A Quick Start Guide to Online Entrepreneurship
Many aspiring entrepreneurs want to start an online business. The idea of low or no start-up costs, running an empire from your laptop, and being able to use all the latest technology in your day-to-day operations is appealing and romantic.
Many believe online entrepreneurs move faster, get things done easier, and reap immediate rewards by keeping their entire business infrastructure online.
The Internet is full of success stories from people doing what you want to do. But what, if anything, makes their process different from any other type of entrepreneur?
To listen to these tips, check out the Ready Entrepreneur Podcast Episode 062: A Quick Start Guide to Online Entrepreneurship at Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen to your podcast
What does it mean to be an online entrepreneur?
Being an online entrepreneur is the same as being an entrepreneur in general.
Entrepreneurs identify value to deliver to the global marketplace. If you have a product or service that people want or need, and you want to bring that product or service to a potential community, then you are already thinking like an entrepreneur.
You become an entrepreneur when you get the business started and reach out your potential customers.
What is different for an online entrepreneur?
To understand any potential differences between online entrepreneurs and traditional entrepreneurs start with the definition of an online business.
An online business means a business enterprise that delivers products or services only over the Internet, and you earn your revenue the same way. You take advantage of online tools and resources to get your idea in front of your community.
Some of the most popular online businesses include blogger, vlogger, podcaster, author, teacher, software designer, artist, editor, copywriter, marketer…and the list goes on and on. These are all businesses that can be started and function only online.
For the purposes of this article, online businesses are those that were created through the rise of the Internet, and its applications.
Old vs. New
Traditional businesses that are now conducted online are different from new economy businesses that were invented online. If you are a licensed professional in a traditional business like healthcare, and you start providing medical advice online, you are governed by a different set of rules than a blogger who starts providing opinion about a healthcare issue online.
An aspiring entrepreneur starting an online business must decide: what business you are in. If you are in a regulated industry, you must follow that industry’s rules even online. If you are in a new economy industry, the rules are still murky and somewhat free. However, the environment of online law is changing rapidly, by the day, and all entrepreneurs must be aware of how these changes may effect their business.
A Website or Landing Page vs. Social Media presence
When starting an online business, an aspiring entrepreneur must know if there are potential customers. And the potential customers must know where to find the entrepreneur.
Many online businesses start with a website, but some avoid even that early expense by focusing on a social media presence.
If you have only social media, your biggest challenge will be in knowing who your audience is, and finding a way to keep them as part of your business. Setting up on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram provides you with a free forum for posting about your product or service offering. You may even be able to communicate directly with your community using services like Messenger. This may set up your initial business, and even provide you with a few customers.
But you also have to think of the customer experience. With a website, you can set-up and organize all your information in an easy-to-navigate format. Most importantly, you can host a permanent location for new and interested customers to sign-up with you and learn more about your product or service.
Own your audience
From the first day you begin an online business, you want to be able to own the potential customers who come looking for you by maintaining a relationship with them. You start by giving them a place to sign up for more information. When they sign up you get their e-mail address, and you can ethically continue to communicate with them about your product, service or related issues.
If your audience is only located on a third party platform like Facebook, then that company owns the audience. You can be kicked off of Facebook at any minute, and at that point you lose the audience and all the comments and connections you may have made.
If you own your audience, you control the relationship.
To own your audience, you can sign-up for an e-mail management service like ConvertKit that provides both forms and landing pages for you to collect e-mails, and back end organization for the e-mail lists you have. You can learn to use the service’s features which automatically upgrade your plan as your email list grows.
New Rules
Aspiring entrepreneurs should be aware of the regulations that are being implemented to protect people’s personal information, children, and commerce in general.
Taking possession of someone’s email information means you are subject to privacy regulations. Most legitimate entrepreneurs state upfront that they never sell or share an e-mail with a third party. This type of transparency helps build trust with your audience, and positions you as a business that does not need to run scams to attract people for only their e-mail address.
If the content you provide is not suitable for children, you must also be aware of the appropriate warnings that you need to include to warn parents and others.
Even with the focus on issue like privacy, other Internet practices are not diligently governed, and you must police yourself using common ethical standards and practices.
The Internet is global, anyone, anywhere in the world can put up any type of online front page and be in business. The governance for this behavior is not universal, nor recognized by everyone.
The reality is both an opportunity and a trap. If you are doing business with the public, you are subject to certain rules and ethical practices. If you abuse people’s trust, they will find a way to bring down your business. The same forces that allow you to successfully join the global business community in a matter of minutes can end your business just as quickly if you prove to be unworthy of their trust.
The best practice for an aspiring entrepreneur is to be prepared to behave online as if you are facing your customer directly in the face, and not as if you are anonymous and unaccountable for your actions.
Which Online Business should you select?
The criteria for deciding which business idea is best for you to start is another article. In general, you should consider:
- A thoughtful, truthful personal brainstorm on your strengths
- Issues or problems that come up in every day life
- Products or services you would use to make your life better
- Align the above with your education, experience, knowledge and hobbies
When you have your idea, you decide which platform is best for delivering it to the global marketplace. Here are some useful links depending on the type of person you identified with above:
For personalities – Start Video-blogging
For Teaching Others – Start an Online courses
For techy types and gamers – Create an App
For software designers – Create Software as a Service (saas)
Online entrepreneurship is the same as all entrepreneurship. You identify value you can deliver to the global marketplace through a product or service that will solve a problem, or deliver a solution.
Summary of The Quick Start Guide to Online Entrepreneurship:
- As you are getting started, decide if you are moving a traditional physical world business online, or starting with a new economy purely online business like blogging
- If you cannot decide, check out the resources just above this section for how to get started in the new economy areas
- Once you have an idea of what you want to do, decide if you want to have a website or strictly social media presence as the place where your potential community can connect with you. If you have a website or landing page, you can begin immediately to collect e-mail addresses and communicate directly with people who are interested in your product or service. If you only use social media, you can get started right away, but you do not own your audience
- Be aware that just because you are online does not mean you are above the law. You must still recognize laws, regulations and ethical practices when dealing with the public and operating online
Disclosure: links to ConvertKit on my site are affiliate links which means I earn revenue for eligible purchases that helps support this website and other resources for aspiring entrepreneurs.
How Entrepreneurial Wealth is Achieved
by Case Lane
Getting rich is part of the entrepreneurial story. Successful entrepreneurs start out focused on the product or service they will bring to the marketplace, but when their idea takes off, they become even more defined for having achieved wealth.
To learn how the wealth emerges, the biographies and autobiographies of successful entrepreneurs form a blueprint for an aspiring entrepreneur to understand the process.
But many people do not take the time to read the books, and remain curious about how an entrepreneur was able to become wealthy.
Image by DarkWorkX from Pixabay
We have a natural curiosity about how people became wealthy. There are many wealthy people who are not entrepreneurs and never were in their whole family line. You can get rich by winning the lottery or inheriting. You might even just buy an expensive piece of art for a bargain price at a flea market. Multiple roads to wealth exist.
But people primarily equate entrepreneurship with getting rich and living the life. People tend to forget about the work part, and only focus on the money and the life of leisure money can buy.
But if you dig deeper into the lives of entrepreneurs, the millionaires and billionaires who highlight all the stories, you might discover a reality about achieving wealth that people seem to be forgetting.
If you investigate a little further, you may realize, the secret to accumulating wealth is, as it has been for millennia: doing the work.
Part of the entrepreneur story is about money, the books and articles are written about the people who get rich. But for the wealth generated by entrepreneurs, the story is simple: Wealth is achieved through work – continuous, dedicated, unwavering work.
