In this video, I'll share seven actionable tips you need to take to become an
entrepreneur, going beyond boring theory.
I'll use specific examples for each to set you up for success right out the
gate, as you start your business journey.
Entrepreneurship is exciting because you're creating and
delivering value on your terms.
And unlike a regular job, the sky's the limit when it comes to both your
earning and time freedom potential.
In general, there are three types of businesses you may be considering,
service-based, product-based and content-based, and I'll be using examples
of each as we explore all seven tips.
So with that, let's dive right in.
Tip one, know what challenge you're solving.
If we distilled a one commonality of literally every business on earth at the
base level, they all solve a challenge.
Maybe you're selling stickers you design a visual homages that only
rock climbers would understand.
The challenges you're solving might include giving rock climbers a way to
share the love of their sport, enabling them to feel a sense of belonging in an
in-crowd and a way to decorate some of their stuff in a way that represents them.
That's product based.
But maybe your business idea is service-based say, mobile dog grooming
the challenges you might be solving could be helping folks who don't
own a car and are short on time, still have their pup looking great.
What about content based, perhaps you and your significant other find yourselves
constantly getting into arguments and decide to start a podcast where listeners
can eavesdrop on others' relationship struggles and gain tips on how to
become a better partner in marriage.
The challenge that you're solving for listeners is providing deeply
relatable takes on how to get through every love related scenario imaginable.
And on top of this, your podcast is also curing.
By providing something educational, entertaining, and sometimes hilarious
to listen to on their evening commute, you can see from all three
of these examples at the end of the day, they are all solving a
challenge for their target customers.
The only way to make money reliably and consistently is to solve a challenge
in the buyer's mind, a challenge they deem worthy of spending money to solve.
So how do you put this tip into action.
Whether you're already in business or still in the idea stage, jot
down your target customer groups and be clear about what their problems
are, then brainstorm which ones you can solve and how you do it.
This will help with how you communicate your value proposition to them in your
website copy and marketing materials.
If you're interested, we'll link a great video about the concept of
value propositions right up here, and in the description below, know
your target audiences and know what challenges you're solving for them.
To do this, do some market and customer research.
Also look at your competitors and take some notes on their website copy, and
especially on their customer reviews, use your learnings to build out your
own customer persona, then tailor your messaging so that it is crystal clear
that your business solves their needs.
Tip two do customer development.
But what is customer development?
It's an effective way of validating your ideas and assumptions before spending
money on expensive costs like inventory, capital equipment, and infrastructure.
But how is this done?
Simple.
By talking with your potential future customers.
So our rock climbing sticker designer may choose to break open their laptop
and show their designs to members at the climbing gym that they go to to see which
designs folks gravitate, to what insights they can get, color options and use
cases that come to other people's minds.
Our aspiring mobile dog groomer may spend time at a few off-leash
parks in the areas that they want to serve, to get to know their potential
future customers current dog grooming routines, and preferred places.
Then researching those places to get a strong gauge for pricing.
The podcasting couple may use one of their phones to film an argument, followed by
a discussion on conflict resolution, then share it on their personal Facebook page
to see the reaction, engagement levels and receptiveness of their friends.
They may even engage in conversations with their existing social circle
to see how their friends currently deal with marital conflicts.
The point is before we buy sticker machines and dye cutters, Lease a work
van outfit with dog grooming equipment, or spend thousands of dollars on
podcasting equipment, we want to be able to higher levels of confidence
that our business idea is indeed solving a need for our target customers
in the ways that we anticipated.
And often you'll learn interesting solutions that you never
even thought of straight from your target customers mouths.
By gaining validation when we do spend the startup capital, you'll
have a stronger plan of attack and build up sales much quicker.
And speaking of spending startup capital.
Tip three, determine your burn rate and runway.
This is a time to really get down and dirty with pen and paper or calculator
in spreadsheet, to gain clarity of your financial landscape end to end.
Identify the costs of doing business, fixed monthly costs and variable costs.
