Introduction to Startup Guide
I believe that having a startup business plan and being an entrepreneur takes great courage and a lot of passion. After all, you need heart and a lot of guts to invest in something you love but only has a minuscule chance of giving you back more than you put in within, say 5 years. But there is more that goes into just passion and love into building a good start-up. You need a boundless amount of energy, optimism, a bundle of great ideas, a ton of research and well, the capital. It is absolutely ok to make mistakes in your first venture. In fact, if you do not see yourself making mistakes every now and then, you are probably in trouble.
Of course, you will have a lot of apprehensions about your startup business plan but that is alright since it is hardly every ‘easy’ to run a startup business plan all by yourself. You will have doubts about whether or not you have taken the right decision, whether you’ve invested the correct amount of funds in a particular field. Fret not. This is completely normal, and a healthy amount of worry keeps you on your feet. A good idea does not a startup business plan make. Ideas are many. What turns a great idea into a living, a breathing startup business model is proper execution and prior research.
It may happen as such that you have a great idea but the market isn’t ready for it. Or maybe you have an idea that is not as original as you think.
The amount of start-ups that fail is staggering. Granted, there are a lot of reasons for a startup guide failing, but that doesn’t mean there is no fail-proof. There are certain things that you can avoid to prevent you from falling flat on your face. There is a basic business startup guide that you can avoid so as to prevent these silly mistakes from snowballing into a huge blunder which may lead to an untimely demise of your start-up.
Startup Guide
1. Having no backup plan
So your idea of a start-up has worked out well and you have waltzed into your office with no backup plan. Maybe you are too optimistic, or just too callous.
Remember that business startup guide happens to the best of us that can be purely circumstantial. There are a ton of entrepreneurs who have absolutely no backup plan in place. They are just way too focused on their new venture or maybe have too much faith in their ideas that they will definitely succeed. While optimism isn’t a bad thing, but remember that overconfidence can wreck you.
What would happen if your product fails? What would you do if the marketing department fails? Would you risk losing lakhs? You either need to outsource your marketing or start making more saleable products. There should be enough arrangements behind the scenes to rev up the backup plan which will be your saving grace.
This is possible only if you give backup plans enough importance and only if you plan it beforehand, in case things don’t go your way.
2. Not securing enough emergency funds
Almost all start-up companies require a large number of funds to function. Keeping an emergency reserve fund is essential.
For your backup plan to actually function, you need to have the funds to back up your back up. You might not have put in money from your own pocket, you might have gotten it from a bank or a sponsor who might have trusted you with their funds.
The smart thing to do is reserve a small amount from the funding that you have and keep it aside in the unfortunate event of an emergency.
Having an emergency fund ensures that you can put off foreclosure from a client who might have defaulted on payments or fill up the losses that have occurred in a period of time. Think about it.
3. Focusing only on results
Having a start-up is not about making quick money. If you are in it for quick money, I suggest you look for an alternative job already. It takes courage to abandon the steady paycheck as I have mentioned in my article before.
Being an entrepreneur is about designing and maintaining a particular flow of startup guide for business in a particular manner. While keeping the long-term goal in mind is pretty essential, it is not the only thing you should focus on. Instead of sitting and fantasizing about and charting up results, you should actually work for results. Usually, most start-up companies are too concerned about getting instant gratification out of their venture, rather than looking at a long-term goal.
Doing so actually hinders your growth. For most, the initial boom is what they measure success in. Stop doing this. By doing this, you overlook the elementary facts of running a startup business successfully.
A good startup guide for business can only be called a ‘good startup business’ if it has a strong foundation which includes the right kind of build and the ability to implement the planned out strategies.
If you focus too much on only the kind of profit you wish to make, you might be strangling the neck of your startup guide for business even before it takes flight.
4. Getting distracted by feedback
While you should revere valuable advice, do not surround yourself with people who constantly fill your ears with criticism and negative feedback. Remember, it is not a democracy. Not every decision has to undergo the scrutiny of the masses. Getting ideas out of your team is a brilliant way to keep everyone involved. Brainstorm with your people who are smart and capable.
The decision should be yours alone. You hire them to ideate and execute those ideas, not to give you feedback all the time which might put you under unnecessary stress. You will have a ton of people around you questioning your every move. It is very easy to lose sight of your vision and want to take advice from people and immediately tweak things to everyone’s liking.