Build the Business Over Everything Else
On the road to wealth, you cannot have your cake and eat it too – meaning no birthday parties. When the most successful entrepreneurs tell their stories, they have nothing to say about going to parties, hanging out with friends, gossiping, surfing the Internet, playing video games, or binge-watching videos.
They talk about focusing day and night on their business idea, and bringing it into reality.
The willingness to be singular focused on business separates the wealth creators. You have to be obsessed with your business idea.
For some people, dropping all leisure pursuits sounds frightening, especially if you have already begun a regular life full of birthday parties. The most successful entrepreneurs never seem to have succumbed to the repetitive socializing routine, at least not once they were working on their business.
Change Your Life Routine
But for aspiring entrepreneurs who already have a ‘regular life’ full of social obligations and friendships, switching gears is a daily challenge.
If no one you know is doing what you are doing, and you want to focus on business 24/7, you have to make a choice.
The next time you receive an invitation for a general social function – not a wedding or funeral – but a theme party or drinks or dinner with friends – you have to decide what’s more important to you. Having yet another drink in yet another bar, or bringing your business idea into the global marketplace.
You are already someone who thinks differently from your circle. You are interested in delivering value into the world by helping people solve a problem using the product or service you create. Not everyone thinks like this. Most people do not think about big world problems at all – but you do.
And because you do – you have an opportunity to transform your life by bringing your business into the market. But you have to do the work. No one is going to know about your great idea if you do not develop it. No one is going to see or hear about it if you don’t market and promote it. The entire story is in your hands, and therefore it’s your responsibility.
Wealth is achieved by making the commitment to fulfill a need and then doing it. Once people become consumers, you can manage the market, and the reward that comes from helping them. But they know nothing about you until you’ve done the work to make yourself relevant to them.
The wealth that’s waiting for you is dependent on the effort you put in to obtain it. The question you have to ask yourself is – are you willing to do it?
Summary for How Entrepreneurial Wealth is Achieved
As a rising entrepreneur, you are curious about how wealth is achieved. You see many entrepreneurs who are rich, and you know their products or services, but how did they become the people who delivered those ideas to the market.
- They did the work. It’s that simple and that difficult.
- If you already have a regular life, and have not been tinkering in your garage since you were 10, you have to make an adjustment, which other people may not understand. You have to begin turning down social invitations, stop idle conversations and focus on your business
- Change your day, change how you behave and start operating like an entrepreneur by working on your business in every spare moment
- Change the conversation to business. If people in your life are not interested, you have to make a choice. You are not trying to convince other people that you can be an entrepreneur. You are trying to bring your great product or service to the people who need it.
- Make a commitment to yourself that you will work to success, just like every big-name entrepreneur has done in the past
Stay One Step Ahead of the Robots
by Case Lane
The rise of technology into every area of our lives has frightened many people into believing the unchecked advances will eventually overwhelm us. Humans will fight the machines…and lose.
But when humans face a new fear – diseases, rodents, other humans – the response has usually been to…fight. Throughout history, humans have challenged attackers head on. The survival instinct has made fighting part of human DNA.
The Rise of Robots
Now comes the rise of robots. Or more specifically the advent of robotic and artificial intelligence products and services that can replace the work currently being done by humans. The fear is that these technological marvels will render humans useless.
People with no work lose their self-confidence and dignity. They turn to substance abuse, violence and other harms to express their frustration. A world where humans believe they have no work is a world no humans would want to live in.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Although many people have been faced with technological change in the workplace, to the point of losing their jobs to technology, the response has been to expect more of the same.
But the response could be…to redefine your value.
The New Hope for Humans
The rise of technology matches the rise of human freedom and independence. Although there are many governments who will use technology to control their population, the difference with advances in the past is that those governments can also have technology used against them.
For the first time, the people have within their ‘brain’ power, the opportunity to override government action with technology solutions of their own. And in so doing to maintain their freedom and independence.
Aspiring entrepreneurs can take advantage of the same opportunity. The rise of a global, high tech future means the every day person has the opportunity to live life on their terms.
This type of freedom has never existed before in history. People were always constrained. In the beginning you were politically free but controlled by your resources, and up to the 20th century your freedom was politically controlled although resources were abundant.
Now the shackles are being thrown off, but a new fear has emerged. The one where you are so free, you are not wanted by anyone, and your value is reduced to nothing by technology that can do everything you can do.
Entrepreneurs Do What the Robots Cannot Do
For an aspiring entrepreneur, this potentially dire fate is actually an open door. Aspiring entrepreneurs can control of their own futures, by starting a business, defining the value you intend to create, and becoming valued for being human with the ability to deliver your product and service in a way only humans can make viable.
Entrepreneurs by definition identify new opportunities. Sometimes the product or service you intend to bring to market already exists in form. If you want to help people learn to paint, or sing or you want to create a new bag or t-shirt. Those products and services exist – but they may not necessarily exist for the audience you intend to target.
For the aspiring entrepreneur, your audience is the one that wants the product or service from you because of the way you design, produce and/or distribute it. You can buy books anywhere, but you buy books on Amazon because they are delivered to your door.
Many companies make computers, but people buy Apple computers because they’re slickly designed.
And when it comes to fashion – t-shirts to haut couture dresses, flip-flops to high heels – the marketplace wants an extraordinary variety of products.
Entrepreneurs fill gaps in the global marketplace. The plan for the robots is to do work that already exists. But not all work can be delivered by robots. Even if you believe that may not be the case someday, the chances that you living right now, will see robots do absolutely every single possible job in the world is probably zero.
Robots also do not do the most human-contact type of work from hair stylists to surgeons. As long as humans want to maintain contact with humans in professions where human thought and interaction are required, the robots will be one step behind.
The Technology Risk to Entrepreneurs
Now obviously there are no guarantees. Science and technology can accelerate at any moment and place your business at a disadvantage. But that has been the prediction throughout history. Sometimes when technology replaces an entrenched product or service, the product makes a comeback, or evolves to fulfill a new need.
Vinyl records now sell for 5 or 10 times the price people used to pay for them because the once ubiquitous item has become a novelty people purchase as a gift or collector’s item.
Other items like the 8-track tape player are not expected to return, ever.
But as an aspiring entrepreneur with one eye on the global marketplace and the other on your niche audience’s demands, you can hedge your own bets about what may or may not work by focusing on fulfilling the need your audience has right now.
The path to controlling your professional life runs through entrepreneurship. By turning yourself into a person who recognizes a gap in the market, you can deliver value to more people who are searching for the same thing.
Because you have to find a product or service that your audience wants or needs, by definition, that product or service does not already exist. And therefore the chance that robots or A.I. can deliver the product or service also does not yet exist.
If you are fulfilling someone else’s vision or working at a company where someone has a specific idea about how the product or service is delivered, you likely have limited flexibility within your job, and perhaps in the not to distant future, no job at all.
Any product or service that exists today is vulnerable to replacement by technology. Robots or A.I. can do many of the activities that humans have always done.
Which job is next for replacement?
At Singapore’s state-of-the-art Changi International Airport, one of the best airports in the world, passengers with time to spare can leave their luggage in traditional baggage storage, or self check-in the baggage at the same time as themselves.
The process involves no humans, only sensors, cameras and prompts provided to you by a screen. An airline ticket counter agent was a position that required training. But the functions were easily automated. The checks and controls gate agents used to provide were covered by cameras. And the rest of the task was left up to the passenger.
As you consider today’s employment field, focus on the positions that have repetitive and mechanical steps. Those are the jobs that can be replaced.
As an aspiring entrepreneur, you create the job for yourself and your team. You are not, at least not immediately, facing the same vulnerability to replacement as existing controlled positions. As long as you maintain your unique approach to the product or service you are delivering, you maintain your distinct advantage over the robots.
