How to Harness Your Entrepreneurial Spirit

Becoming an entrepreneur is an ambition that many people hold, especially at the start of the year when New Year’s resolutions are still running high. There are about 400 million entrepreneurs in the world, so you are not the only one to hold the ambition of starting your own business venture. If you have the entrepreneurial spirit, but you aren’t sure how to actually use it to start a business, these tips will help.

Find a Problem You Want to Solve

If you know that you want to start a business, but you don’t know what you want to do yet, start looking for problems that you encounter in your daily life. When you find something that you think you can solve, start to think of products you could create that would solve that issue. This doesn’t need to be a huge problem, like world hunger or gender inequality, and instead, it can be a small thing, like a lack of sustainably made clothes in a certain style that you like. Sustainably, ethically, and locally made items are very popular right now, so if you see a product that you can’t find within those specifications, that’s a great option for your own business. This problem that you’re solving is called your niche, and it will determine what your market and audience will be.

Learn Your Market

Once you’ve figured what your niche is and what kinds of products you’re interested in creating, it’s time for some market research. In your research, you should be looking for things like the average price of similar products, who your possible competitors might be, what issues people have with products in the market, and any other information that may impact the sales of your product or service. For example, if you’re looking to start a kitchen remodel service in San Francisco, then you’ll find out that homeowners in SF spend the most on kitchen remodels out of the top 20 metro areas in the U.S. By knowing the average spent on a kitchen remodel is $70,000, you’ll be able to properly price your services to be both competitive and fitting of the local market.

Understand Your Audience

Your audience is made up of all of the people who may need your product or service. Understanding your audience will help you better understand how to fine-tune the specifics of your product or service as well as your marketing materials once you have launched your business. For example, if you’re starting a real estate business in Manhattan, the average price of a condo in pre-existing buildings was $1.9 million in 2017, so you know that you are going to be catering to people who have enough money to afford a $1.9 million condo. This will limit your audience significantly, which will help you get a more specific idea of who you’re going to be marketing to.

If you’re in a more general field than the Manhattan real estate market, you may have a wider potential audience that you are trying to appeal to, which will mean that you will probably need to do less specialized content with your marketing materials. For example, if you’re a clothing company making trendy sustainable clothing, as mentioned earlier, your market will be much larger. You’ll want to think about what will make your potential audience become actual customers — what will make them buy from your business specifically? Think about this when you’re creating both your actual product or service and when you’re marketing those things.

Create a Business Plan

Business plans are extremely important when it comes to having your business start successfully and stay afloat. In your business plan, you will detail what your business will sell, your marketing strategies, your target audience, who will work for you and with you, what your business’ goals are, and other details that are important to ensuring your future success. There are many online resources for creating a business plan and being able to complete one before you launch your company will be very helpful in keeping your business going.

Get Help

Trying to start a business completely on your own without any support will likely be overwhelming and difficult. Even if you’re starting a relatively small business and you aren’t expecting large sales or calls at first, having people that you can turn to for advice and emotional support is a good idea. If you’re trying to start a business that you expect will have a more rigorous impact on you, you should consider if you have to hire other employees. If your business will take a pretty penny to start, you should look for investors who can help you monetarily.

You can also try to find another businesswoman who can mentor you or give you advice as you begin your foray into entrepreneurship. If there is a woman that you look up to, consider reaching out and asking to connect for a cup of coffee or a zoom call to ask some questions and get some advice on opening a business. Networking on sites like LinkedIn can also be helpful if you can find entrepreneurs that you look up to and can reach out to.

Advertise

Even before you start your business, you should start to build hype for it. Depending on your audience, this can happen in many different ways. If you’re starting a more exclusive business or service, you can start to spread your business by word of mouth in the right circles, and if you’re starting a business that appeals to 20-somethings, you can start social media pages. Make sure to think about where or how your potential audience will be best able to get exposure to your business before it launches. Having some customers who are ready to buy as soon as you launch can help make the start of your business a success.

If you try to wait until every single thing for your business is perfectly in order, you’re going to be waiting forever. Instead, prepare the best that you can, using these tips, and start the business that you’ve dreamed of.