Entrepreneurship – What is it?  AND How to do it?

Just wanting to be an entrepreneur is not enough. Entrepreneurship encompasses many things. We need the determination to succeed, to push through all the hard times and keep no matter what.  I helps to understand why we have the desire to work for our self and run our own business, is it to prove to someone else (like our parents) or is it our own dream and desire?

Entrepreneurship or Try Hard ?

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Taking the faith of leap and just going with an idea is what an entrepreneur does.   So what is the difference between a good entrepreneur and a try hard?  A good entrepreneur cares about his customers and makes sure they are happy, satisfied and contented, they understand that the best customer service 4 Lessons in Customer Service always wins.

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door”  -Milton Berle

The role of Selling in Entrepreneurship

We are all in sales, all of us.  We sell our ideas to our kids and family all the time.  We sell our time to our boss if we work.

While we are all in sales we are also all entrepreneurs as we are our own business and we sell our skills to the outside world.  We are a monopoly on selling us to the world. The difference between a “wantropreneur” and an entrepreneur is actually resilience, taking the initiative and just doing the big idea.

Finding The Idea  for Entrepreneurship

Coming up with an idea Best Techniques to Brainstorm ideas and Goals can often be the hardest thing to do.  So asking yourself “What problems do I need solving?” this could give us ideas of what we could start a business doing.  If we spend time thinking about what problems we have in our life and others might also need solving to make our life easier and simpler could give us clues about what might be in demand and easily sell-able.  Keep a bug list of things that annoy you.  Solving these problems could give us the next big idea that grows into a new business.

Advice for Entrepreneurs

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When you start out in business you will get lots of advice from people, they will tell you lots of different things and trust me, you will need some of the advice you will get plus you will be looking for places to get the information you need New Business Set Up Essentials or 8 Steps before starting your new Business or How to Start a Business, but there will come a time when you just need to start doing things confidently.  Remember mistakes are just learning experiences and you can do it again differently another time.  Stop listening and start doing.

“Everyone is not your customer”    -Seth Godin

Is there a gap in the market?

If you are producing a product make sure the market needs what it is you are producing.   Ask yourself if you would seek out and buy this item yourself, it helps if you are a consumer of your own product. If you are selling the best, cheapest pink onion shaped scooter and no one wants to buy it, then you have wasted your time.  Make sure the market is ready for your idea and wants what ever it is you are producing.

Announce to the world your idea and don’t keep it a secret.   Patients and legal tape take a long time to get and products are easy to change to get around it.  So don’t be hung up about keeping your idea a secret, as no one buys a secret.  Back your ideas and share it with the world to get the sales.

Master your skills

Make sure you master some skills at something you are already good at in your business so you know what is happening and surround yourself with masters of skills in other areas.

Use your time to learn skills and or sell it to make money.  Once the business is starting to take off, you need to stop being the factor of production and start to scale up and get others to do the basic work and do things for you.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”  –  Benjamin Franklin

An app isn’t always the answer to people’s problems so make sure you think outside the box about what is really needed so you produce the minimum viable product or a product that is usable and new to the market to simply test the viability of products by the first customers so they can give positive feedback to validate the product in the market for the future sales.

“Your brand is more than just your tagline …………

It’s how every element of your brand works together synergistically.”

-Hilary Hartling

Brands

Making your brand stand out and trustworthy is most important.  Let people know what you stand for because even the littlest things can have the biggest impact on your customers perception of your business.

Be consistent with your branding, so your customers know it is you.  You don’t want different colours, logos, labels, fonts on every different correspondence item you send out to your audience.  Keep it all the same every time, so customers can identify that it is you.

Brands identify the cultural niche we pitch our products to, the face of our design and thinking about the business model and ideas of your company.

Premium pricing.

We are taught to believe that if you want the best you will have to pay for it and the better the quality the higher the price will be, you only get what you pay for, so if this is true, if you have a premium product your price must reflect this otherwise you will be cheating your customers.

“Quality is more important than quantity …..”  -Steve Jobs

Tag lines

A good tagline or slogan elevates public awareness and is remembered by everyone, it’s a vision of where the brand want to be seen and summarizes the reason to use your product, it says a lot about the product that we think is believable.

• Apple – Think different
• Ted – ideas worth spreading
• Nike – Just do it
• L’Oreal – because you are worth it.
• Mars bars – work, rest and play
• Coca Cola – things go better with Coke

Touchpoint with your customers

Every interaction with your customers matters, the more you interact the more your customers will remember you, so make sure each contact is memorable but it also must be authentic and sincere and not spam.

Social Media (Facebook for Business) can be a great way to keep in touch with customers and build a relationship while letting them get to know you.   It allows you to be creative when touching your customers by giving them education and ideas they can use regarding your products, eg. If your selling clothes you can explain washing or dry-cleaning hints and tips or styling hints using scarfs etc.  Restaurants might give cooking tips or share recipes or the best way to season your saucepans etc.

So make sure your posts are consistent to your brand and relevant to your clients this will give them something they can take away or share with their friends too.  If you post something controversial you run the risk of loosing them and damaging your own credibility.

“It takes months to find a customer ….. seconds to lose one.”    -Vince Lombardi

Being an entrepreneur can be fun Top Entrepreneur Hacks.  It gives you huge freedoms but with the freedom gives you great responsibility which you need to take seriously.  It is a lifestyle, a way of life, rewarding, satisfying but oh so challenging as everything is a massive lesson in life.

“Entrepreneurship is about turning what excites you in life into capital,

so that you can do more of it and move forward with it      – Richard Branson