Remember, they are not the ones who are running the company. This is your baby. You have put in the desired hard work and toil. Not them.
5. Not listening to your customers
There will be a point in time when you will have customers. And they will have a lot to say about your product. Once you do reach that point, an important thing to do is to conduct a research survey.
It is essential that you know what your customer wants from you. One more thing you can do is when you are executing your startup business idea and keeping things quiet until the launch, you can engage potential customers and listen to their feedback. A few right tweaks would be all that your product might need to go from good to great. Entrepreneurs can fall so in love with their ideas that they aren’t open to feedback from their clients or their customers.
It is ultimately them that you are selling your product to. You need to give them what they want, no matter how much you want to keep your executed idea intact. It is not wise to do so; you might never get the product-market fit if you are obstinate and unchanging.
6. Not hiring intelligently
Love can make you blind. Do you really want to hire that friend of yours who isn’t that great at marketing, just because he is your ‘friend’? Don’t make this mistake. You are still growing and agile, which means that you are flexible and open to change since you are not yet set in your ways. It is a good thing. Use it to your advantage.
Many times, in a start-up company, the work goes way beyond a job description and it is your job to make sure that your employee knows this. If you don’t manage this intelligently, you will find yourself looking for new people to employ six months down the line.
These small things may seem inconsequential but are vital to a growing startup business. To a young and new CEO, time is money. A lot of you entrepreneurs may be thinking that you can manage your own accounting, company finances, and other minor functioning and be hiring someone to do this for you is a waste of precious resources.
You couldn’t be more wrong. If you don’t have someone to do these tiny little things for you, you in turn, end up spending all your time on things that aren’t that imperative to your company’s growth as other more consequential things.
7. Not maintaining relationships
Steer clear of souring relationships with anyone. In a growing startup business, there are no useless links. Be consistently in touch with your mentors, potential startup business partners and key people in your life.
Remember that it takes a lot more effort to rebuild a relationship than to maintain one. Think of it as calling up an old friend whom you did not maintain relations with and starting of it, ‘Hey, long time since we last spoke!’ Break your habit of calling up people only when you need them. Maintaining a relationship does not take up a lot of time and effort. I know everyone is busy in their respective lives, but this is imperative, especially when you are at a seedling stage. You will need these people ahead of your life.
8. Taking on more than you can deal with
It is exciting to land a big client. It is a great moment when you have that handshake that seals your deal with the big company, and it needs to be celebrated. But hold up. Before signing over a big fish, do your company analysis. Is your company going to be able to deliver on the promises you are making? Do you have enough funds? Do you have the resources to get the tasks done?
Don’t rush growth. Let it happen at its own sweet pace. I know that there are some companies who grow manifolds overnight but be practical – they are one in a hundred. Keeping this in mind, make sure you have a plan of action to operate from. You need to take small steps at a time, having practical goals. Do not lose focus or go off-course.
You are a new company, and you must understand that you have certain limitations. Don’t worry, you will be working with the big guns soon enough. All it takes is a little patience.
9. Not being visible on social media platforms
Living in the digital age, it is imperative that your company seems on social media. It is so easy, and so upsetting to see start-ups avoiding social media like the plague.
Use it to your advantage! There are a large number of platforms available, why not make use of them? Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook – take your pick. Advertise your startup guide for business to the fullest. Remember, networking is very important in any startup guide for business. You cannot put up two posts and expect to see instant results. It will happen eventually. Think of social media as a slow cooker rather than a microwave oven.
Post engaging content all over social media and interact with your followers. Keep it lovely and relatable. In this day and age, not having a social media presence is a mistake every start-up can easily avoid.
10. Expecting everything to work out
It is not possible to build an empire on your own. Any successful entrepreneur can attest that nothing is ever handed to you on a silver plate. Anything hardly ever works out the way you want it to, because of some variables which you cannot possibly control.
A startup business, as I have stressed on earlier as well, is no cake walk. It takes more hard work than what I can tell you. Having a strong work ethic is crucial.
This does not mean that you won’t ever receive any help, but don’t rely on it. Being an entrepreneur, you must learn to work alone – accept help when the opportunity arrives, but do not wait on it. Not everything you want will be given to you.
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