice negotiation and influence, find ways to make the business better. Even if you never pitch your ideas to management, you are training yourself to “think” like a business owner.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: If you’re starting a business or thinking about it, it’s vitally important to protect your name. I had a cyberstalker register my personal name, my cell phone and my home address as URLs, and I had to go to federal court to get them back. Don’t let that happen to you. Register your personal name as a URL today.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Find out what corporate entity is best for your business and how long it takes to obtain in your state. Also find out requirements for d/b/a’s and Master Business Licenses.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: After doing lead generation for a b2b software company and figuring out what worked and didn’t, I put together a lead-generation product offering that gives my customers exactly what I would want to purchase…a strict pay-for-performance lead-gen program where they get to pick the qualifiers.
By choosing something you yourself would buy, you can cut out all the BS that turned you off in the past when others tried to sell similar services to you and that will be your market advantage.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Work for a start-up either full or part time to gain experience with the day-to-day operations and what it’s like being in that environment. If possible work for one operating in the industry you would like to be involved in as an entrepreneur.rnrnThis experience will help you understand and manage the daily struggles and issues start-ups face everyday.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Realize that you do not have to have “ALL” of your questions answered before you start. Most people never start because the fear of the unknown overwhelms them. Simply commit to full time research and learn on the fly!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: You can’t be a ‘leader’ (successful entrepreneur) until you have been a ‘follower’ (observe, study, emulate, constantly seek knowledge to improve).
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Take note of processes and procedures at your current job. Consider how larger problems are assisted by the set process. Chances are you will come up against something similar in your own business one day.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Develop relationships early on with people who are
where you want to be. The advice and support can be invaluable.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: A fat rolodex and empty wallet don’t match. Your business thrives through contacts and the time to begin building your database is before you start your business. Take the prep time to find out who you should know, who should know you, ascertain the industry innovators, and connect to potential consumers. Social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter make it easier to ever to figure out who you want mingle with.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Once you decide you want to be an entrepreneur, the first thing you must do is incorporate! Spend the money and register a corporation. The older your business is, the more prestige it will have. Prospects will take you seriously if you can honestly say “we have been in business for 5 years.” Start-ups are risky. They have no track record. An established company, however, must be doing something right. Incorporate immediately. This will start the clock on your business that much faster.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Put a price on your time, and you will start naturally outsourcing tasks to others and gaining leverage…which will give you scale.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Read “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill – it lists the primary attributes of successful entrepreneurs, the main one being, “to have a burning desire”.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Feng shui has shown that when you’re in the right environment – even a work one — you’re much more successful. That’s why when you’re ready to begin working as an entrepreneur, invest in good office furniture and equipment at the start. Determine a budget and set about creating a working environment that is organized and professional. Forget trying to get by on a card table and folding chair. Be ready to create the environment of success so you can be more successful from the outset.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: 10 Q’s for the First-time Entrepreneur:
You can’t hit the target if you can’t see it!
Who/What is your target market?
Who is your primary customer?
Who is your secondary customer?
What do you offer that is unique?
What value do you provide?
How do you serve this market?
How might you reach this market?
What does success look-like?
How will you know?
What is your game plan?
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: The most important thing that any one can do is to find people with gray hair to learn from their experiences. This is not to say that one shouldn’t make there own decisions. Rather, one should make “informed” decisions.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Think of prepping for entrepreneurship as building the fabled three-legged table, this time with legs made of: 1) connections, 2) experience, and 3) resources. You’re going to start out short on one or more, so act now to maximize the most important ones.
My recommendation? Build connections and experience. Take a job, internship, or even volunteer in a position related to your goal. Getting in the game lets you learn how it’s played (experience) and meet the critical players (connections).
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: “KNOW WHO YOU ARE” – Whether people are going to be purchasing services you offer or products you sell, what they are buying is YOU. Think about it – Microsoft is Bill Gates. Apple is Steve Jobs. Google is “the Google Guys”…. and for many brands of products, the “Who You Are” is the quality of the product – Volvo is synonymous with safety, as an example.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: It’s the day you CONSIDER opening up your business that’s important, not the day that you open your doors and sell something. This means personal items you put into action for your business begins receiving IRS tax deductions for everything you use AND the time you expend to start it up. Having an early business registration DATE (LLC, S Corp, etc) even if you may not use it right away protects your personal assets from being sought after if you have financial issues later on.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Save as much money as possible before starting, because you will never predict every expense, especially starting costs. And talk to as many people as possible regarding your business idea. It will help keep your idea alive and may help hold you accountable to your idea as people continuously ask about your progress.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: 1. Know you market. Many people think they will succeed because someone else did.
2. Know your customer’s wants (not needs because business is mostly based on what people want, not need)
3. Know how to market effectively: positioning, your niche authority, how to write articles, press releases etc.
4. Know why some succeed and more important what caused others to fail.
5. Avoid quick get rich sites and anything close to that.
6. Invest your time wisely, look for valid resources.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Get a part-time job in the industry you desire to start a business in later. Test the industry now, and use the extra cash to further research your business idea; or fund it later on.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Business is not purely a business activity, but also a creative and intuitive activity, As with any creative endeavor, entrepreneurial tasks require a lot of time just thinking about things.