Know your monthly personal burn rate for survival and identify
your current available resources, which will all culminate to give
you a clear idea of your runway.
The amount of time you have in order to keep the early net negative business
going before profits outpaced spending.
Our rick climber may realize they only have two months of runway.
So getting a part-time job as necessary, and Hey, if they can get a
part-time job at a climbing gym, all the better to be constantly surrounded
by potential future customers, right?
The soon to be mobile dog groomer may have already saved enough money necessary
to get a used van and some equipment and have a spouse whose job earns enough
for them to go full-time right away.
Through their number crunching though, they've identified that the fixed monthly
cost, regardless of whether or not they get dog grooming clients is $500 a month
and have an extra $1,500 set aside.
So therefore they know that they have no more than three months to get
the business into positive cashflow.
Our Aspiring podcasting couple recognizes that content based businesses often
require a much more time to become profitable since more often than
not, a sizable audience needs to be built before money starts coming in.
So they both decide to keep their full-time jobs and to hit the
record button during evenings and dedicate their weekends to
editing, uploading, and marketing.
No matter what type of business you've started or plan on starting,
getting a bird's eye view of your financial landscape and identifying
your burn rate and runway are critical for planning, sales targets,
milestones, and ultimately viability.
We actually have a free template that is going to help you with just that.
And you can find it by clicking on the link in the top right corner of the
video or down below in the description.
Tip four, start with a minimum viable product.
I know the word product is in this tip, as usual, this applies to
service and content businesses too.
The MVP is a way for you to move fast and spend as little time and money as
possible to truly validate your offering.
Our rock climber may have dreams of having holographic stickers with gold
leaf and Boston elements on them, but needs to recognize at the end
of the day, it's the core design and the insights sense of belonging for
rock climbers that they're solving.
So going with less costly stickers that still enable customers to feel that sense
of community is all that's needed as a minimum viable product to start selling.
Once the sales start flowing in and there's cashflow to experiment
with that's when all the bells and whistles can be added.
Our dog grooming friend, doesn't need to spend money, getting fancy graphics
on their van, nor do they have to offer every single service that the big box
pet stores offer for grooming right away.
Maybe through their early conversations with dog owners at dog parks, they
learned that the vast majority of dog owners in the area just want a deep
brushing and nail clipping once a month.
So spending money on a dog shampooing platform and water tank
to install in the van just isn't necessary, at the very beginning.
Our podcasting couple realized that they can get pretty great sound
quality from the voice recording app on their phone, as long as they
record inside their walk-in closet, where all the clothes reduces echo.
So they skipped buying expensive microphones until they prove to themselves
that they're in it for the long haul and start building a small following.
Determining your MVP actually starts all the way back in tip two.
In the customer development phase.
As you have conversations with potential future customers, to
validate that your idea is indeed solving a challenge worth spending
money on for them, you'll naturally get valuable nuggets of information
from them in those conversations, that'll help guide your MVP.
There'll always be a temptation to spend lots and build out every last
feature and offering, but potential features and offerings are never ending.
So focus on the minimum viable product where the least amount of input still
solves the target customer's challenge.
Validate sales from that, and after money reliably comes in, then
consider expanding the offering.
Tip five, don't go fishing, instead, find the waves.
And just so I'm clear, we're talking about sales and customers here.
See when trying to make sales, oftentimes new entrepreneurs may
find themselves going fishing.
One customer at a time.
And maybe it starts with texting everyone they already know who they genuinely
believe they're offering can help.
Maybe it's going door to door and maybe it's posting stuff to
their Instagram and asking their friends and followers to share.
The point is their efforts are less impactful because
they're going fishing for sales.
Instead, find the waves.
The places where your target customers already exist and interact in droves.
So instead of fishing, you can stand in the path of the wave
and let it knock you over.
Our rock climbing friend can of course go to rock climbing gyms, but
even better contact a rock climbing competition organizers to set up a
small booth at major competitions, they could even consider creating
an affiliate deal with a couple of climbing influencers on social media.
