An entrepreneur should analyze the following aspects without a bias to his business idea. In order to achieve success in his venture, an entrepreneur should always think and act like a chef who cook food to match the tastes of his customers and a film director who direct movies to suit the expectations of his audience.
Strengths: Know your strengths, be it professional or personal. Professional strength could be working experience, business experience as a partner earlier, or relevant subject matter expertise. Personal strengths could be as discussed in my earlier posting.
Weaknesses: The most important weakness to overcome in business would be anger and emotional approach. Could be negative emotions or positive emotions. Our weaknesses should never underestimate the value of our stakeholders or hurt their genuine feelings.
Failures: Review the various contexts where you feel you have failed in your attempts. Note down the lessons learned from such incidents. This should help you to not to repeat the same in future or determine whether to go ahead or not with the present effort.
Achievement: Very obviously, you should review this to understand why and how you have succeeded earlier. The formula could always be repeated wherever it is relevant in the proposed venture.
Time: You may be every thing to go ahead with your plan. But if you don’t have time to devote on the proposed business, there is no point of making a start. Your business demand your time, your team need your time. You need time to control your business.
Awareness: How much conversant are you with your proposed business? Its relevance, market share, competition, returns, future, and gestation period. You have many more issues to take into consideration with the help of Consultant(s) before you commence your journey.
Plan: A must for business. Otherwise, how will you know what do you want to achieve? When do you like to achieve? How do you plan to achieve?
Promise: What is your promise to your stakeholders? This will act as a reminder to you and to your team towards achieving the Vision and Goals.
Stakeholders: Customers, suppliers, vendors, public, team and whoever is related with your business. Society is one of the important stakeholder in every business. You can define your business according to the demands, gaps, culture, economic patterns and other relevant aspirations of your stakeholders. Business survival is always the decision of stakeholders who are the oxygen to it.
Technology: Explore the technology tools, applications and means that can help your business. Your business may need specific software applications besides the common requirements like web presence, online marketing tools, ERP application, and analytics.
Team: Your success is your team’s effort. Identify and evaluate the core team who will supplement your efforts. This is pivotal for the entire business.
Network strength: Business contacts, personal contacts, and professional contacts that could help you in your decision.
Family support: Your time is always your family time too. For a wholesome success, you need your family’s support. Understand their preparedness and feelings before you embark on to your venture.
Tolerance: Means patience to achieve results. Business is never a magic. You need to support your entire business at times at the cost of your salary even. Have enough financial backup to support your personal and family needs till you achieve your projected receipts. You should have very practical and even pessimistic estimates initially which will increase your tolerance level to see the results.
The above are not exclusive. Business success is not a luck factor always. We should await our luck while doing our job.
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