When we enter a “planning to start a business” mode, the world begins to looks different. Everyday life: the issues others comment on, praise, or complain about; news items; product information; investment advice; the minutiae of daily living; are seen from a different perspective. Everything is viewed through the lens of business opportunity. Many of the best new ideas and refinements come from the insights gained as we reexamine the everyday from this new vantage point. It’s important to nurture this immersive process, to think about, talk about, read about, and quite literally, dream about, these issues. When the time comes to move forward with plans, our vision will be both sharper and broader.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Before opening my own wine store, I worked at one first. I stumbled onto a short-term position managing a store similar to the one I planned to open, but even working as little as one shift a week would have helped me pick up tricks, both big and little, that would help make my eventual business run more smoothly.
Perhaps most importantly, I was able to confirm that this was actually what I wanted to do before making the actual leap to wine store owner.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Start networking and affiliating yourself with potential partners, suppliers, entrepreneurs, and marketers. Begin to learn about your market and all the players involved in your field.
Once you know who the players are, you can begin the strategy of who will play, what they will do, and at what point in your business stage you’ll need them.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: It’s great preparation to work full-time in an established company in the same field as your prospective business. Join the related trade association, and network like heck.
When you start your own business, you will already know the industry standards, best practices, and some experts in your field. Follow the practices you like, or break them to do it better your way.
And ask for advice from the leading lights: They will usually answer someone starting out.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: the most important tip is to distinguish whether you’re having an entrepreneurial spasm or are driven to start a business — if you just got laid off, think long and hard about this. If you’re an entrepreneur you may get fired a lot so you have to get used to it. Second, do your market research. Just because you think you’re idea is a winner, you may not have a market. Third, learn as much as you can about business! I mean it. Be able to do a real business plan and a marketing plan and execute them. Finally, if you’re not absolutely passionate about it, don’t bother…it’s way to hard and stressful otherwise.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Start bootstrapping NOW! Cancel cable, lower car insurance, switch to VoIP, research free business tools, pick up pennies, etc.! You must live as frugal as you can until you get out of the zero profit muck!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Start saving for your own business now. Most businesses fail because they are overcapitalized. You need at least 2 years of operating expenses plus living expenses even if you think you’ll be profitable in the first few months of operation. Even if you plan to seek outside investors, no one will put money into your business if you don’t have a personal stake in the business. After all, if you don’t believe in your business enough to put your own money into it, why would anyone else?
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: I don’t care if you write out your business plan on a napkin (or on toilet paper for all you TPE’s) but make sure you have a plan that lists the top priorities that MUST be accomplished within the first year. Not doing so makes them intangible fantasies! Each step should build upon the next with the ultimate goal of reaching your vision. Your ability to plan and set goals is crucial to your overall success as an entrepreneur. So plan, plan, plan because without it failure is guaranteed.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Take the time to write your vision down. What do you know is possible if you create your business. What is possible for your life? What is possible for the industry that you will work in if you were to start your business? Write it down and read it regularly.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Do you have goals? Are they written down? Do you make the common mistake of worrying about “how” you will achieve them?
The mind is a natural goal seeking mechanism – once we set a goal, our subconscious mind takes us to that destination – acting like a guided missile. Too many get limited in goal setting by the constraints of their imagination. We would all like to start a business but may have no powerful, compelling reason ‘WHY’. Connect with ‘WHY’ and the ‘how’ will take care of itself.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Entrepreneurs cannot do it alone. We need a team. Figure out who really is on YOUR team. Who do you need to have in place so that you are supported in making your entrepreneurial life come to fruition? Don’t settle for less than top quality folks…or your business will suffer. If you have reservations about a person and whether s/he is really on your side, then find someone else. Make sure your team members share your values of excellence, customer service, and work ethic. Believe me.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Transitioning from having a boss to being the boss means YOU are the one who decides what you do. That means that there is no one looking over your shoulder and no one requiring accountability. Can you handle that freedom?
Learn now to organize yourself and to live a disciplined life. That will serve you for years to come, not just in your business, but in anything you do.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: The importance of planning cannot be over-emphasized.
Prepare to become an entrepreneur by starting with a business plan. There is no exact formula for putting a business plan together. However, a number of “specific topics” that should be covered:
Executive Summary, General Description, Products and Services, Marketing, Management, Legal, Finances, and Operations.
Remember, your business plan is a working document, use it!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: My biggest tip is don’t get discouraged early on. Never let anyone talk you out of your dream. The first 6-12 months are the hardest.