The job you create for yourself by becoming an entrepreneur puts you in charge of a future you create.
Cherish the Value of Humans
Your vision is singular. Can robots see the world as we do? Not yet, and probably not ever. Because it’s the essential humanness of ourselves that we put into our business that makes it valuable to other humans.
As long as humans value humans. We will value what humans do. And your opportunity to be your own boss and be part of the global marketplace comes from your ability to put something new and differentiated in to it.
You stay one step ahead of the robots by identifying the value you add to the marketplace, and making that value available to those who want and need your product.
If you are still trying to think of an idea, or you are working on building your business, either way, you are already ahead of the airline counter agents, and those like them whose tasks can be performed by technology.
And if you continue to build on your idea and make your business successful. You are also one step ahead of those who are missing out on the life they really want because they work on someone else’s dreams.
You get to your life dream through globalization and technology. Even if you have been negatively affected by the twin forces of 21st century change, you can use the setback to your advantage, by leveraging the exact same forces that upended you, to make a better world for yourself.
In summary:
Stay One Step Ahead of the Robots:
- Globalization and technology are the twin forces of change that are here to stay
- Many jobs from airline ticket counter agents and beyond will be replaced by technology solutions
- You can hedge your bets against being replaced by robots or A.I., by developing your business idea
- Your business idea is designed by you to bring value to the global marketplace based on gaps and opportunities that you can see need to be filled.
- You develop your idea based on your individual uniqueness and qualities that appeal to your audience
- You create a product or service that is valued for its innovation, production or distribution – and therefore is unique to the vision you have seen
- You stay one step ahead of the robots by creating your own business, providing a product or service that is valued in the global marketplace, and continuing to deliver results for your audience
How Do You Force Yourself to Do What You Really Want to Do
by Case Lane
Aspiring entrepreneurs can learn about entrepreneurship by reading about or listening to successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates or Martha Stewart or Oprah.
But hearing about success sometimes leads to a limiting belief that what those people did is not possible for everyone. There is an idea that the successful are wired differently, and therefore have capabilities that do not apply to the average person. Aspiring entrepreneurs are left wondering, how the successful are able to actually do the work they do.
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Famously Bill Gates spent endless hours tinkering with computers; Martha Stewart obsesses over every tablecloth; Oprah chased the good stories. They all seem to have some sort of special trigger inside them that propels them forward to success down the entrepreneurial path. If that’s true, how does the average aspirant to entrepreneurial wealth and achievement become one of the them?
Is it possible to make yourself…force yourself to become the successful person you’ve always wanted to be?
The Success Words
The chapter headings from Lewis Howes’ book The School of Greatness, read like the step-by-step lines from any familiar success manual. The headings are: create a vision, turn adversity into advantage, cultivate a champion’s mindset, develop hustle, master your body, practice positive habits, build a winning team, live a life of service.
The book emphasizes greatness in general, in how you live your life.
But the challenge for so many is that those success lines and even the tips that come along with it are all great advice that so many people have difficulty implementing. These are the actions and ideas you need to develop if you want to reverse the struggles of your life, or any type of past backwards pace. But understanding that fundamental fact is often only the first step.
Understanding the intention of the advice helps you realize what you need to do. The next, and more complicated step is to determine ‘how’ you are going to fulfill those success goals. And the ‘how’ must be compatible with your personality, your lifestyle and your best efforts.
The step to learn next is to figure out how you do the activities that you know you want to do because you want to achieve greatness by building your entrepreneurial dream.
Here are 4 strategies to help you achieve the ‘how’ for making yourself that person you wish you were…
1. Think about Your Plan all the time
The best way to cultivate your entrepreneurial mindset is to think about your business idea and your plans 24/7/365. Immerse yourself in your own vision of being a successful entrepreneur with a business you own, and control of your lifestyle.
The most successful entrepreneurs think about their business – the opportunity, scope for improvement, operations, the team, all aspects of the enterprises – in all situations. You can do the same with your business idea, and the plan for your business.
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
You become an entrepreneur, by being an entrepreneur. Transforming to your dream life through entrepreneurship is about reinventing yourself, changing who you imagine yourself to be, and doing what you have always wanted to do.
You may feel that constantly thinking and talking about your business will alienate you from your friends or family. But you are on a mission to improve your life. If those around you do not support your actions, they have alienated themselves from you.
Create a vision in your mind of your future as an entrepreneur, and hold to that vision in your present. Think it, operate in it, push it all the time as your singular purpose. At a certain point, you are going to want to be living that vision. You are going to want it as your reality because you have made it possible.
2. Clear Your Space
With the minimalist movement gaining support and adherents the idea of working in a less-cluttered environment has become a trend. But the clean-up is also a proactive way to set yourself up in a success-promoting environment.
You want to operate in an environment without distractions. Sometimes our inability to do the activities we need to do to become successful are a reflection of being around too many things we do not want to do – like cleaning up – that all provide an excuse for not moving forward.
Begin your movement towards being your own champion by clearing away a piece of clutter each day. Pick up the piece of clutter you have been seen in the same place for more than six months and…throw it away.
Top performers work in an environment that focuses on their business. You need the tools and resources you will use to be close at hand, and all other diversions to be tucked away. You are trying to put yourself in the same shoes as the most successful entrepreneurs you know. People who focused on building their business. If you want to be one of those people, you have to focus too.
Any item that is truly meaningful or beneficial to you should be appropriately organized. You may already have shelves, boxes or envelopes where you can put items of value. Everything else can go.
Clearing your space can reduce your sense of overwhelm by giving yourself room to function in the best environment you can create.
3. Look for allies
Setting out to build your own business can be lonely and difficult. You may not have any support among family or friends. You may be afraid to talk about entrepreneurship at work because you think people will think you’re out of your league. And you may be tolling away with trying to create your business idea without any help.
But you can find motivation and support by quietly, and confidently, asking around to find out if anyone is doing, or wants to do, what you want to be doing.
Unless you’re in Silicon Valley, finding people who support the idea of starting their own business may be a quick way to lose friends. But you can carefully begin looking for allies by speaking about your business whenever it’s appropriate. Learn who responds well and who quickly changes the subject. You may be surprised to learn who your allies are.
Say to your spouse, partner, sibling, colleague, friend a statement like: ‘hey, I’m doing some research about the business idea I’ve had for years, would you be interested in the things I learn?’
For every person who replies ‘no way,’ there may be one who says ‘yeah, I’ve always been interested in starting a business, tell me more.’ The idea is to find someone who aligns with you. If that person becomes your accountability buddy that’s even better.
To help you stay on track with your dream, and make your plan a reality, you can make a commitment to someone other than yourself. If you form an alliance with someone, you’re more likely to get things done.
However, if you come from a world where no one at all responds favorably to your low-key approach, you can still form alliances – with virtual mentors. Your virtual mentors are the people whose books, videos, speeches, interviews, courses and shows become part of your life when you are researching how to be successful with your business.
You can listen to hours of someone encouraging you to be strong, stay committed to your dream and so on. This provides you with effectively the background soundtrack to your aspirations. And a chance to be aligned with people who are on your side, even if you’ve never met them before in your life.
4. Plan to Work
Writing down goals you plan to complete is much easier than actually doing the work to see those goals finished. To make the exercise more tangible, write down goals, that are accompanied by specific action.
Step-by-step, hour-by-hour goals are designed to take you exactly where you want to be in an orderly and planned fashion. Instead of a lofty ‘I want to be a millionaire’ goal, write down exactly what you would have to do to become a millionaire. What would you have to do every day?
