1.Appearances Are Everything
Before launching your business, you need to make sure that everything is completely ready to be viewed by the public. This includes both online and brick and mortar businesses. If your store or office building doesn’t look polished and professional it may deter potential clients and investors. This is why it is so important to bring in professionals when you’re looking to revamp the exterior of your business building; you can find out why here. All in all, you don’t want to launch your business before it’s ready. Take your time with the process and ensure everything is in order before you press “play” on the launch.
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Your Niche Needs to Be Narrow
If you knew about the importance of choosing a niche before you launched your business, you would have found success much more quickly. It is fundamental to start off with a laser focused idea and then expand later. As soon as you think you have found your ideal target market you may want to go one level deeper. You will find it so much easier to speak to your potential customers if you know precisely who you’re talking to.
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Networking is Invaluable
Networking sounds like a really daunting activity, especially when you have never done it before. In reality, it simply means that you’re talking to people who are in a similar industry to you. Reaching out for collaborations, complimenting people on their work and attending relevant events are all valuable ways of networking. If you adopt the idea of collaboration over competition, you will get so much further in your career. Talk to people who have been there before and get curious about their work; you can learn a lot from the people around you.
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Social Media Scheduling Will Be Your Savior
If you’re trying to start a business you won’t get very far without a strong social media presence. Running an online company is all about building your online credibility, giving value to your audience and creating a reputable image for your brand. You can build a strong social media presence by being consistent online. For example, if you decide that Instagram is your main platform, you should be showing up on stories as much as possible. Posting on your feed regularly will help your ideal client to discover your business quickly and easy, especially if you’re using the right hashtags. The best piece of advice you could have ever received when you were building your business is to try not to be everywhere all at once. If you’re trying to cover Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and a blog you are going to burn out. It’s likely that your content won’t be very high quality too, as you’re spreading yourself too thin. Focus on creating strong, consistent and valuable content for your target audience; this will be much more impactful and your sales will increase as a result too.
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Business Ownership is a Rollercoaster
When you’re running a business one minute you’re going to feel on top of the world and the next you might want to give it all up. Being prepared for this rollercoaster of emotions during your time as an entrepreneur is very important. You need to have a strong, resilient and driven mindset in order to maintain a thriving business. If negative thoughts or imposter syndrome start to creep in, you will not be able to put your full energy into the business. All in all, you need to be prepared for a rough ride when you’re first starting out. Unless you’re incredibly lucky, overnight success isn’t going to happen for you. As long as you’re prepared for constant highs and lows you will be able to push through the launch of your business in a strong and impactful way.
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Consistency is Key
In the early days of your business launch, you need to be so consistent in everything you do. Whether you’re posting on social media everyday, reaching out to your ideal clients or sending nurture sequences in the form of an email, you need to stick to your plan. If you fall off the radar in the initial few weeks or months it is so difficult to build yourself back up again. You will thank yourself in the future if you show up every single day for your target audience. Although it might seem like a really hard slog during your launch phase, it will all be worth it once you have built a strong and loyal audience.
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Your Mindset Will Prevent You From Achieving Success
When you first started out in business, your mindset certainly wasn’t in the right place. You were mainly driven by money which isn’t the right headspace to kick off a successful business. On the other end of the spectrum, you might have gone into business feeling under confident and worried about your launch. No matter what your sole purpose of running a business is, your mindset needs to be positive and focused. If you don’t believe you can make money from what you are doing, your goals will never manifest in the way you want them to.
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Patience is Fundamental
As soon as you launched your business you expected customers and clients to come running to you. In truth, it may be several weeks, months or years before you see significant progress in your sales. You wish that you had prepared yourself for the anticlimax of your launch, because you would have saved yourself a lot of disappointment. If you could start your business all over again, you would definitely tell yourself to be as patient as possible.
You may not have reached the point of feeling comfortable and confident in your business, but what can you learn from this? You can implement all of the things you wish you had known into your future business strategies. Whether you’re testing out new marketing methods, finding a way to gain consistency or altering your mindset, there are so many ways to get one step closer to success. Even if you don’t know anybody to pass this wisdom onto, you can pass it onto yourself! One day your business is going to grow and expand; implementing all of the ideas mentioned above will make for a smoother transition when you scale. All in all, there are so many different things that you wish you had known before you took that leap into entrepreneurship. Now you are able to hold onto these golden nuggets of knowledge and use them whenever you need to.