You will get knocked down. Pick your self up dust yourself off, and get to pushing on for better things. You started this business for a reason; plaster it everywhere to remind yourself when the days are long, hard and dark.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Save your contacts. It is that simple. The minute you have an inkling that you might want to start a business someday, start saving your contacts. Your personal network will be invaluable. If possible, get them to be Facebook or Plaxo friends, or in your LinkedIn network, because that way if they change jobs or move, you won’t lose touch with them. And then, when you finally “cut the cord” and actually start the business, let everyone know! You’ll be amazed how much help you receive.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: In other words, make sure you have at least a basic handle on the various software applications (i.e. Excel, Quicken, etc.)that will help you manage your business finances. If you are organized right from the start, you’ll have insight early on as to how profitable you are, and where potential opportunities exist to tighten your spending. Many new businesses fail because the owners run out of money before their businesses even have a chance. So keep overhead low and track every penny.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Set concrete goals! (Quit rolling your eyes, you know they work!) Truly if you set a few simple goals and WRITE THEM DOWN, it will go far towards helping get what you want instead of just spinning (which is easy to do when you don’t have a plan). The cool thing is when you get to cross them off as completed! (Wow, are you making things happen or what?) It goes a long way toward motivating you to do more and keeping you on-track.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: The best thing you to prepare for becoming an entrepreneur is to really study the market you want to get into. Not sure what you want to do? Then take this time to discover what it is that really excites you while studying the lives of entreprenurs who have been successful. And also, build up a cash reserve to seed your business. Being undercapitalized is one of the major reasons for new business failure – that and not understanding your market. Study and make money is a winning combo!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: The biggest key to help you excel is understanding your company’s personality, and how you relate to your customers. Use that knowledge to define your brand, and make sure to integrate that personality into all of you visual and verbal efforts. Having a strong, but flexible brand can separate you from your competitors in a crowded marketspace and give your company the personal connection that consumers need. Never follow trends in your branding, or you will always be chasing your competition.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Attention Deficit Disorder is a healthy entrepreneurial trait that dedicated professionals must be able to 1. Embrace and 2. Manage. Entrepreneurs have to think about lots of pieces – all over the place pieces that help keep the business together. A good entrepreneur has to have some attention deficit, if they don’t, the big picture will be ignored and being able to look at the big picture, outside of the business and at lots of pieces of the business will make an entrepreneur succeed.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Take a vocation vacation: http://vocationvacations.com/ or apprentice with an entrepreneur that is already doing something similar. Interview other entrepreneurs, and most importantly, spend a lot of time being silent, still, going within, asking your heart and your gut for guidance on how to move forward, what the initial steps will be.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Yes according to me the best way is to listen to the people who have been there and done that, engage with the enthusiasts or you can say the wannabe entrepreneurs and try to gain some confidence and backing for your idea.
In the end learn from the mistakes of people who have struggled at some stage of there career.And yes do not think much, be quick in your actions.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Don’t think you need to go it alone. Leverage the power, acumen and support of others. Begin thinking about the additional talent and expertise that will help grow your business. Think with the Collabortive Factor in mind. Then identify your trusted board of advisors (Note: this doesn’t have to be formal board) – these are the people who have experience and expertise, and above all, are willing to give back. Leveraging this select group of entrepeneurs will jump start the launch.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: The heartbest of your new business will be and must be MARKETING, MARKETING, MARKETING! Fall in love with marketing as a heart-felt expression of your care for your customers or clients and you’ll be well on your way to big success!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Are you doing your passion? As when one does their passion it is so much easier to move their company to great success. Start by asking yurself some questions:
Who needs what I have to offer?
Where do they show up?
What organizations do they belong to?
What publications do they read?
Then create your Business Plan and start SHOWING UP.
It’s like setting up a roadmap, once you know the who,why and the where it becomes easy to achieve success. It is about building relationships
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: If you really want to prosper as an entrepreneur, you have to plan now to be prosperous. The secret is by creating a vision of yourself as being wealthy and prosperous, and place this image or vision in your subconscious mind. Once you get it there, take the necessary action to fulfill your image or vision. By doing this you will always be successful as an entrepreneur.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: I actually have two tips for newbies – first, go to the Small Business Administration website to learn about setting up your company. Once you’ve completed that task, go to the Service Corps of Retired Executives and get yourself a couple of mentors to help you along the path to success. It worked for me and it will work for you!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Create a plan or RoadMap so you can stay on your journey, it is so easy to give up just before you make it where you want to be. Here are a few things to map out:
1. What do you want to do?
2. Who is in your support system (mentor
group, coach, etc)
3. What does the competition do?
4. What makes your business idea unique?
5. How will you market? (Social Networking,
Viral Mktg, Print, Website, etc)
These are only the top 5 questions to ask yourself, however ask & you will succeed
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Your first step is to read Napoleon Hill’s all-time classic book Think and Grow Rich. It’s not so much about money as about properly programming your mind for success.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Realize you don’t have to know everything, you just have to have the right people on your team to get everything done. Don’t try to do it all yourself. Do what you do best and hire out the rest.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Set yourself up with a network of allies that will be a source of support,
help, advice and motivation. This could involve legal contracts for JV partners or Affiliates; or business partner to share responsibility. Here is where you find out your strengths and weaknesses if you didn’t know them already. This will follow finding a passion of product or service to match a “hungary market”.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: In order to be an effective entreprenuer, learning key marketing and advertising skills is a must. It is all about publicity and how you get the word out that will make your company successful.
Today, it is so cheap and easy to take advantage of free publicity. Check out Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, and other social newtorking sites. Also, direct traffic to your website via keywords.
Implementing all these forms of advertising correctly will make your company successful.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Look for a specific niche that you can dominate and create opportunities for that niche. For example, I don’t do just Organization and Time Management (too general), I don’t organize homes, closets, or garages (too general), BUT I do focus on Organization and Time Management for Home-Based Business Owners (a more specific and narrow niche). All of my products and focus is on this small subset of the organization and time management niche, allowing me to make the maximum impact in that area.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: More than at work, working on your own requires focus and organization, especially if you are working from home. You need to carve out space and time to ensure that you don’t get sidetracked. I find that keeping my Palm with me at all times, helps to keep me sane and at least with all the tasks in one place, so I can prioritize them as the day goes on.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: The best way to get ready for the entrepreneuer’s life and also your very first roadblock to success is NOT having a clear vision of where you want to be within 3 years.