For example, in my book A Better Plan, I encourage financially challenged readers to calculate exactly how many hours they would have to work, at their current wage to earn one million dollars. If your current wage is $12 an hour, you would need to work eight hours a day for about 83,000 hours or 40 years. Once you have that baseline, you can figure which variables to change to reach your goal faster.
But at the same time, each hour that you’re working is still getting you towards your goal.
A detailed plan for building your business may take you months to write, but the goal is to get started. Think of the plan like the notes for your autobiography, how would you describe the detailed story for anyone who wanted to ask.
The plan becomes your blueprint for how you are going to create the business. Write the story in all its detail. For example if you get a loan for one million dollars, write out how you would go about procuring that loan. Who would help you and why? Write out every word. And take all the time you need on doing it.
You can write a line or two in the morning, or at work. Buy a planner or desk calendar and write on each of the days of the week. Lay out your plan in all its glorious detail.
The point is to give your a roadmap, a point of reference, a vision that you can use to lead yourself exactly where you want to go. And to help you to move forward on achieving your life dream.
These four strategies can help you think clearly about yourself as an entrepreneur. You can force yourself to do what you really want to do – which in our case is transition to lifestyle freedom by becoming an entrepreneur – by making strategic moves towards your goal.
Even if you’re still saying – but how? – think of these four strategies as the activities that help you identify the ‘how.’
If you want to know how to literally force your fingers to start writing, or how to open your mouth to ask a friend if they’re interested in business, you may not be committed to the goal of achieving the life you want through entrepreneurship.
If you are sit on the couch and do not move in any form or direction because you believe your dream will materialize without effort, then neither these strategies or any others will help you.
But if you’re ready to move forward, to take the initial steps, then you are on your way. Improve your life for yourself and take action to achieve your dreams.
To help yourself do what you really want to do:
1. Think about what you want to do all the time
2. Clear the space around you of distractions and diversions
3. Find some allies, either real or virtual, who will support you
4. Plan the work you have to do in specific detail
When you lay out your vision, you find you are compelled to move forward and bring it all into fruition. And before you know it, you will be walking, talking and living as the entrepreneur you have always wanted to be.
Disclosure: links to Amazon.com are affiliate links. I participate in the Amazon Affiliates program and earn for eligible purchases
Read to Wealth: How to Select Books for the Road to Success
by Case Lane
You have probably read that many successful people read. The world’s movers and shakers, billionaires and influencers read books (and magazines and newspapers). They read to stay informed, learn practices and strategies for success, and to continuously improve their minds.
Part of your success strategy for transitioning your life to entrepreneurship, should include reading.
But where do you start?
There are hundreds (probably thousands) of “best book” lists that you can Google and reference. But how do you even choose which books to read from that list?
One way to start is to think first about what you want to get out of the books. What do you want books to teach you? You want to be reading for implementable action, things you can do to improve yourself as you build your business.
Here are five categories of books to begin with:
The Definition of an Entrepreneur: Read biographies, autobiographies, and books about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship to learn who entrepreneurs are, what they do and how they are formed.
Skills of Successful people: Read personal development books to learn how to improve your success skills and yourself, so you can move more efficiently in the entrepreneurial world.
General business environment: Read books about the business of business, the histories of specific industries and companies to learn how the broader global economy functions.
Think like a Billionaire: Read books about investing, the road to super-wealth to understand how markets work, and how entrepreneurs access private funds to fuel growth.
Life in Action: Read fiction about successful people, business people and business-related ideas to see the big picture, and get background and inside information about how people function in a success-driven life.
Here are suggestions in each of these categories. There are dozens of books in every category considered “the best” or “must-haves,” below are only some initial suggestions. You can start in any order.
If you find you would prefer to read books about your specific product or industry, of course add those ones as well. The key is you want to understand which books to read, and why. You want to be able to implement the learnings from the book into your lifestyle
DEFINITION OF AN ENTREPRENEUR
When you are starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur, and the only idea you have in your head the concept of starting a business, you might not be confident about what your vision will really mean.
To develop a more specific idea of how entrepreneurs are formed and what entrepreneurs do, you can read biographies and autobiographies, and books about entrepreneurial ideas. People often wonder: how did so-and-so get rich? One of the best ways to find out is to read the biographies about rich people, and learn the facts for yourself.
You are looking for an in-depth accounting of the entrepreneur’s story – what were the actual steps this person took to become successful. The best biographies tend to be those thick ones that take you back not only to the entrepreneur’s childhood, but also through his or her parents, or other significant influences. This additional insight will help you realize the most successful entrepreneurs come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and have had an even wider variety of experiences on the road to success.
While industry and technology do change our economic landscape, the day-to-day realities of humans rarely change. Everyone still must secure food, clothes and shelter to have a civilized life. The actions taken by John D. Rockefeller in the 1800s – walking up and down the street to ask for a job – are still relevant today. Despite all the online employment services, in the 21st century people still often find work by word-of-mouth.
Use biographies and autobiographies to help you understand how you can write your own story as you transition to entrepreneurship. Look for the lessons that explain the idea of an entrepreneur.
Books in this category include: Biographies and Autobiographies
The Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow
Shark Tales: How I Turned $1000 into a Billion Dollar Business by Barbara Corcoran
Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw
Morgan, American Financier by Jean Strouse
Entrepreneurship:
The Four-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-to-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
The Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness by Jeffery Gitomer
Zero to One: Notes on Start-ups or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
SKILLS OF SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE
Most of us are not born ready to take on the world with our entrepreneurial ideas. In fact, when you realize how big the personal development book market is, you realize that being an organized, attentive, polished, successful person takes information – ideas and strategies that you can learn and implement for yourself.
Successful people have a mix of skills, but they are not always the same. If you learn some of the basic, timeless behaviors, you can use those attributes anywhere. Personal development must be taught and practiced. It is not enough to read the books, you also have to implement the ideas from the book. And you must be consistent in applying the changes to your life.
Perennial sellers like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich have been around for decades, yet the number of people who stick to the advice is certainly not visible in today’s economy. If everyone who had bought or read Think and Grow Rich had applied all the activities, average incomes would likely be much higher.
You can be an exception. You can use personal development books to actually make changes to the way you behave. The advice exists (and continues to sell) because it works. And it works because people like you make it happen.
Books in this category include: Personal Development:
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale
GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
As an entrepreneur, you want to be thinking about the global economy in which you run your business. Even if you have a small enterprise, you are affected by global economic changes in the price of oil or the value of the dollar. Having a more knowledgeable background on these issues can help you manage your business rationally.
You can muse about inflation or trade like the average person, or you can read books that explain current economic development and trends. These books will provide you with an insight that you can use to develop your own business. They tend to be interesting histories giving you the information you did not know, and helping to dispel certain fallacies about business, trade and investment.
Although these reads can often be dense, they are well worth the effort to give you a broader grounding and overview of the business world that you now occupy.
Books in this category include: Business of Business:
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein
A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World by William J. Bernstein
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras
Guns, Germs, Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power by Daniel Yergin
THINK LIKE A BILLIONAIRE
As you read the biographies of entrepreneurs, you may notice a pattern – the big money, mega wealth, came from the stock market. Either the entrepreneur became an investor or was invested in, when the company was taken public. The real jump to billionaire wealth, comes from owning the factors of production, from owning capital.
You can begin to build your billionaire mindset by reading books about investing. These are books that help you develop a money consciousness, to see money not just as the tool that pays the bills, but as a factor that can be transformed into changing your life for the long run.
Many people have a poor financial management and investing education. Without these types of books, the situation would be even worse since this information is not taught in schools. In fact, good investment advice is passed on from one generation to the next within the same family, but not transferred horizontally through a society. This is information you are unlikely to hear.
