Proven strategies for thriving in a disruptive era.
Existing businesses are disrupted by startups. When this happens, we blame the company for its failure to adapt to new technologies. Within those press-propagated “winner-loser” stories, painful truths go untold.
Why shouldn’t they? Those truths make the story boring, and the media are not in the business of promoting boring yarns.
The actual truth is that most of these big businesses adopted the new technology. However, they failed to improve productivity while implementing these new, disruptive technologies efficiently.
Stories of Blockbuster, Xerox, and Kodak are some of the most-read stories of companies sent under by disruptive technologies. In the real sense, the problem wasn’t their failure to implement those technologies but the inefficiency that came with the adoption and its effect on the organization’s interim productivity. …
A complete guide to drafting a business plan for your startup.
Young entrepreneurs find it challenging to develop a business plan. This is because they are still uncertain of how things will pan out in their business. So, they resolve to just winging it and see what happens. However, with a well-written business plan, you stand a greater chance of turning your startup into a successful business.
This article simplifies the process of writing a business plan. Following the described process below can help you create a simple business plan that can help you navigate your startup journey.
Why you need a business plan?
This may not be an obvious question, but many young entrepreneurs silently ponder the need for a business plan. To reiterate the need for a business plan, here’s a simple list of reasons why your startup needs a business plan. …
A guide for achieving ambitious goals.
Growing up, I’ve heard advice from people of influence, asking their audience to set their goals high and never settle for less.
This, as inspiring as it sounds, is the reason behind many unrealized goals. This is because we misinterpret advice.
Growing up with this advice sounding like church bells, I aimed to enroll in the local medical college. I had friends who wanted to be lawyers, engineers, doctors, and whatever prestigious profession they desired.
We had these aspirations because those were the most prestigious professions. They were not necessarily what we loved to be.
We wrote the UTME — a substitute for the SAT in my country — to compete for slots at a local university. …
A way to avert stress and achieve more.
Since the beginning of civilization, humans have believed that 24 hours make a day. There’s been no reason to question this postulation. Clearly, it took 24 hours for the world to come back just the same way it was the day before. Science holds that the Earth rotates around its axis in 24 hours, but the inference that a complete rotation makes a day still remains blurry to me.
Individually, allowing the rising and setting of the sun to dictate the length of our day is a catastrophic flaw on our part. …
Pretenders are many, avoid them, and get the right funding.
As an entrepreneur, you may fail in business if you can’t find the right investors for your startup business. Finding the right investor can be a bit confusing. You’re giving your business idea to a bunch of persons who are most probably refusing to sign an NDA. However, you still have to do what is required to take your business to the next level. Finding the right investors for your business is one of the crucial steps that you must take. It is one step that you can’t even think of outsourcing to anyone. It’s your responsibility as an entrepreneur. …
Price has nothing to with it.
It is one thing to have a product to sell and it is another thing to sell a product that customers will love. Doing the latter requires you to horn certain skills that put you and your product on a platform that the customers crave to be. Because most entrepreneurs do not know how to make customers love their products, they often sell with difficulties.
Let me give an instance of a product that customers love. Apple products are a perfect example. We love the iPhone and most other products not because of its features. Of course not. Many iPhone users don’t even know the unique features let alone use it. Just last month, I though a friend how to command Siri with her voice. …
The last step is what most businesses miss — and the most important.
The biggest challenge for startups, and existing businesses, is winning customers and retaining them. Things get ten-fold tougher if they are venturing into a saturated market. Sometimes, pricing strategies are futile when the industry price is so low for new businesses to survive the competition. In this case, knowing how to win customers and never lose them becomes crucial. Following this method effectively wins one customer at a time. However, if you diligently serve, one won customer is a customer for life.
These simple processes detail how to win new customers and keep them all through your business.
Be Honest About Your Product Features
As your business is just starting out, you may be tempted to tell your customers all the cool stuff that your product can do and more. …
Most importantly, identify your business and yourself as separate entities.
As a startup entrepreneur, one of the challenges you might face is separating your business expenses from your personal expenses. This can be crippling some times. However, smartly handling personal expenses while running a startup business is crucial. For most people, they send money into the same account, whether it’s business or personal. Also, both business and personal expenses leave from that account.
Running your business like this can spell doom. You must first learn to separate your business from yourself as individual entities. Simply put, you should consider yourself as an employee to your business. …
What happens to the coffee shop down the street?
The fuss about diversity in corporate organizations has grown into an industry of its own. Every diversity consultant and researchers are focusing on multinationals and huge national corporations on the NYSE limelight.
Has anyone wondered what happens in the far smaller organizations?
The coffee shop down in the suburb. The local delivery service. The grocery stores in suburbs and rural areas.
Although these businesses have a streamlined demographic of applicants seeking employments at their establishment, there is a lot they would have achieved if they never sent away that guy that didn’t look like the locals. …
A simple way to avoid overspending and take your business to new heights.
Let’s face the reality of things. Overspending kills your startup business like a woodpecker to a tree. Knowing what to spend on while running your startup business can be a determining factor for your success. There are countless guides on the internet on how to spend money as a startup business. Many of these guides touch various areas depending on the writer’s perspective and experience. Succinctly, I will point you in the right direction on how to spend your money as a startup business so that you can position yourself for success.
Don’t Spend Money On Non-essential Things
Yeah, I know it can be a bit confusing to know what’s essential and what’s not. Especially when you are just getting to the business world for the first time. It’s very easy to mistake somethings as essential when they are actually not. …
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