“An entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create.” – David Karp, founder of Tumblr
In the previous blog, you learned that there is no such thing as ‘the right time’ to start your business, but you need to have the mental makeup to take the decision. If you have got this on point, then you are ready to go, my friend! You decided to start your business, that is quite a brave decision, but often while running the business you will wander around chasing the right things to run a successful business. You don’t need to worry though! Through our research and based on our experience, we have compiled a list that has a few of the most important aspects to run a successful business, in this blog. So pay attention, jot down important points on your notepad and start working right away!
1. Passion
Passion, one of the key elements of starting a business, is needed throughout the journey. Passionate leaders translate this passion through their employees and these passionate employees end up creating excellent products/services. They also help create a healthy culture in the company where ideas foster.
Throughout your journey, it is also natural to ask yourself, “am I really passionate about these things?” But the thing is, you might not be passionate about everything about your business. Yes!, there are many kinds of stuff you need to get done that are nowhere related to your passion. You need to relax and enjoy the journey, for the boring things often get you the most. Yes, but you should be passionate about the core problem that your business solves, or else you would risk running out of motivation for showing up daily. So, if you are quite passionate about the problem your business solves, then you have it to run a successful business.
2. Are you Qualified?
Another doubt you may have is if you are qualified enough to run this business. In this case, don’t worry my friend as every expert was once a novice! But, the important thing which you would need to consider is that your core skills should align with the problem which you are solving. It is understandable that you might not have all the skills required to run your business. In that case, you would want to have a co-founder who compliments your skills or hire a team for specific departments.
Entrepreneurship is an art, that many learn by diving right into the sea of entrepreneurship. Your educational qualifications are mere pieces of paper, in this pursuit, the only thing you should be having is the hunger for knowledge. As you move forward with your journey of entrepreneurship, conquering obstacles, your eager-to-learn attitude will help you gain enough knowledge to run your business, or maybe more! So don’t worry about your qualifications, and enjoy and learn from the ups and downs of this journey. You only learn to swim, once you dive into the water!
3. Make your MVP
MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is defined as a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development. An MVP forms the basis of your idea and is the fastest way to test it. Although MVP is commonly used for tech businesses, the concept is applicable to almost all. For example, we at Beginest coworking spaces wanted to test the idea of coworking spaces especially catering to startups and small businesses like yours. Instead of jumping directly into the arena, we thought of conducting a pilot in a small space. We literally, converted one floor of our friend's home into a well-equipped coworking space, in Indiranagar, because that's what startups do, JUGAAD! (Here we would also like to thank Rajesh for helping us out.) So, this small office space was our MVP. Which surprisingly was full within only a week of its inception, and we added another floor to it. As of now, we have 4 coworking spaces in Indiranagar and 1 coworking space in Residency Road and we are expanding throughout Bangalore. These coworking spaces are designed to cater especially to startups and small businesses, like yours. Our mantra was to test the MVP as soon as possible and improve it. If you have a physical product, then your prototype becomes the MVP.
You should put up an MVP as soon as possible and build your business by iterating on the feedback from it. This will help you determine whether the market is willing to adopt your product. If you are working on a freemium model, you can test this by the number of signups of subscriptions. The loop of testing your product/service, taking feedback from the customers, and working on it is crucial for any business to succeed. The faster the loop, the faster the product becomes better and will help you stay ahead of the pack.
4. Customer-centric approach
Often in the pursuit of scaling, businesses tend to lose sight of the fact that they are in the business to serve the customers in the first place. As an entrepreneur, you should always remember, “customer is king”. Having a customer-centric business approach not only keeps the existing customers happy but also helps make an amazing customer journey.
5. Tenacity
Are you the one who is constantly looking for that dopamine burst from various things or the one who can show up every day even if it gets boring? If you are the former one, then you should work on being tenacious. Entrepreneurship is quite a grueling journey, which many times leads to burnout. There are things that an entrepreneur might dislike doing personally while running his business. Thus, it is important for an entrepreneur to be tenuous and persevere in his endeavor of entrepreneurship.
6. Communication
One of the key aspects that are often overlooked by people is effective communication. As an entrepreneur, you will have to deal with many folks, where effective communication is vital. When we talk about communication, it doesn't necessarily mean conveying our message to others but also includes understanding others' points of view. For example, understanding customer needs clearly by interacting with them, sharing your vision with investors and the team, etc.
Proper communication with the customers is often missed out and might lead to customer dissatisfaction. Your communication game should be on point, throughout the customer journey, be all ears! You can build effective communication by listening more. As said by Peter Drucker, “The most important thing in communication is to hear what’s being said”
You surely will be a rockstar if you get these things right. Now you should meet like-minded folks and expand the horizon for your business! Beginest is a cult of entrepreneurs that has one of the founding principles to help new businesses and budding entrepreneurs like you! We are not only a coworking space in Bangalore but also a community of startups and entrepreneurs. We have built a network of over 200 flourishing startups that have benefited from the provision of our incubation, startup service capabilities, mentor hours, access to funding, and other resources. We have coworking spaces in Indiranagar and Residency Road.
You can contact us to join the cult. See you!
Now that you know how to run a successful business. In the last part of this series, we will cover how to build traction and sustainability to grow your business, so stay tuned!