Habits Of A Bootstrapped Entrepreneur
When you wear the hat of an entrepreneur, it often happens that you run short of accepting the little measures that need to be taken during inception. Today it is most important to create, develop, encourage and educate employers.
DON’T START WITHOUT A PLAN AND A MENTOR!
To begin with, a plan is the most essential step before you start your business. Don’t test your water before you know how much money you need to invest and where. The business plan, marketing plan & first five-year strategy are the basic details to be chalked out. You should get along with some experts for proper mentoring and guidance to fix up the missing elements in the budding entrepreneur.
A wise mentor shows you a way to think through a business idea to generate revenue with proper experience. Cheers for good work and heads-up for troubles are the major ingredients for establishing a strong foundation to scale up success.
INNOVATION AND DISRUPTION
What are you innovating or disrupting through your start-up is what you need to observe. Conduct a competitive market analysis with the minute details of the product, prices, promotion, and advertising to get a clear picture of outside influences affecting your business.
Is it service or expertise or price?
You need to focus on customer satisfaction since word of mouth is the best way to grow your business. Referrals, offers and free consultation add to new referrals. Make it a habit to measure and monitor the operational rhythms of your business, where you should be plugged in all aspects of your business.
Most importantly the non-critical spends like a boss are to be shut down. Things that don’t help you meet your goal do not invest money in them. Keep all your expenses to zero and generate positive cash flow. Your tenterhooks hope and pray for the first customer and when you land down with one, you latch them all on the cost which sinks you down. So always have this habit of holding on to a valuable customer because toxic customers not very difficult to be satisfied and demand non-standard features. So learn to say no and just move on.
Make it a habit to monitor your competition.
What do they do?
How they infuse new features and products?
How is the pricing strategy changing?
Bootstrapping entrepreneurs should do that extra mile to make things happen and be that one cheerleader that has every incentive to keep you supporting. With your disrupted sleep also there is also a real danger to keep you walking dead. So learn to carve out your time to ensure that you make the best out of it.
