The decision to start a business is exciting, but don’t get caught up in the fairy tale. If you want your business to succeed for the long-term, have these three essential elements in place.
1. Enough capital for six months. The time it takes to turn a profit will vary between industries and individual businesses, but the rule of thumb remains the same: have enough cash in the bank to survive for six months or more before you launch. Developing a realistic personal and business budget can help you survive the first few months, and sticking to this budget will be crucial to success.
Develop a list of potential expenses early on so that you have a good idea of what monthly bills plus extraneous expenditures will add up to and how this spending will affect your bottom line. Know that you may not receive a paycheck for months or even years after launch, so a hefty cash reserve will ameliorate the growing pains of starting a business.
2. Marketing and sales strategies for early-adopters. Coming up with an outstanding product or service is great, but your business will likely fail without those crucial first few customers. Develop a marketing plan with an allotted marketing budget that will get your product or service in front of key early-adopting clients. From the start, prepare ways to engage with and nurture clients to develop a loyal base.
Next, build your sales infrastructure: think about sales contracts, proposals, product listings or anything that a client will see when he or she wants to purchase from your company.
3. Endurance. I tell people this all the time: one of the hardest parts about being an entrepreneur is having the stamina to keep up with the daily demands of running your business. A lot of people mistakenly think that it will be a walk in the park.
Sure, there are major benefits such as working for yourself, having a flexible schedule and enjoying the successes of your hard work. But each benefit comes at the cost of putting your own capital and reputation on the line.
Before starting your own business, make sure you can mentally and physically ensure the journey. Be prepared to work long days, do things that are outside of your comfort zone, make personal sacrifices, work hard for what you believe in and dedicate yourself fully to the businesses success. If you aren’t in it 100 percent, the business won’t achieve its full potential.
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Five main categories of team building exercises exist. They consist of activities that build communication, promote problem solving and decision making, encourage adaptability and the ability to plan, work to build trust, and develop a cooperative spirit. The team building exercises that promote these various skills are meant to be enjoyable and instructional.
Depending on what you want to improve on your team, you can try some of the following activities:
1. Build communication. Activities that develop open lines of communication and listening increase communication. Try games like telephone, where you sit in a circle and one person whispers a scenario into the ear of the next person, such as how an important report was not delivered to the president in time. The “telephone” chain continues until the last person, who announces what he or she heard. Generally, by the end of the chain the story has been altered substantially. This gives employees a chance to discuss how the story changed along the way and methods they could use in the future to improve communication.
2. Promote problem solving and decision making. Used often in science fairs, the egg drop is a particularly effective activity for promoting problem solving. Split the employees into two groups and have them rig up a package that ensures a raw egg doesn’t break when dropped from a distance. Make it more challenging by timing them and limiting the types of materials they can use to protect the egg.
3. Encourage adaptability and planning. Survival scenarios work well to encourage planning and adaptability. Announce a survival situation, such as the fact that everyone will be deserted on an island indefinitely. Instruct the group to come up with a list of 15 items they must bring with them in order to ensure their survival. The process of choosing will require that they adapt and plan for the unexpected.
4. Build trust. One of the most efficient ways to test the trust between two individuals is to have them protect one another physically. This can be done by having one person close his or her eyes and fall backward into the arms of another. Or, you could have employees stand facing each other in pairs; with their elbows bent, they place their palms together, leaning toward each other and moving their feet back further and further until they’re supporting each other. Such exercises quickly highlight trust issues and help everyone learn to believe in one another.
5. Nurture a cooperative spirit. Assigning employee teams to volunteer with charitable causes is the best way to encourage cooperation. When people work on a cause that the team cares about, they will bond. The opportunity to give back to those less fortunate often creates a charitable, cooperative attitude among everyone involved.
Armed with these ideas for team building exercises, you can create the best working culture for your business.
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When starting out in business, you may be able to fumble your way to short-term success if you have a good product and a measure of business savvy.
If you want to experience long-term success, however, there are some core disciplines you learn and execute.
At some point (sooner is better than later), you will need to become skilled in the following six areas:
1. Conducting market research
Doing market research will provide you with key information about the industry in which you operate. It will also help you develop your business plan and adapt it over time. Adequate market research includes, at a minimum, the following areas:
2. Testing your ideas
Starting a new business or launching a new product can be intimidating, but it’s also very exciting. Sometimes the excitement causes entrepreneurs to over-commit time and resources on untested or unproven ideas. This is a recipe for failure.
Find ways to test every idea before rolling it out. With the Internet, testing an idea does not have to be difficult or expensive. Search engines and social networks provide some incredible tools that can be used to effectively test and perfect business ideas.
3. Developing business plans
Another important discipline involves proper planning. Creating a business plan in the beginning will raise your likelihood of future success because it forces you to think about and plan for critical issues you will face down the road. Furthermore, by devoting time to planning each year, you will be better equipped to adapt to changing market conditions.
There are several mobile and desktop applications that make creating business plans much simpler than it used to be.
4. Saving vs. spending
It’s easy to spend money on a new venture, and many entrepreneurs overspend in the beginning. Because it can take awhile to get established and begin generating revenue on a consistent basis, it is wise to maintain a cushion at all times. A new business owner should have at least six months of operating costs socked away before going into business.
5. The art of negotiating
Knowing how to negotiate is one of the most powerful skills an entrepreneur can acquire. When opportunities arise, you must know how to negotiate for lower prices when buying and higher prices when selling. If negotiating is not one of your strengths, study the art of negotiating and practice doing it whenever you get the chance.
6. Mental toughness
If you’re not resilient, you won’t be able to bounce back from the setbacks that you will face. Every entrepreneur inevitably faces setbacks and failures. Some will be small, and some will be so big that they will seem overwhelming. You must cultivate mental toughness and the determination to press on despite obstacles if you’re going to survive in the business world.
You have the ability to build a successful business. Thousands of people have done it who have no more ability than you do. To succeed, they simply learned the necessary behaviors to make their dreams a reality, and consistently took action to reach their goals. You can do the same.
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