Starting your own business is one of the proven path to wealth and financial freedom. If you look at the Forbes list of billionaires you’ll see that over 90 percent of the individuals that make the list are entrepreneurs.
However many novice entrepreneurs make the mistakes of not knowing what should be their priority when starting a business.
The key to starting business and succeeding is that you must have the mindset of an entrepreneur.
The other thing you must know about starting a business is that you must take the critical steps in business that will propel your company from the start-up phase so that it can grow into a profitable business.
Unfortunately many entrepreneurs and small business owner do not know the most important things they should be doing starting business.
Why do you need to know the most important things to do in starting a small business or any other business?
Because knowing the critical steps in starting a business will make the difference between failure and success in your business career.
Let me explain my point with a true life story….
Recently One of my friends came ask for my advice about starting business. I was more than happy to offer my advice because I know her: she was ambitious, disciplined and entrepreneurial.
I asked her few questions:
When will you be starting your own business?
Who is your ideal prospect?
How do your customers buy?
Why will your customers choose your product over your competitors?
What’s your unique selling proposition?
She was initially taken aback by my questions.
Then after recovering from the barrage of my questions she told me “ I think I answered your questions in my business plan”.
When I gently pressed her for answers to my questions ,she gave me an irritated look that told me I would not get any answer from her.
I quickly realized that she wanted to show me her product samples, glossy catalog and my assistance in sharing her business cards.
I shook my head…Because my friend was making the same mistake, most start up businesses make.
The United States Small Business Administration ( SBA) cites lack of experience, and low sales as some of the reasons why small businesses fail.
This is not surprising because most of the advice that you’ll get about starting business are flawed.
Why? Because the advice you’ll get from most business gurus fail to mention the primary things you should do when you start a business.
Instead, they tell you about the secondary things you should do after you have set up your business.
In his book Ready, fire aim: how to from zero to $1 million dollars in no time fast Michael Masterson, a bestselling author and small business expert talks about the stages of business growth.
Masterson divided business growth into four phases: infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
I will not tell you about all phases of business growth because this is not the topic for this article.
However what Masterson mentioned about the infancy stage of starting a business was what struck me as essential for any entrepreneur to bear in mind…when starting a business.
Masterson concluded that the main challenge an entrepreneur faces in the steps starting business was-making the first profitable sale
Therefore for a business to thrive and grow beyond the start up phase, it must concentrate on marketing and sales of its product so that it can make its first profitable sale.
I agree with the author because a business can not thrive if its not selling its products. In fact, the business will soon run out of cash and fold up
Therefore, the main skill you need when you start your own business is selling your product.
Why? Because when you start making profitable sales your business has a shot at growing
Masterson also mention what Ted Ciuba a mail order expert said in his book : Mail and grow Rich. He asserts that a business owner’s time should be spent on the real business of the business-that is selling
As a business owner, your number one priority should be selling. This means you should devote a large amount of your time to marketing and sales related activities.
This bring me to what I said earlier about the primary things you ought to be doing when starting a business.
The primary thing you must devote most of your time at the start up phase of your business is in the selling process
The secondary things you should spend less of your time on are activities like ; company registration, leasing office space, printing business cards, checking if you meet all the government regulations and health and safety issues
You can see from the above the reason why I felt my friend was going the wrong path.
By the way, I don’t think I told you the update on my friend’s business. She has nearly given up on the business. When I run into her from time to time to find out how she is doing she tells me things are hard
Yes, starting a business could be challenging and risky.
However you can avoid the mistakes most wannabe entrepreneur make if you’ll devote most of your time doing the following
- Research your market and find your ideal prospect
- Find out what they want and are willing to pay money to get it
- Create a product that you can sell to them
- Spend more than 80 percent of your time on marketing and selling your product
- Make selling your product your number one priority until you make the first profitable sale
If you are confused about what to do go back and remind yourself of the real business of why you are in business- that is selling