Our dog groomer can consistently visit off-leash parks on Saturdays and
handout doggy treats with their name and website printed on the packaging
of the individually wrapped treats.
Our Podcasting couple, they might pay for Google ads for the search terms,
"marriage counselor near me" and "best marriage counselors" in a city name so
that when people search for relationship counseling, a catchy ad for their podcast
shows up at the top of the search results.
This is your business.
And in tips one and two, you have already figured out your value proposition
and your target customer segments.
It stands to reason that you know, where your target customers go in droves, both
in the real world and the digital one.
So locate those ways of potential customers and stand in their paths,
instead of casting one hook at a time.
Tip six, design processes and systems.
Being an entrepreneur, especially a solopreneur or early stage startup,
means time is stretched thin because you're wearing so many hats.
So dedicate energy and thought to designing processes that make
all of the tasks you need to do as frictionless as possible.
Our sticker maker may discover that it takes a lot of time to put
orders in envelopes, seal them, write names and addresses and
drop them off at the post office.
So finding tools that optimize processes like using Shopify robust
backend to fulfill and directly print shipping labels with a label printer
would save them boatloads of time.
Our dog grooming friend may soon find themselves struggling to
keep promised appointments on time as their client list grows.
And the number of hours spent stuck in traffic increases in tandem.
So applying for a permit with parks and rec to allow them to park their van at
dog parks, to reduce driving time and have so many potential customers in one spot
could both drastically increased business while cutting down on commuting time.
Our podcasting couple may find that juggling both of their
careers, recording and editing a podcast just takes too much time.
So setting aside a few hundred dollars a month to hire an editor
on gig sites like Fiverr or Upwork, just relieve so much pressure and
enables healthier work-life balance.
By designing processes, optimizing them while always thinking in terms of systems,
instead of individual tasks, we eliminate guesswork and undue stress to enable us to
stay focused on the most impactful things.
As we navigate the entrepreneurship journey, tip seven is to live
the phrase, always a student.
The co-founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman has been quoted as saying that building a
company is just like jumping off a cliff and assembling the plane on the way down.
There are a lot of takeaways from this quote, not the least of which is that
when it comes to entrepreneurship, we take a leap and must constantly
be learning things and learning them quickly and effectively in order to
take flight, you've got to take the leap, but make it a measured leap.
And once you leap, you can't just expect results without action.
Assemble that airplane as you free fall, but assemble it properly.
And the only way to do that is to ensure that you're always learning,
learning from your customers, your peers, your mentors, from your failures,
and Hey, maybe even a weekly visit to the learn with Shopify channel.
But all cheekiness aside, one thing's for sure when we stop
learning, we stop growing.
And the fact that you're even watching this video means that you're the type
of person with growth on their minds.
And by the way, if you're really ready to make the leap, Shopify is
here to give you one piece of that airplane in the form of a trial with
Shopify, that's completely free.
Over a million folks, just like you and me are using it to sell ship and process
payments anywhere it's backed by powerful tools that help you find customers, drive
sales and easily manage your day-to-day.
I think Shopify has definitely helped us in many businesses get started.
And there's nothing like hearing that cha-chang when you're out living your
life and doing something that you love.
I like that.
You can sign up for your 100% free, no commitment trial by clicking
the link in the top, right of this video or in the description below.
Oh, also one bridge we didn't discuss is funding.
When we think of funding, we often think of tech venture
capital, hearing of funding rounds going to millions of dollars.
But maybe you have an idea that doesn't quite require millions, but
requires more than you currently have access to, to see it come to life.
If you'd like a deep dive into getting funding for your business idea,
let us know in the comments if a video like that will give you value.
And speaking of giving you value, if you got some value from this video, be sure
to hit that subscribe button and hit that bell, so you'll be notified the moment
videos, just like this one, come out.
Thanks for hanging out with me and I'll see you in the next one.