Having a mental picture for your business and focusing on that vision draws you towards attracting it.
Creating a vision usually involves all of your senses. Writing (rather than typing) a powerful vision for your business is the engine that pulls you toward what you want.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Working as an entrepreneur can be lonely. Before you set out, create a support network for yourself. This can include family, friends, and business contacts. You can use them as a sounding board as well as “test subjects” in your new business. In the beginning, they may even be your only customers. Find people that you can trust who will support you in your venture but also give you honest feedback. You’ll appreciate both their encouragement and their candor when you need it.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Check out what the Small Business Administration has to offer with workshops, seminars on a variety of topics and even counseling with experienced business owners. They all have the knowledge and resources to help you succeed and best of all, it’s FREE! All it costs is your time. SBA is the best business resource any business owner could ask for!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: If you already have the idea, check the national trademark files to make sure your company name is not trademarked by someone else. Then, purchase your domain name(s) and file your company name with your state and local (county/city) government. Start branding yourself with an online presence in social media. Expand your network, network, network to include other entrepreneurs. Subscribe to all the free entrepreneurship-type newsletters and start gaining knowledge!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: There’s plenty I could tell you, but I’ll highlight the three that matter most:
1. Don’t start your business until you feel you are more-than-sufficiently capitalized. The money flies from your bank account quickly.
2. Keep your credit-card purchases to a minimum. Those can add up quickly, too.
3. BUY, do NOT rent, your credit card processing equipment. I wound up paying more than $1,600 for a credit card processing machine I could have bought for about $300.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Get acquainted with uncertainty – if you can stomach the ups and downs without sacrificing your sanity, relationships & productivity – it’s a good start (if you have a life partner – make sure they’re prepared, too). Do what you can do well – delegate the rest – be honest in this self-assessment. Trust your gut, and try to validate hunches with facts, as much as possible.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: To get ready first determine what you are good at, what your strengths are and if you are not sure take the time to ask the people you trust to give you an honest opinion and then do what you are good at and then become a master at it.You will love what you do. When you love what you do it becomes a passion. Your creativity will be ignited. You will make money and your happiness will radiate to your family and the people you meet. You will live the life you love and love the life you’re living.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Choose your business based on something you are passionate about -you’re going to be deeply immersed in it so you’ll want to love it!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Network, network, network. If you want to eventually start your own business, you should be finding successful entrepreneurs, calling them, and offering to do anything they need you to do. Eventually, you will have built a diverse skill set, demonstrated that you’re up for anything, and have access to contacts who are successful enough as entrepreneurs to know where to find anything that you’d be looking for when doing your own startup. Build the skills and contacts now.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Whenever you plan to start your business, you will need a company name and/or a product/service name. You should research what .com web domains are available and reserve it as soon as you find one that will work. That way, you will have a strong name and the web address to make it work when you are ready to launch.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: By learning to leverage small business software online to run your business, you will save a lot of both time and money and enable yourself to focus on your most critical tasks – delighting customers and growing your business.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Better take a good, long, hard look at your finances now. Most businesses aren’t profitable for at least the first year and often longer. What can you change now to align your monthly expenses with a reduced income while you work to grow your new business? What can you save? Choose your real priorities and be ready to make a few sacrifices in these early days. Plan first, work hard, promote your new business well and the rewards do come!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Starting a business is usually a gamble. Reduce your risk of financial failure by padding your bank account with 6-12 months worth of operating costs – both personal and business related. If you can, get completely out of debt before embarking on a new adventure and DON’T borrow money to start your fledgling biz.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: You might have the best business plan in the world but you are bound to hit some “dry” times sooner or later. Even if you secure business funding, be sure to sock away a healthy sum in an easily accessible personal rainy day fund. That will give you the peace of mind you need to ditch the day job and follow your dream – while avoiding the distracting extra stress that comes with financial strain.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Get into the habit of Backing Up your important data and consider keeping a copy or previous Back-Ups around 20 miles away, at home, at your assistant’s home, at you other office, etc. Just in a safe trusted place. Why? If you are in your office and fire or tornado sweeps through, it might get your PDA, computer, server, AND the Back-Ups.
Keep Track of 3 Things
1) Money Spent (not obsessively, you just need to know where you stand.)
2) People you talk with and people you are told abo
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: If your long term goal is to launch out with your own venture, have at least 6 to 9 months of the income to support your family in the bank. This should be able to help your family meet their bills for a year (as you should be making some money from the start of your business).
The runway for most businesses is longer than you might think when we draw up your plans. Having a full year of money keeps some of the financial pressure at home from hurting your focus on establishing your business.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Financials are the heart of any business, and one entrepreneurs dread…we rebel against those neat columns of black and red numbers. But, financials are very exciting especially if you go from being in the red to being in the black! Before starting your business get a book out from the library about bookkeeping, visit a CPA and learn all about profit and loss statements and balance sheets! I love my financials, and wish I hadn’t waited so long to understand how to use them in my business.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Learn to solve problems effectively. There are several approaches to problem solving and none of them has exclusivity on being the right approaches. There are, however, techniques that you can apply that help you to more quickly and effectively solve problems. For example, dissecting a problem and solving its component parts, distinguishing the root of the problem from the observed symptoms, and knowing when to ask for help are all skills that an entrepreneur can (and should) learn.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: If you have entrepreneurial yearnings, it’s probably because you’re really, really good at something. And you just know you’re better at that something than anyone else in your marketplace. Here’s the cruel irony: the thing you love–the thing you do best–may end up being the one thing you never have time for. Pre-launch, figure out what parts of the business you’re going to offload They should be things you’re appallingly bad at. Take out the head trash that says you must (or can) do it all.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Having a clear vision of your niche will make it easier to focus on where you will want to spend your time marketing yourself. Your network will then know who your ideal client would be and who they can refer to you. By establishing your identity early, you will feel less threatened by the competition. There are so many choices out there, dare to be different!!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Develop a GREAT relationship with a banker and insurance broker. These two people will be able to help you, connect and refer you to everyone. A great banking relationship will help you with funding. The insurance broker (depending on the type of business) will be able to insure your business, and refer you business. Also, a good CPA never hurts.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: There are great resources out there for entrepreneurs, like this blog.
