Starting out as an emerging entrepreneur is no easy task: You need to have curated strategy, tip top management and organization skills, and be naturally innovative to make your mark in the business world. Entrepreneurship does not only require that a person have creativity, industry knowledge, and new ideas, but also the strategic management ability to turn those things into real results and opportunities.
So how do you become a successful emerging entrepreneur?
First, let’s list out the basic types of entrepreneurship that exist:
- Start-ups: When you think of a start-up, you’re probably picturing two scruffy college drop-outs in a Midwestern garage, creating a never-before-seen innovation. Sometimes this picture is reality, but other times it’s not. Many start-ups have funding secured from venture capitalists to fuel the “next big thing”, meaning there are people invested in their product and potential business strategy.
- Small to Medium Businesses (SMB): SMBs can serve as a great way for emerging entrepreneurs to start a new venture within the means available to them. Starting a small business does not devalue the importance of the process, research, and entrepreneurial strategy that goes into this type of entrepreneurship. In fact, small to medium sized businesses can be a great place for emerging entrepreneurs to live out certain behaviors and practices at the single business-unit level.
- Large Businesses or Firms: Large businesses can offer emerging entrepreneurs the experience and opportunity to be students of entrepreneurship within a successful and established context.
- Individual: This founding team will consist of one person, which can seem daunting at first. However, starting a venture on one’s own can pave the way for the process of entrepreneurship to be understood and learned more fully, which can also lead to a long-term pattern of strategic behavior, especially in the face of success.
Now that we’ve laid out the types of entrepreneurship available, let’s dive into 5 strategies that emerging entrepreneurs can practice to achieve success.
1) Know who you are. Knowing who you want to be as an entrepreneur and what you want to offer the world is a core concept that will drive many other aspects of your business. For example, if you know who you are, you can more easily start shaping your branding strategy, messaging, target audiences, and more. In addition, knowing who you are will help you establish consistency throughout your marketing and sales outputs.
2) Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Sometimes the best leaders are those who seek advice from everyone around them. As an entrepreneur, you’ll have many resources available to you, but it’s up to you to decide how to best utilize them! Being open to receiving new insights and learning from external resources can help your business’s growth and scalability in the long run.
3) Keep track of your finances, and then optimize them. Staying on top of your financial information is a crucial part of sustaining a healthy business over a long period of time. Make time to look over your financial statements to ensure that everything is on course to reach your financial goals as a business. In addition, when you have a firm grasp on your financial situation, you can consult with financial professionals to decide how to best optimize your assets and financial resources. As an entrepreneur, having a solid foundation of financial resources can open a world of possibilities to expand your product or vision.
4) Be relational. Remember that anyone, anywhere can sell a product – even robots! In a time where human connection is decreasing more than ever, make sure that you prioritize the people you’re selling to more than your product itself. After all, building real relationships with people is what keeps them coming back, establishes their loyalty with your business, and makes them want to stay for a long time.
5) Keep learning. In order to continue growing and succeeding as an entrepreneur, you must keep learning from everyone and everything around you. Make it a priority to study the newest and latest developments related to your idea or product, so that you can implement best practices to optimize your services. Another great way to learn is from your competitors – Take in their strategy, approach, messaging, and learn from what does and does not work for them. You can use this to make alterations to the way you decide to position and market your business.
No matter the industry, there are plenty of ways for emerging entrepreneurs to pursue success in what they do. At Lift Digital Marketing, we offer the best quality services to entrepreneurs and business leaders, big or small! Thinking about starting your journey as an entrepreneur, but don’t know where to start? Call us to talk through some of our marketing services that you can utilize!