So your best bet for putting yourself in line to understand the business of money is through an investment in time spent learning more about how investment works in the global economy. Educate yourself before you become an investor.
Books in this category include: Investing and Financial Management:
The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing by Benjamin Graham
Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Thomas J. Stanley
LIFE IN ACTION
As a bonus, fiction books featuring characters in business can give you a broader overview of the world you are entering. By reading about fiction characters, you have a sense of day-to-day life, as well as the road to wealth.
Unlike a biographer, a fiction writer can tell you everything. You get inside the character’s head, and maybe even read words that resonate with you, and your entrepreneurial vision for yourself. You may even decide to emulate the behaviors and practices of business or success-oriented fiction characters who you feel connected to through the story.
Books in this category include: Fiction
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The High Flyer by Susan Howatch
The Financier by Theodore Dreiser
If you are starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur and looking for guidance on how to face the entrepreneurial world, start by reading. When you set aside, 15 minutes a day to work on your business, your time can be focused on reading, your research for creating the life you really want.
Many of the classic books now have e-reader versions and you can upload copies to your phone or tablet to read when you are standing in line or commuting on public transit.
If you have no idea where you want to start, begin with a few books. You will likely find yourself inspired to keep going until you have your business up and running, and you can begin to live your life on your terms.
NOTE: In future blogs, I will follow-up on each of these books and provide more detail about what you may be able to learn from each (especially the fiction) as you move forward on your entrepreneurial journey.
Disclosure: book links are affiliate links to Amazon.com which if used may result in compensation to the author to help support this business and future posts
Five Practical Tips to Get Started as an Entrepreneur
Maybe today was the day. The rudest person at work interrupted you for the tenth time, your supervisor ignored your brilliant suggestions, and you had to cancel lunch with a friend because a useless meeting was just scheduled up against your lunch break.
You’ve had it.
It’s time to get serious about starting your own business.
First question: Where do you start?
Many people know they want to start a business. And for many the reason to start is to gain control of your own schedule and manage your time as you see fit. Entrepreneurship is not easy, and will often be frustrating, but being the boss means you have ownership. You can make the process as difficult or complex as your resources permit.
Yet even after you’ve made the decision to start your business, you are often distracted by the endless directions advice you receive. From start a business plan to build a website to complete market research, deciding where to start your entrepreneurial dream can be confusing.
Here are five tips:
1. Pick a business idea (which can, and probably will, change)
If you already have a business idea, skip to point 2.
If you do not have a business idea, pick one. You do not have to stick with your pick. Having a business idea simply gives you the context for getting started on the rest of your business. Points you will learn about Idea A may help you with Idea B. So the time you spend on an idea you do not actually turn into a business will still be useful.
If you have no idea, start with your hobbies and interests. Where is there a gap you have identified in the marketplace when people say about a particular good or service: I wish we could have this? Or I wish it could do that? That is your opening to slip in your business idea.
Pick your business idea first because this will give you a specific topic to focus on while you get through the next four tips. It’s easier to say, you need 15 minutes to work on a specific idea than it is to continue to sound as if you are just “thinking about” starting a business.
But if you are still lost for an idea and really want to move forward with your entrepreneurial dream, then keep going. Part of “starting” your business will be to define your idea, you can still move forward on the next four steps.
2. Identify your Space
You will want to have somewhere to work on your business. But when you are just getting started your space does not have to be elaborate. You can decide to work in the bathroom or closet if that’s the only quiet place you can find.
Maybe you prefer the library or local coffee shop. All of these options are viable.
But if you choose a space that is not near your home or work, include the time it will take you to travel to and from that space in the time you are setting aside for work. So if you are going to do 15 minutes of work and it takes you 15 minutes to get where you need to go, you need to set aside 45 minutes to make it happen.
Be realistic about the time you need and how you plan to use it before settling on a space. You might find you need a spot closer to home to preserve your time.
3. Gather your tools
The tools you need to work depend on how you like to work.
When you are first getting started you might not even think about this topic, but the minute you sit down to do some research you realize you need a notebook (digital or paper?), a cup of coffee or tea, a brighter light (artificial or natural), a power outlet, a sweater/blanket, a timer, a bottle of water, some chips, maybe cookies, light music (Spotify or playlists?)….
And you do not want to make excuses or get up every minute because you forgot to put one of your productivity tools in your work space.
If you have no idea which tools you like to have around you, go ahead and start with nothing, and add your preferences at the end of that day’s work session.
4. Clear your distractions
In our busy worlds, distractions are not only living all around us – ie. kids and dogs – but digital also. You have to figure out how to turn everything off for the time you want to work on your business.
For the family, find the time to do your work within the family schedule. However that works best for you. Since you have your business idea (see #1), you can tell everyone what you are doing and how you really need to move forward with transitioning to lifestyle freedom.
For digital, you know what you have to do. Turn off the phone. Or at least turn off the sound and lay the phone upside down so you cannot see the screen. And don’t try and work around any other screens like the TV or your partner’s mobile.
You only need to give yourself that first 15 minutes to get the ball rolling, so push the distractions away.
5. Take 15 minutes
The best way to start a business is just to get started.
That may sound roundabout but it’s true. People often make excuses like they do not have enough money or are not sufficiently qualified for a business idea. But you really do not know the truth behind those excuses because you have never spent any time working on the business.
Take 15 minutes. I know you have it. Before you start bingeing on Netflix take 15 minutes to research your business idea.
What are you researching?
- Similar businesses to see what other people are doing
- Specifics about your business idea and your industry.
- Courses in your area of expertise or about the product or service you are interested in.
As you continue researching, you will begin to move towards creating your action plan for starting the business. But it’s just brain-storming at this point. You do not have to pursue anything formal. You will likely find that the more time you spend researching your business and putting together ideas, the more time you will have to work on your business.
Before you know it, you will forget to watch Netflix.
Once you get to number 5, you have started your business. Because when you set aside time to transition your life, every step counts. From here you will begin to formulate the questions you want to ask, the activities you want to do and even the courses you may want to take to transform your business idea into a viable reality.
You will also start to build your confidence. The more you know about your business idea and industry, the stronger you will feel about your capabilities and the possibilities you have for making your lifestyle dream come true.
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Turn Good Habits into Your DNA
Does this list describe you, or the activities you find impossible?
Get up early with a smile
Cleaning up after yourself
Complete a task from beginning to end
Listen
Be on time
Save money
Do you wish you could, or would, automatically do all the good behavior actions you are supposed to do? You know the activities you think will make you a stronger person able to achieve your goals like starting your own business. And imagine if the process of converting your good habits into your DNA is not annoying or a burden.
What if you could build good habits in to your everyday life and not have to be reminded to make an exception?
Having good habits is a skill on the road to success. People who are able to consistently perform and to get things done are the people who end up completing the work necessary to achieve lifestyle freedom by starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur.
Those that don’t have to settle for a life of struggle.
You can make yourself the person you want to be by focusing on six abilities: desire, effort, progress, consideration, reliability and thrift.
You have heard it all before, but how do you actually make those abilities part of the person you are on a daily basis?
Self-help books are full of ideas for developing good habits. But how many people are able to keep the habits? You know you want to be one of those people who function at the highest levels of competency at all times. How do they do it? And why is it so difficult for many others to embed good habits into our DNA so we are able to live in success mode all the time?
What does it take to turn good habits into your DNA?
Desire
To set yourself off on the right direction to embed good habits into your DNA, you have to want the goals you are striving for. And wanting does not mean you expect to be rich by doing nothing. ‘Wanting’ means you are absolutely committed to figuring out how you can be rich and do nothing, and then execute on the plan to make that vision a reality.
You will work to ensure you do not have to work.