Read them. They contain fantastic pieces of advice and insight and can often spark ideas that will help you to ready yourself for success.
Then, when you need a break from reading, chat to others who have walked the entrepreneurial path. Their stories of success and failure will help you prepare for your journey.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Actually listening well, and *hearing* what people say, is a rare quality.
As an entrepreneur you need to learn to listen – - to your supporters, investors, partners, customers, and even your competitors. Learning to truly listen takes practice, but the pay off is tremendous.
Listening attentively will set you apart from others who hurry through life only hearing what they want to hear.
Practice now taking the time to listen and just watch how this simple act improves your relationships!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Before you do one single thing as an entrepreneur, do a sales and expense forecast for a period of one year to see if you have a viable business.
Set sales figures by month for one year. Try to estimate the cost of sales like commissions, and deliveries, then you come to gross profit. Subtract every single overhead expense you think you’ll have and you’ll arrive at your net profit by month and year. You’ll get a sense of whether you should even get started!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: People tell great chefs, “You should open up a restaurant.” Even if you have the best recipes in the world, wait. Work under a great restaurant owner. See where the problems are, like stealing meat from the freezer to finding reliable staff. Be patient; absorb information. Then, you’re better prepared. There’s a big difference between culinary mastery and business savvy. Not everyone’s adept at running a business. That’s true whether you’re a cook, baker, or candlestick maker.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Know where your funding source will come from. If your self funding be sure to save as much you as can before the doors (physical or virtual) open.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: My website generates 95% of my new business because (a) it can be found on page 1 of a Google search under the terms I want it to be found and (b) it has content that people like to stay and read. I strongly recommend investing time and money in a website that is fully optimized for search engines, along with a strategy for further optimizing (e.g., having your own blogs, publishing articles online, etc.)
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Do you want to begin prepping for your new venture today? If so, begin to think through and document basic processes. This will help create a framework for running your business. Start with basic, day-to-day operational processes such as:
- How will you prepare and send outgoing mail and packages?
- How will you handle incoming mail?
- How will you answer a ringing telephone?
- How will you handle incoming and outgoing emails?
- Will you use a fax machine in your business? If so, create guide lines on how to handle incoming and outgoing faxes. Create a fax cover sheet.
- How will you pay your business expenses?
- Will you use some type of filing system in your business? If so, create and document how to use your filing system.
Creating basic processes in your business now will assist you greatly down the road. As your business grows and you need to bring in help, these documented processes will be a training tool for your new employee or independent contractor and help make for a smooth and accurate transfer of information. Good luck!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Be scrappy! You may not have the best Business Plan. You may not have all of the money you need. Investors may not get it or want to get in. Customers may not be buying what you thought the market needed. Adjustments may be required to meet the needs of clients and customers. So be scrappy! Never give up and stay true to your passion. Something pushed you from deep down inside to take the chance to start your business. To give up security for the pursuit of the vision that you see. So keep at it
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Knowledge is one of the most powerful tools you’ll ever have as an entrepreneur. You’ll need to learn all you can about various aspects of business. Find books about successful companies and successful entrepreneurs and begin a list of things you’d like to see happen in your own company. A compelling vision is essential to success and the more you know, the more colors you have to paint your bright future!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Paper Out.
That’s right. Get all of your paperwork out of the way so you can focus on client service, product development and marketing. When you launch: Focus on execution, zeroing in on the consumer.
Paper Out means get through your legal contracts such as setting up your corporation and trademarks; registering domain names; even printing business cards/letterhead. When it’s time to thank your first customer, you want to 1) have your business protected and 2) focus on the client.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Finding a mentor(s) just might be one of the best moves you make. Early on (and even recently) I’ve asked experts in my field to shed some light on an unknown aspect of my business. Getting real-life advice from those who have gone before you can have a lasting impact. Wether it’s someone local or Mr. Trump, pick up the phone, send an email or drop by. I’ve found there is never harm in asking, there are no stupid questions and everyone is more than happy to help!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Business plans and maps can do much more than get you financing. It will help you determine what kind of clients you are looking for, how you’ll know they’re the clients for you, and how you plan on getting those clients.
Your plan will morph into your mission statement and vision for your business. It will help you to weed out some problems before they happen.
If you aren’t familiar with business plans + maps definitely spend some time researching or talking to someone with experience.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: The first question any potential customer wants to know is “How much is it?” If you don’t know, you’ve just lost a sale.
