It’s not always possible, but you can start a company without investors or a big credit line. According to Jay Gould in his article on Entrepreneur, “focus, energy and determination are critical to entrepreneurial success—but so is knowledge.”
In his experience, there are four important insights he’s gained. Those include:
- Iteration is your most critical resource. Even some of the biggest companies didn’t get it right the first time. Both inventions and business models must constantly be reviewed and updated, and even when one model finally works, continue to improve. If you don’t think failure is a stepping stone to success, listen to what David Damberger has to say about failure in his Ted Talk here.
- Establish a comfort level with your prospects. Building rapport is the first step to building relationships that last with prospective clients. This means that both you and your business may have to build or adjust your company culture in order to match that of your customers. Customers enjoy familiarity, whether it be with you or your business. In order to share your company culture, this will require ample communication skills, used to express what it is your business is all about.
- Hustling is more valuable than cash. Having a hard work ethic and hustling to run your business will not only communicate your success to backers, but will cause you to strive for a higher quality product, which, in turn, will lead to more profits. Revenue is not the goal of a small business, but rather, it is the result of goals. If a company strives to improve quality, customer relationships, and efficiency, then as a direct result of these, they will be profitable.
- Profits cure all. Profits early on are a sure way to build comfort and reduce risk for any business. Although there are barriers to entry in any industry, a strong web presence and free social media publicity can severely reduce these and give any business a fighting chance. In turn, these smaller barriers to entry also allow businesses to use extra finances to take marketing risks early on to secure an early lead and get a foot in the door.
If you’re inspired by an idea and have the drive to pursue it, get started with your business today. If your idea doesn’t work the first time, figure out what went wrong and fix it. Make a plan to get started and- hustle!
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