A Million Lives

A million lifestyle hacks...unlimited possibilities

by

Here’s How to Survive the First Few Months of Your Start-up business

The first few months of your new business can be equally exhilarating and nerve racking. A lot of the time, you are part confident and part scared shitless. This is not surprising as statistics show that only 75% of new businesses ever make it past the first year. And with millions of businesses starting up every year, it is obvious that the odds are not exactly stacked in your favor. However, there are a few things you can do to even the odds up a bit. Read on for some tips on how to survive the first few months of your new start-up.

Remind yourself why you started out in the first place –

Very few people can gather the confidence needed to walk away from the security of a paying job and start up a business. It takes a lot of guts to do that. These same guts can keep you going even when you hit a rough patch in the early months of your business. The secret is to constantly remind yourself exactly why you chose to go into business. Let everything you do revolve around this singular purpose. This will carry you whenever you begin to doubt your sanity.

Surround yourself with the right people –

It takes having the right kind of people around you to succeed. This includes your employees and those you see advice from. No matter how much you know, there will come a time in the early days of your business when you will encounter things that baffle you. This is where you will experience the importance of having a mentor. People who have gone ahead of you in the industry once passed through what you are passing through; don’t be ashamed to ask for assistance.

Keep your expenses low –

One of the major problems startup face is the lack of enough capital. In fact, as you journey further in your business, you will realize that you can never have too much money. It is therefore vital that you keep you expenses as low as possible so that you don’t get insolvent. There will be certain things you will have to do without during the early days of your business. If you can comfortably run your business out of a 12 by 12 room, then you have no need for something bigger. However, as much as you are trying to reduce expenses, it should not affect your business offerings.

Make the right partners –

“No man is an island” should be the maxim for new entrepreneurs and startups. The truth is that in the early days of your business, and even as the business continues to grow, you will need the right kind of partnership that encourages scalability. For instance, partnering with similar businesses will help you enjoy economies of scale. Similarly, you also need the partnership that provides adequate coverage for your fledging startup in the event of that you hit one of the many potholes you are bound to hit as you journey in business.

Make customer king –

The purpose of starting a business is not necessarily to make a great product or to create an empire; it is to offer value to your customers. These are the people that would make your business grow. As long as you focus on providing customer satisfaction, you will have the satisfaction is surviving the first few months of your startup business.

by

How to Plan to Start Your Own Business

Many people want to start their own business, but they have no idea how to go about it. The first stage of any business venture is to plan, but you need to plan in the right way. Here are the three most important steps.

Work Out What You Want to Do

First and foremost, before you can even begin thinking about how you will go about setting your business up, you first need to work out exactly what it is that your business will be based around. Of course, there are innumerable things your business might do, but in general a solo business venture will be based around specialist knowledge, or a unique idea. In other words, you need to have something to offer people that they can’t easily get themselves.

Some people know that they want to start a business, but they don’t know exactly what they want to do. If this is the case for you, don’t be afraid to take a step back and get a bit of work experience before you commit to anything. Everyone has talent, skills, and knowledge, it’s just a case of working out how you can combine them in a relatively unique way.

Map Out Your Path

Planning ahead makes everything go so much smoother. You should work out, in as detailed steps as you can manage, how you will go about getting from where you are now, to operating your planned business. Laying out all of the steps in this way will allow you to reassure yourself that you know what you are doing and will also give you a chance to examine and think about your chosen path.

If you are uncertain how to proceed at any point, your best bet is to take a look online and look for resources relevant to the field you hope to one day work in. For example, if you want to ultimately open a salon, or perhaps see clients as a personal stylist, Beauty Pros can help you identify the right schools and career path for a career in cosmetology.

Work Out Your Budget

So, now that you know what you want to do, and how you’re going to get there, the real fun can begin! And by ‘real fun’, I of course mean ‘rudimentary accounting’. When you are just starting out with your business, there will often be little, if any, distinction between your personal funds and those of the business. It is therefore imperative that you take the time to work out exactly how much money you have.

You also want to work out what your weekly/monthly income and expenses are. If you aren’t sure, take a month to record every dollar that comes in or goes out, then review your data. Once you know how much surplus money you have every month, you can set some of it aside for the business. Making a budget and sticking to it is an important skill for an entrepreneur to have.

Once you have finished the above steps, you should have a clear idea of how you need to proceed in order to achieve your dream. At every stage of your entrepreneurial career, look to the above steps as a blueprint for how to proceed. First, you work out what you want to do, then how you will get there, and finally you assess what resources you have at your disposal to achieve it. If you do it right, starting your own business is a very rewarding journey.

A Million Lives

Travelling in all its glory is fun and exhilarating but sometimes you might want to find some information on where to go, what to see and how to go about it from someone other than the go-to websites, especially when it comes to travel hacking and the coolest, most useful ways to get the most out of your next adventure.

Recent Posts