People who are taught to get up early because they ‘have to,’ for chores or school, end up resenting losing the time they could have spent sleeping. But if those people were excited about every day, because they were anxious to learn or contribute to the harmony of their family life, they would want to be up long before anyone told them they had to be.
You have to match the activity to the desire for achievement of a higher goal to help convince yourself the work is worth doing.
Effort
Habits that require actual physical labor, like cleaning up after yourself, are not going to be sustainable unless you make the practice automatic.
We hate chores. We want to avoid work as much as possible and pursue a life of leisure. We constantly put off the activities we do not want to do and become more and more anxious as those activities pile up and begin to threaten our peace.
How do we make a chore part of our DNA? You do it by forcing yourself to complete the task at the exact moment you are aware of the work must be done. You have to train your brain to do the activity without thinking.
As you stand up from a table after eating, gather plates and cutlery into your hands. As you walk into the kitchen, go directly to the dishwasher and unload into the racks. Do not stop to place the plates on another surface, where they will be left for days.
Do the activity immediately without thinking about it. Resist the urge to moan and groan about something you have to do. For every chore you are required to do, make the prior act and the chore the same activity. For example, make the act of getting up from the table and removing your plate one continuous motion. Remember: no thinking.
Train yourself to follow all the way through until the work is done. Soon you will realize there are no more chores haunting you from the imaginary to-do list in your head.
Progress
Any task without a deadline inevitably is only done on deadline. Too often we do not complete work from beginning to end because we do not feel a sense of urgency. One way to overcome this lackadaisical approach is to focus on just one task at a time.
Instead of making to-do lists with 20 or 30 items you have to check off, make a list of one item. Just one that you must finish before you do the next one.
If you are afraid of forgetting your bigger list, write each item down on index cards (or tear up paper into smaller squares), and place the one card with one activity at a place where you can see it until the item listed on it is done.
Finish the task as if it’s the only thing you have to do. If the work is particularly difficult, it may roll over until the next day or the next, but you cannot put your card away until it’s done.
When it’s done, go for the next card. Before you know it, you’ll have no more cards to deal with, and you would have made incredible progress.
Consideration
Where does your mind go when someone is talking to you? Do you drift towards unfinished business at work, or maybe the bad date you had the night before? Do you forget to listen? We are easily distracted not just by actual events and activities before us, but by our own minds and our ability to think about too many things at once.
But when you fail to listen you could be missing a range of vital information from heartfelt confessions to a critical work assignment. You have to teach yourself how to hear what others are saying.
To do this, you can try hanging on every word. That is, make it a habit to repeat in your mind the words that are said by the speaker. When you are learning another language, you have to focus on every word the other person says because you are not familiar with the hearing and processing the sounds. The more you become familiar with the sounds, the more fluent you will be.
Use the same technique when listening to others. This will help you concentrate on the words the speaker is expressing and force you to transform those words in your brain to understanding, and perhaps action that supports your own goals.
Reliability
When the stresses and strains of modern living began to change our concept of politeness, we got out of the habit of always being on time. As soon as we had excuses like traffic, kids, and holiday shopping to deflect attention away from our tardiness, we used those words to elicit sympathy for our rat-race lives.
But you do not have to operate under those excuses. To avoid being late, leave earlier. Give yourself enough time to get where you are supposed to be. This applies to the meeting down the hall, as much as the dinner across town. When you have an important meeting with a senior executive or investor, you strive to be on time. The same reliability should apply to meetings with friends or subordinates. You know how long you will need to get there, make a point of preparing ahead.
This is not a trivial matter. Sometimes you are running behind the whole day and never find the scope to catch up. In that case, start your whole day earlier. If other people are late to meet with you point out their faux pas, perhaps in front of others, as a reminder that people are waiting. But do not be the one who others are waiting for.
Thrift
Money comes in, and money goes out. How can you keep any of it around for the times when you really need it?
We like to spend money, especially if we grew up with little and learned fear and scarcity about money. Or we feel an obligation to purchase items for others or in recognition of our own virtue.
But loosely spending money is detrimental to your chance to have a comfortable and secure future. You can discipline yourself to protect money by making sure you put a portion of your earnings away immediately. As soon as you are paid, have an automatic deduction taken and transferred to another account you do not touch. Put the account in a different bank so when you go online to check your accounts you do not see money accumulating that you think you should be spending. Make that designated percentage disappear so that it is available to reappear when you really need it to exist.
You can make good habits part of your DNA by focusing on these six abilities: desire, effort, progress, consideration, reliability and thrift. Once you have implemented the practices that turn your fortunes around, you will realize you are exactly that person who lives in success mode, all the time.
Disclosure: Links to ebooks or physical products are affiliate links to Amazon.com meaning Ready Entrepreneur may be earn compensation for purchases made through the link
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Do you feel the Urgency to become an Entrepreneur now?
The number #1 reason to become an entrepreneur right now in the 21st century is because the world has changed irrevocably. The twin waves of globalization and technology are changing the economic and employment landscape for every profession.
You will not escape. This is already happening.
In Yuval Noah Harari’s fabulous book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, he says:
“The global empire being forged before our eyes is not governed by any particular state or ethnic group. Much like the Late Roman Empire, it is ruled by a multi-ethnic elite, and is held together by a common culture and common interests. Throughout the world, more and more entrepreneurs, engineers, experts, scholars, lawyers and managers are called to join the empire. They must ponder whether to answer the imperial call or to remain loyal to their state and their people. More and more choose the empire.”
If you are a person who has business ideas in your head, you can become an entrepreneur right now and avoid being ‘left behind’ by “the empire.’ To visualize the rapidly changing world, think back to the past twenty years on earth and the impact the iPhone, Amazon and Facebook have had on business and culture. Now think forward to consider where we will be twenty years from now. If you think the ‘rise of the empire’ is unlikely to affect you and the way you live your life, you are missing your opportunities as an entrepreneur.
The dangers of waiting to start your business
Both globalization and technology help you start a global business, and reach out to a global audience of potential customers and clients from anywhere in the world. This reality is incredibly liberating and exciting for anyone who has dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur. You are free to get started on the work you want to do.
If you wait, you may face a situation where you are scrambling to start your own business because you have run out of options. If globalization and technology, replace more traditional jobs and transform your local labor market, you may find your ability to get the kind of challenging and valuable work you seek is no longer available. There is no issue with starting a business at any point in your life. But it’s more fun to do it when you are feeling comfortable about your future, and you can make good decisions based on your own timetable.
Waiting to start your business also puts you up against issues you may not understand. You may face increasing competition as more global markets develop, tighter financial markets as lenders become more selective, restrictive legislation from overzealous lawmakers, and personal inertia from the debilitating effects of your own procrastination.
But if from the beginning, you think of globalization and technology as resources you can use, you can rapidly move forward on your plan to start your own business and live your life dream.
Globalization as a resource you can use
If you are thinking about your business ideas and trying to get started, you likely feel compelled to deliver value to the marketplace through a product or service you know people want or need. Just like big businesses that must make decisions supporting the goals of shareholders who are based all over the world and expecting economic gains, you have to make decisions to satisfy your own hopes, dreams and economic plans.
To deliver your product or service to the global marketplace, you may end up hiring, for example, a Latvia-based graphic designer to create your logo, just as a big company moves an entire factory offshore to make parts for their product. The process is efficient and straightforward. Once you look at the best offers you receive for a project, the quality of the test work and prior reviews, are you going to look at the person’s location to determine whether or not to give her the job? Maybe some of you will, but it’s possible many of you will not. You’ll participate directly in the global economy by hiring the most qualified, accessible person you could find.
