So You Want To Be An Entrepreneur?

Many of us dream of be­ing our own boss. Imag­ine choos­ing your own work­ing hours, work­ing by your rules and hav­ing to an­swer only to yourself.

It is a fan­tasy of many, but it is pos­si­ble to make this fan­tasy a reality.

It takes hard work, ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment but the calm af­ter the storm re­ally is worth all the stress that you have to deal with at the beginning.

If you are ready to be­come an en­tre­pre­neur here are the steps to success.

So­lid­ify Your Idea

Be­fore you do any­thing else you need to have a solid idea in place. This shouldn’t be a fi­nal busi­ness plan, but a clear idea that is open to mould­ing and adjustments.

Be clear about what it is your busi­ness will do, how you will do it and why it is some­thing that is needed and some­thing that oth­ers will pay for. Will your idea make you money?

Once this is in place you can be­gin to tweak and change el­e­ments when nec­es­sary work­ing to­wards your fi­nal plan.

Mar­ket Research

Mar­ket re­search is es­sen­tial to any new busi­ness. The sug­ges­tions and thoughts of oth­ers will help you put to­gether the most pow­er­ful model possible.

In­den­tify who you think your tar­get mar­ket would be, this may be more than one group. Or­gan­ise an event where you can run your busi­ness model by peo­ple to re­ceive feed­back, ideas and most im­por­tantly whether they would use your ser­vices or buy your prod­uct or not.

This is also a great op­por­tu­nity to fi­nalise your tar­get mar­ket and be­gin to re­ally un­der­stand their needs.

Fi­nalise Your Plan

Us­ing your mar­ket re­search you can now fi­nalise your plan. Ap­ply any ideas that stood out from the fo­cus group, al­ter any­thing peo­ple didn’t like and neaten up any rough edges.

Your fi­nal plan should in­­­clude- Bud­gets, mar­ket­ing plans, re­sources needed, tar­gets, plans for your busi­ness premises/website etc, brand­ing and any other de­tails you know need to be clear and set in stone be­fore you launch.

Mar­ket Your Business

Mar­ket­ing be­fore you launch is es­sen­tial. You need to start to build in­ter­est and ex­cite­ment around the launch of your brand be­fore it happens.

Start to get your name out there by us­ing so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing. Gain fol­low­ers on sites such as Twit­ter, Face­book and Pin­ter­est. When you do launch you can of­fer your fol­low­ers a spe­cial in­tro­duc­tory rate as a thanks for get­ting your so­cial me­dia sites go­ing. Use your so­cial me­dia sites to an­nounce the launch of your web­site too.

Time To Launch

Af­ter all this plan­ning and hard work it’s time to launch with a bang.

Throw a party, in­vite friends and fam­ily, so­cial me­dia fol­low­ers and most im­por­tantly po­ten­tial cus­tomers and clients.

Fo­cus on hav­ing a good time to cel­e­brate fi­nally launch­ing, but also re­mem­ber this is the first con­tact for many with your new com­pany. Hand out busi­ness cards and leaflets de­tail­ing what you do, con­tact de­tails and so­cial me­dia sites. Maybe in­clude an in­tro­duc­tory of­fer to those who at­tended and of course at the end make a speech!

You’re an en­tre­pre­neur now; you need to have your busi­ness brain on at all times.