Before you ever find a space, put in a phone line, or create a domain name, figure out what you’re selling, and how much you’re charging for it. Make sure you include in the price not only the cost of all your materials (and that includes rent and utilities, if you’re paying them), but also a reasonable amount for your time. Remember, you’re in this to make a profit!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Starting a new business can costly if you don’t have a plan. A fully developed business plan will help you to identify your target market, your niche, and potential dangers as well as opportunities along the way. It’s not a great idea to pay someone to write a business plan for you. The best way to approach a business plan is with a trusted third party who can be objective enough to ask the tough questions. A good business plan requires you to do your homework and research your field.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Before I started my company I talked to any business owners that were willing to talk. I asked all of them 20 (or closer to 100) questions. But most importantly, I really listened. One of the key things that has brought me to this point in my business is learning from other entrepreneurs whether it is in person, or from a book. One mistake some entrepreneurs make is thinking they “know it all”. What 15 years in business has taught me is there is ALWAYS something to learn.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: 1. Make a list of your values: what is most important to you? Integrity? Follow through? Being trustworthy? Keeping your word? Speaking the truth? Kindness? Decide what is important and valuable. 2. LIVE THE IDEALS you deem valuable. You will be drawn to people of like mind, and like-minded people will be drawn to you. This will insure your success!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Take time now to dig deep into your soul, your experiences and your talents. Sit down and list all the areas you have experience or talents in. Where you have gaps that need to be filled. Like building a large skyscraper, you have to start with bedrock. Find out what skills and talents will be your bedrock that a new business can be built upon. Find talented people to help you fill the gaps through using contractors, partners or hiring people. Check my site for 7 key people you must have.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Before you begin your business realize how important it is to network. You can not grow your business without having a great network of people. Visibility is the key and the more people know who you are and what you do, the faster your business will grow. Just like the old Wella Balsam commercials: They tell two friends, and then they tell two more friends and so on and so on. Be selective, be ready to help others connect and it will come back to you 100 fold!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Don’t get bogged down by everything, or you’ll get overwhelmed and might give up. Remember it all doesn’t need to happen at the same time!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Tell everyone you know. Not only will sharing the good news provide you and your new endeavor with a built-in cheering section, it may well also provide you with some great word of mouth business leads.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Have cushion, will travel. Starting a business is fun, scary, frustrating, rewarding, stressful and the most totally awesome experience you can ever imagine BUT there’s one thing you must have to help you cover your proverbial butt, if and when the going gets tough. YOU MUST HAVE A CUSHION and by that I mean a financial cushion that can carry you through the start-up phase and the lean times that are sure to come along with it.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Identifying your target market is one of the most critical steps in becoming a successful entrepreneur. Know who needs your product or service. Figure out what their most pressing issues are and show how you are the expert at solving those issues!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Learn how to actually do things. You won’t likely have much staff, so you need to know how to execute key activities, not simply hand them off to someone else and supervise like you might in a big corporate setting.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Buy a notebook you love and will want to write in and a pen that you can’t keep your hands off. Carry it everywhere and jot down ideas as they come. Create tabs for different sections – products, logo, marketing, contacts, vendors… whatever makes sense. I had my business idea in February and started keeping notes when I was working full-time, never imagining I would actually begin. In April I was laid off and I used my notebook to motivate and guide me to start the business for real.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Take the time to create a detailed business plan. Understand that a well-thought out (and honest) business plan is not for someone else (investor, bank), but an exercise for the entrepreneur. It forces you to really think about the product, market, competition, pricing, revenue, cost, go-to-market strategy.
If after you spend the time and brain cycles to write the business plan, you are still excited by the idea, then go for it!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Before your “coming out party” to the world, it is important to have a firm idea of your brand’s values.
What gives your product/service value? What do you want to communicate to people? What will come to mind first when hearing your name? Make those messages consistent through everything you do & say.
Build your Web site and materials first so when people ask for info, you have a place to direct them. It makes your firm look more professional and gives your company an edge over others.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: If you’ve decided to become an entrepreneur, congratulations!! Welcome to the club; you’re among an elite and unique group. It takes courage, lots of effort and immense dedication to “buck” the W-2 world and step out on your own, especially in this economy. Two characteristics that will serve you well are the ability to ignore the feelings of doubt and fear. They’re both destructive emotions and can also be real “dream killers”. If you’re able to remain positive, faithful and fearless, you’ll be well on your way to being successful.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Consider freelancing in your area of expertise. 1) Create a portfolio with a binder and sheet protectors with examples of your work and referral letters. 2) Build a contact list of potential clients and include online sites that match freelancers with projects such as elance.com, gofreelance.com, odesk.com. 3) Send potential clients a “pitch letter” with your background, examples of how you solved problems for others. 4) Follow with a phone call in two weeks and ask for a 30 minute appointment.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Talk to others who have struck out on their own and learn from their mistakes. Ask what they would do over if given a second chance. Really listen to what’s being said and don’t assume you’ll be any different. Ask LOTS of questions…as mom said, the only dumb question is the one not asked!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: check carefully about state laws where you plan to setup shop..basing a company in your own state may cost you lots of $$ in recurring fees for filing annual reports, etc. Make sure you know what it’ll cost you up front so you at least go in with your eyes open (perhaps that’s why so many companies are based in Delaware…)!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: What does every Olympic athlete have that other people with the same potential do not? A coach. In sports, no one becomes an Olympic contender without help. In business, if you want maximize your chances of success, find someone whom you can bounce ideas off of, whom you can trust to tell you if you’re making a mistake, and who will keep you focused and enthusiastic when things are tough. The Olympics or the bush leagues… decide where you want to play.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Start off by being an “intrapreneur.” Study your existing company and keep a log of lessons that can be applied to your own new venture. If you are not currently working, set up informational interviews with successful entrepreneurs. Again, make copious notes to apply to your own future situation. When you exit your current situation, you can enter the world of entrepreneurship knowing the mistakes others have made and thus, can avoid making them yourself.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Before making a decision to become your own boss,do a lot of soul searching and ask yourself some hard questions. Why do you want to do this? If it’s because you don’t like your boss, want to work when you want, play when you like, or-any other lame reason, then you are not going to make it.Look at the numbers the stats for failure, take a long hard look. You have got to really want it, badly enough to work like you have never worked before. Once decided, give it all you’ve got! It’s the best!