This type of decision-making is happening right now all over the world. You may even be directly affected if your work has been impacted by offshoring or outsourcing. As difficult as cutting jobs is for a business, managers look at what’s best for their company.
The value of global competition
As an entrepreneur, you may find yourself in the same position. But in the long-run being forced to compete on a global scale is typically beneficial to the work force. What would be the quality of the NBA brand if the league did not recruit the best players from around the world? Do we as fans, as an audience and customers really want to miss out on seeing the best in the world play the game? And do we want to miss out on becoming the best in the world through our exposure to the best competition?
In business as in basketball, competing with the best can only make you better by compelling you to improve your skills to keep pace with your competition.
Or get out of the game.
Although the reality is competition can force you out of a particular organization that does not necessarily mean you are completely out of an industry. Many tech companies were started by people who were not necessarily the most successful where they were, but could not get their ideas taken seriously until they went out on their own. You can find an angle for your product or service that creates its own market and finds its own customers in the marketplace. The experience, although painful in the short-term, will ultimately be a huge boost for you if you stay with your plans.
Technology as your primary tool
And you do not only get better on the basis of your personal skill. Your ability to use technology to your advantage is a major factor in success and the other major driver of changes in the new economy. As a rising entrepreneur, you can employ technology tools to support your business in every area from accounting, to design and email management and marketing. The new technologies allow you to produce high quality work at a fraction of the price the work used to cost. This is called reducing barriers to entry. You can enter into the global entrepreneurial workforce by using technology to ensure your product can compete.
Technology is even more certain to take direct aim at employment by humans. Technologists are all over the world. Every company must compete with bright minds in Russia, India and South Korea who can severely disrupt a business enterprise overnight. This fear does not only apply to hackers or pirates. All over the world bright minds are engaged in developing new software and innovative ideas designed to disrupt the functioning of traditional business. Since the Internet is global and most people have access to its possibilities, there is no reason to believe the technology will stop at anyone’s border.
We adapt to technology (not the other way around)
Lately some people are getting a little concerned about the influence of companies like Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook. In less than twenty years, these companies have fundamentally changed the way we shop, communicate and decide where to eat. Those companies were built with rules set only by the people who built them. And we are adapting to how they are making the world.
As an entrepreneur who uses these online platforms, you have to approach your business decisions on their terms. In medieval times when ‘ancient you’ was farming a plot of land, a new landlord could come by and tell you now submit to his demands or face dire consequences. If you did not have a Knight or some other defender to help you, you were forced to do as you were told or lose your land, or at worst be killed. You effectively had to play along to get along.
The same is true today of technology’s key consumer-facing Internet platforms. In today’s world, if you do not behave on Amazon or Facebook as required, you will lose access to the site, which may mean the end of your business or your social life. Most people are not willing to take that risk. Although it’s technically possible for a new company to rise up tomorrow and replace the big names on the Internet, you have to manage your business in the world you see before you today. You will both have access to a global market through the mega online platforms, and you can lose access just as easily. Your goal is to hang on while remaining true to your vision for your company.
Your business or your job
As globalization and technology define our world, opportunities for continued employment are dependent on these twin pillars that are out of your control or the control of governments. Most people will have to try and get into a job without any hope of staying in the position for a long time. At the same time, millions of jobs go unfilled because the education system, and popular thought, cannot adapt quickly enough to the changing demands of the job market. If the teachers are not trained, the students will not be either.
Where does that leave you?
If you have a business idea in your head, you should be feeling it’s time to take that idea into the global marketplace. Globalization and technology are already here and the world economy is changing right now. The global GDP, or gross domestic product is currently valued at the $78 trillion, with a T, mark. You can take your business idea – your product or service – and deliver it to the market and take your part of that soon-to-be $100 trillion dollar pie.
But you have to get started. The time to become an entrepreneur is now when the field is wide open, your product or service idea is needed, and the available tools and resources provide access to the global marketplace.
Do you feel the urgency?
Struggling with how to get started? Download my book Life Dream: Seven Universal Moves to Get the Life You Want through Entrepreneurship.
Disclosure: book links in this article are affiliate links to Amazon.com meaning I may be compensated if you click on the link to go to the Amazon.com website
Prepare to Pitch Investors in under Five Minutes: Tips for Rising Entrepreneurs
Are you ready to pitch your business idea in under one minute?
You have one minute. One minute to convince someone with money to give you money for your business. Have you prepared?
Rising Entrepreneurs have an opportunity to directly pitch angel investors and venture capitalists at events like the Funding Post Investor Roundtables held all over the country. Here are some tips to make sure you arrive prepared and give your business an opportunity to get funded.
Want the FREE Pitch Investors in under 5 Minutes Cheatsheet CLICK HERE
Attending a recent Funding Post Investor Roundtable and listening to about thirty pitches, it was clear some people had prepared, maybe some people had not or maybe some were just a little nervous.
In all cases, the opportunity was presented and available to anyone who wanted to get a business idea in front of potentially interested investors (for a fee). Entrepreneurs signed-up to pitch for either one minute or five minutes, followed by questions from the investor panel. Watching the event and speaking to both investors and entrepreneurs, here are the key tips for entrepreneurs who want to try this next.
If you have one minute:
- Show Them the Money!
Every entrepreneur must be able to explain how the business will make money. Funders are investing in enterprises that will bring returns, fundamentally the return on their investment. Without quickly stating exactly how this will be possible, you could lose the investors’ interest.
- Explain the Problem you are Solving
Successful entrepreneurs find gaps in the marketplace. Consumers are searching for solutions to help them with their problems. You must be able to make it clear to investors how you are filling a gap.
Even if you are creating a new version of an existing product, you must be able to explain how your vision is solving the gap created within the existing marketplace. Make the gap and the solution clear.
- Highlight why you are the person to solve the problem
Investors may quickly recognize the business opportunity, but since they don’t know you, you have to convince them you are the best person to solve the marketplace issue. Like most people, investors want confidence around their decision based on the information you are providing.
How did you come up with the idea? Who are you working with? Do you have advisors or mentors on your team?
You can convince them your business is ready to take control of your market, because you have the ability to exploit your advantage.
- Clearly state the name of the company
Seriously, pronounce this one word or phrase, the name of the company, clearly for future recognition. At least investors can remember you by that name. If they hear a great pitch, but not the name of the company, you make it harder to follow-up or find you in the program, and you will miss a great opportunity.
All this in one minute?
Yes, you can make these points in under one minute, but you have to practice. Put yourself in the investors’ shoes, would you invest in you after your pitch? If you have doubts about how you sound, imagine how the investors feel.
Here’s how to prepare to pitch to investors:
Create your response to points 1 – 4. Write out and organize your points first, without thinking about time.
Read the answers aloud. Does your response make sense? Have you stated how you will make money, the problem you will solve and why you can solve it? If yes, you have the fundamental information together, now work on getting those details under one minute.
Time your response. Use the timer on your smartphone. Turn it on as you read your response, how long is it taking?
Based on the time, edit, edit and edit again. Cut out extraneous words. Tighten long phrases. Use everyday language. Make the message short and concise.
Keep editing until you are under one minute. You’d be surprised how much time 60 seconds really gives you. Keep re-writing until you get this right. You will get cut-off if you go over one minute so leave the extra details out of the story.
If you have five minutes, all of the above plus:
The five minute presentations featured more detailed explanations of the business, and slide decks to support the information.
Assume the investors are going to ask you for your pitch deck. You want to incorporate all the information from points 1 to 4, plus the details behind all those points.
But stick to clear, concise details that people can understand. If you have a technical solution and want to attract a certain type of investor, you can tailor your deck to that language. For everyone else, make your points clear and straight-forward.
