By Mitchelle Uzorka
Starting a business entails understanding and dealing with many issues—legal, financing, sales and marketing, intellectual property protection, liability protection, human resources, and more. But interest in entrepreneurship is at an all-time high. And there have been spectacular success stories of early stage startups growing to be multi-billion-dollar companies, such as Eveafrique Business and News, Threadstone Couture, Spicy Model, B.A.D Kompany, and many others.
In this article, I give an overview of 5 key steps for entrepreneurs who are starting a business,
• know the MARKET;
How can you possibly have a meaningful vision about the future of a market if you are not a leading domain expert on that market?
If you are not an expert, then get to work!
• know your TARGET AUDIENCE;
From the outset, you need to intimately know of one very specific archetype who desperately needs your product.
And, there’s nobody you know more intimately than yourself That is why so many great businesses have been formed from a personal need.
• Original special spice;
Is what you are doing unique, or better than everybody else? Do you know a secret that nobody else does?
Be bold, because the best ideas are transformational, not incremental.
• Set Up a Good Accounting and Bookkeeping System;
You will need to set up a bookkeeping/accounting system to keep track of your finances—income, expenses, capital expenditures, EBITDA, profit and loss, etc. This is important in order to understand your business’s cash flow situation and also for tax-filing purposes.
• Take advantage of social media and free websites for marketing;
Many entrepreneurs today build and maintain their own websites, with powerful tools such as Shopify. Site marketing is easily extended through blogs, Twitter, Facebook and social media. Don’t sign up for outside search-engine optimization, public relations or other experts until your business is generating revenue.