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: EVERY project, business, concept…WHATEVER, starts with a strong foundation upon which to build on. Spend the time and energy into researching your market niche (do you even know WHAT your market niche is?), competition (locally, internet…) and have at LEAST 3-5 reasons why YOUR product/service is better than your competitor’s (price? csr? location?)…Without the time/effort spent at the beginning building a strong foundation, your business can fail at the first big test.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: Before you venture into the world of Entrepreneurship, know who’s got your back.
Especially if you plan to start out as a solo-preneur, its important to build a team. You don’t have to do it alone.
Your team can consist of individuals to advise you on anything in which you’re not an expert or should delegate (think lawyer, CPA, bookkeeper, business banker, web pro, administrative assistant, etc.). As advisors, consultants and assistants, these team members can invaluable.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: You can’t avoid the bottom line! Buy money-management software (I use QuickBooks) to track all of your budgeting and (if you can spare the funds) hire an accountant to handle your taxes. It’s worth every penny & every second of stress you don’t have to waste on such a complex subject.
How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur: You might have come up with the coolest thing. Who cares?! Well, that’s the point, who cares? ASK PEOPLE. If you can’t find people who care about what you’re selling, they’re never going to buy it. Find that out before you go too far down the entrepreneurship road, it’ll save you a ton of time, effort and money.
13 Responses to “How To Get Ready To Be An Entrepreneur”
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. « Qittle SMS Message Solutions Says:
August 4th, 2009
[...] leave a comment » This famous saying couldn’t be any truer then when it comes to successfully building a business.
Devesh Says:
August 4th, 2009
Great advice, Mike. I’ll add one from my side…
160. Learning by doing: The secret of running a marathon is preparing for one first, beginning with 5K races. Entrepreneurship is one of those things in life that you have to experience by yourself. You’ll never know what its like and how it works until you experience it first hand. The example of marathon that I just mentioned, you can plan, diet, and exercise but you don’t stand a chance to finish the race let alone winning unless you’d already run miles and miles first to prepare for the big race.
Start with something small and make the best out of the learning experience.
Kevin Cullis Says:
August 4th, 2009
Devesh, learning by doing is a great thought, but with enough information out there you can at least get some ideas as to how things could/should work. Having SOME knowledge reduces the amount of work and mistakes you’ll encounter. There are two extremes that I avoid, paralysis by analysis and acting before thinking about things. I’ve seen wasted effort on both sides of these extremes.
dee relyea Says:
August 4th, 2009
Good compilation! I teach “First Steps for Starting a Business” at UW-Madison and would add these Key Questions need to be answered before launching your biz:
1. What kind of business/industry will you be in?
2. What product of service will you sell?
3. Who will your customers be? What do they want/need?
4. How will you stand out from your competition?
—and most importantly:
5. What do you love to do and have expertise in? This is key to success!
Carol Pilkington Says:
August 5th, 2009
It is so important to think about having systems in place that will enable you to be more efficient, save you time and money. There is that old saying work smart,not hard. Having systems in place that support that effort is very important. Don’t be so proud as to not ask for assistance and guidance. Where you don’t have to re-invent the wheel, DON’T. Find a mentor that you can trust and that you can be as open as possible with so they get to know you and have your best interests in mind.
Kathleen Says:
August 5th, 2009
Admittedly I only scanned the first 100 but nobody said the most obvious: have an idea, project or product with value worthy of the effort. Not value as you define it or how your friends do but people who don’t know or care about you. At least half the prospective entrepreneurs who contact me don’t have that.
It’s NOT fair but with everyone wanting to be an entrepreneur these days, competition has raised the barre. As a mentor, I want to talk about what you’re doing (beyond branding and networking, please, it’s so over done) and making and how to improve that; not what you plan or want to do particularly if you haven’t followed the advice you’ve already been given. Clean your plate and then you can come back for seconds. This isn’t the Golden Trough (Corral).
They have the branding down, logo and the whole nine yards with nothing but “vision” to paste it onto. It’s like an “etch a sketch” business (nod to Keillor). Not to say logos aren’t nice and sometimes useful (maybe when I’m not so busy, I’ll consider getting one too).
A universal problem seems to be an over emphasis on business plans that consist of near perfect examples of confirmation bias conjecture and rely on investor funding to implement the very first step. Hours spent poring over a template business plan does not create value. Create a prototype I want to buy and THEN you can begin to write a plan that describes how you think you need to move to the next tier. That is what excites people and makes them want to become involved. As I said, with everyone starting a business these days, novelty has become increasingly rare. Build it first, then talk about it.