Include your contact information. Do not miss a chance to put your name, company name, website, phone number, e-mail, social media sites – all this information should be in your deck. You do not have to mention it, but make sure it’s there for investors to find later.
- Speak to your audience, not to the screen
You are pitching to the investors in front of you, not to the screen behind you. You should know the information in your deck and not need to read off the screen to make your pitch. You do not have to read the slides verbatim. Speak to each point on the slides. But address the investors directly.
Questions from Investors
Whether you pitch for one minute or five, you may get a question from an investor, any question.
At a minimum, you must be able to answer the following questions about your business:
How your business makes money
How much money you are asking for
Why you want money at this time
Your credentials and those of your advisors and mentors
Technical details related to anything you said in the presentation
Answer as many questions as you can. If you absolutely do not know the answer, ask the investor if you can follow-up. This is a great way to ensure ongoing contact with someone who has expressed some interest in your idea.
Questions from entrepreneurs:
Does it matter how I’m dressed?
No one mentioned the entrepreneurs’ look as a factor. You are doing the presenting, so dress how you are comfortable. It’s only one minute so the information you deliver is more valuable than your personal look.
What if I’m shy?
Put on the investors’ shoes. You have asked for their valuable time and you want money for your business. You have to be able to speak about your business. If you are terrified, you may have another person make the presentation, but investors want to hear from founders so at least be in the audience for follow-up questions or one-on-one contact.
Summary
As an entrepreneur, you want the opportunity to speak directly to investors so you can raise money for your business.
Practice your pitch to investors. You may end up attending dozens of events before you receive one dollar. Look at those presentations as an opportunity. You want the practice. You want to be able to clearly state what your business can do. You want to hear the types of questions investors will ask. And you want the exposure to as many investors as possible. So keep attending events and practicing your pitch.
Know your audience. Read the program and have an idea who will be listening to your presentation. Watch for investors who have an interest in your field or industry. Even if they do not ask you a question during the event, you can follow-up afterwards, or offer to send more detailed information.
If you’re serious about taking your business to the next level and want to reach out to investors to participate in your world-beating idea, make sure you are prepared to let them know how ready you are to work with them.
You have a great opportunity to bring your idea directly to the people who have the money to fund it, take advantage of every second you get. Good luck!
Can Entrepreneurship be Taught?
Who are the entrepreneurs in the world, the people who start businesses? Could it be the most clever or the hustler or the cheapskate or the visionary or the lucky or the hardest working or the liar or the cheater or the privileged or anyone who isn’t you?
Or is it really just the people who had an idea and decided to see if they can put it into fruition?
And if it is those people then is that not a gift in itself, or can entrepreneurship taught?
Whether or not the answer to the question is ‘yes,’ entrepreneurship is being taught at schools everywhere and in business school programs. People believe you can learn how to be an independent businessperson and start your own business. But if you read the biographies and autobiographies of famous business owners, you will almost certainly come to realize that none of them took any special courses in how to be an entrepreneur.
They had an idea. And put the idea into action. They took risks, used persistence, ignored naysayers and defied the odds to keep going when others told them to stop. Can those behaviors be taught?
The answer is still ‘yes.’
The answer is ‘yes’ because one way to understand how to do something is to see what others do and emulate them. If the ‘secret sauce’ for successful entrepreneurship is not giving up on your business idea, people can be taught the concept that perseverance is a key to being a successful entrepreneur.
For people who want to start their own business, many simply do not know how it’s done. There is an information gap when it comes to explaining what it really takes to get a business going. Even the books about entrepreneurs do not really give you the details. A book may say an entrepreneur started with ‘nothing,’ but then suddenly the person is able to buy a storefront – how did that happen?
Or the person has one, two or ten friends who are on their exact same wavelength and work with them day and night to get the business going – where does one meet such people?
Or there are favorable laws that can be exploited in a particular jurisdiction or a relative who left behind an old truck and a recipe or an observation that triggered a bright idea.
When successful people write their own stories, you get the version they want to tell you that is a little bit entertaining, maybe glamorous, and always an idea about how they want to be viewed by others. You do not get the whole story. The blanks need to be filled in.
Typically, ‘the blanks’ the boring part is all about the work required in the average day for a rising entrepreneur. From the beginning of a business idea you must figure out how to bring the idea to market. Often you will try and fail to bring the idea to market and you will have to change your approach. If you begin with no money, you may have to work all day at a paying job for someone else and then work on your business all evening and weekends. That kind of effort rarely makes for dynamic page-turning in a biography.
The rising entrepreneur may have to approach people who can help advance the business. You may contact people every day and never receive a response. People may be short with you, bored with talking to you or tell you your idea is ‘stupid.’ You hang up and call someone else. Successful people are unlikely to want to recall those rejections either.
You might have to attend meetings where someone will only speak to you for five minutes, after you spend five days getting ready to meet them. You may make a presentation where the person asks a question you never thought of and then thinks you’re an idiot because you cannot answer it. You go to the bank and ask for a loan and get turned down because that lender, that day, did not like your idea. You move on to the next bank, the next day.
You will not go out partying with friends, you will not drink, do drugs or smoke. You will not take vacation or go to the movies. If you have a car you will use it for the business. You will eat, because you need food for nutrition, but you will not see the insides of any fancy restaurants. Possibly for years.
If you are on your own you will do these things while maintaining your housework, laundry, and other mundane household chores so that you remain a civilized person operating at a level of dignity.
If you are an entrepreneur, or even an entrepreneur-in-training, you will keep doing this until your business is a success.
Is managing this life until you are successful an academic skill or possible only if you have certain personality traits?
You have to be tough…with yourself. You have to have an iron self-discipline and will to forsake all the ‘normal’ rituals of everyday life in favor of building your business. This attitude applies even if you have children and a spouse. You have to convince them that changing your daily life now to concentrate on building a business is worth the effort for everyone.
You have to be able to shut out whining and complaining and wishing. You cannot set a deadline. For example to declare, ‘if the business if the is not viable by Jan. 1 we’ll do something else.’ Because setting a deadline could set you up to lose. Or worse, quit just before the business turns the corner. Instead from the beginning, you must decide you will build a successful business and that’s it. You will put your effort into creating the business you want or die trying.
A deadline will emerge on its own because you will find yourself determined to be successful to satisfy all those who may be counting on you to make it big…or to fail.
But if you are the kind of person who gives up, who believes you can in fact end your quest for entrepreneurship, then no amount of courses or books or lessons will help you. You can be told you must keep on going until you have a successful business, but you cannot be taught the personality traits needed to be that person.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, a person who runs your own business and manages your own lifestyle based on individual enterprise – you must be realistic about how you run your life.
Walk away from the daily ritual of a so-called ‘normal’ life, and set your sights on building your business dream. This is what you are being told, not taught.
Now it’s up to you go ahead and implement on that vision.
Additional Resources for Wantrepreneurs
Free Video Training
Check out free training for wantrepreneurs if you would like help to get started.
Check out: free video training series for wantrepreneurs. This training is for those of you who have always wanted to start a business, but need to find the confidence, time and money to get started.
Money Management Tips
Facing money challenges? Download my book: A Better Plan: Spend to Live, Save to Wealth: A Real Life Guide to Building Wealth from Nothing and Living a Life Without Financial Fear
For Amazon (Kindle): https://www.amazon.com/Better-Plan-Building-Nothing-Financial-ebook/dp/B06W5GXLP1/
For iBooks (Apple products): https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/better-plan-real-life-guide-to-building-wealth-from/id1222099554
For Smashwords (all formats): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/705684
Want to discuss the content of this blog or other ideas? Send me an email to: contactcase(at)readyentrepreneur(dot)com
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