J. Scott Alexander Says:
August 11th, 2009
I did not read them all, but I did not read any mention of finding what you are passionate about and create a business around your passion. If you love what you do then it will be easy for you to do what you love and sell.
Regards,
jscottalexander.com
CONFIDENCE IS AN INSIDE JOB ™… » How to Prepare to be an Entrepreneur Says:
August 15th, 2009
[...] and I touched on a few points that in essence are the same.
Rick @ Bushnell Binocular Says:
September 8th, 2009
This is the most thorough and informative information I have found. I really enjoyed it.
Tips on getting ready to become an entrepreneur | Julie Lenzer Kirk's Blog Says:
October 3rd, 2009
[...] you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Check out the “How to Get Ready to be an Entrepreneur.” My tip is #35. He was looking for “unusual” so that’s what I gave him! What else would [...]
tax marketing and operations coaching Says:
November 21st, 2009
thank you for the post i think this will be useful to me.
keep going on.
Pet Society Help Says:
November 22nd, 2009
Great collection of advice, my favorite being in order to start a business be prepared to spend money thus get ready for ramen noodles. I like ramen noodles anyway, with a slice of bacon and boiled egg, you can’t go wrong with that.
Unlock UR Wii Says:
November 30th, 2009
Hi, Just supposed I’d let you know your blog is rendering weird in my K-melleon browser. Looks good from what I can see though.
August 4th, 2009
[...] leave a comment » This famous saying couldn’t be any truer then when it comes to successfully building a business.
August 4th, 2009
Great advice, Mike. I’ll add one from my side…
160. Learning by doing: The secret of running a marathon is preparing for one first, beginning with 5K races. Entrepreneurship is one of those things in life that you have to experience by yourself. You’ll never know what its like and how it works until you experience it first hand. The example of marathon that I just mentioned, you can plan, diet, and exercise but you don’t stand a chance to finish the race let alone winning unless you’d already run miles and miles first to prepare for the big race.
Start with something small and make the best out of the learning experience.
August 4th, 2009
Devesh, learning by doing is a great thought, but with enough information out there you can at least get some ideas as to how things could/should work. Having SOME knowledge reduces the amount of work and mistakes you’ll encounter. There are two extremes that I avoid, paralysis by analysis and acting before thinking about things. I’ve seen wasted effort on both sides of these extremes.
August 4th, 2009
Good compilation! I teach “First Steps for Starting a Business” at UW-Madison and would add these Key Questions need to be answered before launching your biz:
1. What kind of business/industry will you be in?
2. What product of service will you sell?
3. Who will your customers be? What do they want/need?
4. How will you stand out from your competition?
—and most importantly:
5. What do you love to do and have expertise in? This is key to success!
August 5th, 2009
It is so important to think about having systems in place that will enable you to be more efficient, save you time and money. There is that old saying work smart,not hard. Having systems in place that support that effort is very important. Don’t be so proud as to not ask for assistance and guidance. Where you don’t have to re-invent the wheel, DON’T. Find a mentor that you can trust and that you can be as open as possible with so they get to know you and have your best interests in mind.
August 5th, 2009
Admittedly I only scanned the first 100 but nobody said the most obvious: have an idea, project or product with value worthy of the effort. Not value as you define it or how your friends do but people who don’t know or care about you. At least half the prospective entrepreneurs who contact me don’t have that.
It’s NOT fair but with everyone wanting to be an entrepreneur these days, competition has raised the barre. As a mentor, I want to talk about what you’re doing (beyond branding and networking, please, it’s so over done) and making and how to improve that; not what you plan or want to do particularly if you haven’t followed the advice you’ve already been given. Clean your plate and then you can come back for seconds. This isn’t the Golden Trough (Corral).
They have the branding down, logo and the whole nine yards with nothing but “vision” to paste it onto. It’s like an “etch a sketch” business (nod to Keillor). Not to say logos aren’t nice and sometimes useful (maybe when I’m not so busy, I’ll consider getting one too).
A universal problem seems to be an over emphasis on business plans that consist of near perfect examples of confirmation bias conjecture and rely on investor funding to implement the very first step. Hours spent poring over a template business plan does not create value. Create a prototype I want to buy and THEN you can begin to write a plan that describes how you think you need to move to the next tier. That is what excites people and makes them want to become involved. As I said, with everyone starting a business these days, novelty has become increasingly rare. Build it first, then talk about it.
August 11th, 2009
I did not read them all, but I did not read any mention of finding what you are passionate about and create a business around your passion. If you love what you do then it will be easy for you to do what you love and sell.
Regards,
jscottalexander.com
August 15th, 2009
[...] and I touched on a few points that in essence are the same.
September 8th, 2009
This is the most thorough and informative information I have found. I really enjoyed it.
October 3rd, 2009
[...] you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Check out the “How to Get Ready to be an Entrepreneur.” My tip is #35. He was looking for “unusual” so that’s what I gave him! What else would [...]
November 21st, 2009
thank you for the post i think this will be useful to me.
keep going on.
November 22nd, 2009
Great collection of advice, my favorite being in order to start a business be prepared to spend money thus get ready for ramen noodles. I like ramen noodles anyway, with a slice of bacon and boiled egg, you can’t go wrong with that.
November 30th, 2009
Hi, Just supposed I’d let you know your blog is rendering weird in my K-melleon browser. Looks good from what I can see though.