5 Questions If You Launching a New Business

Successful entrepreneurs share some common traits. You have definitely heard about many of these. Passion, motivation, self-belief, flexibility, hard work and networking, right?

But there’s one trait which overrides all – ‘’asking the right questions.’’

If you are planning to launch a new business, you have multiple challenges that stare you in the face. At any given point of time, you’re asking yourself whether you should do something or you shouldn’t do something. In fact, there are millions of questions that you face. But only a few of them actually matter, ones that you should really ask yourself to get started right and lead your business in the right direction. You need to know what those questions are.

Given below is a list of five questions that are essential to your success as an entrepreneur.

1. Is my market segment profitable enough?

Before you start to operate your business, you should find out whether that market offers opportunities for making sufficient revenue. On the surface, the market you pick may look like a promising one. But the truth emerges when you dig deeper and explore. Nowadays, most market segments are highly competitive because they have been so saturated.

Do adequate research and make sure that the market you choose will allow you to build a profitable business.

2. What are my target audience demographics?

Your business can’t win them all. To achieve success, you must reach a specific group of people who have a specific need. The challenge for you, as an entrepreneur, is to identify that specific audience.

It requires you to know as much about your target audience as possible. Once you have collected that information, you’ll find yourself in a better position to reach out to them and make a real impact. Start your research by looking at the key demographics of the geographical location that’s on your radar. Study groups of people in terms of their age, gender, income range, marital status, occupation and education among others.

3. What are the needs of my potential customers?

Now, move on to the next vital piece of information: customer needs. Why would people purchase your product or service?

The answer lies in understanding what your customer needs are. If you are going to start a business in health and fitness, you need to find out what your customers care about. Are your customers looking for home-based exercise? Do they have time to attend a gym? Conduct thorough research and connect with friends and colleagues who are conscious about their health and aspire to lead a happy and disease-free life, for insights.

That way, you’ll be able to craft a product which fits in with the actual needs of your customers and marketing will be easier too.

4. Who are my key competitors?

To beat competitors, you need to know and understand competitors. When you start a new business, one of the first things you should ask yourself is what your key five or ten competitors look like.

Find out who your top competitors are so that you can learn from them and improve your own offer. When you keep a close watch, you’ll always be aware of the changes they make to their marketing and advertising, which in turn reveals new processes and strategies. Use different tools for researching content strategies, display ad strategies, ranking strategies etc. It will help you size up the competition really well.

5. What are my business goals?

Be crystal clear about what you want to achieve from your business – both for the short and long term. Not just business goals, you should also take your personal and financial goals into consideration. Knowing your expectations from day one will help you make the right decisions.

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15 Books That All Entrepreneurs Should Read

I’ve read hundreds of books on entrepreneurship and business but some have stood far above the rest.
This is a list of 15 books that are essential reads for aspiring entrepreneurs. Reading them will improve your business mindset, soft skills, productivity, and more.
They are divided into four main categories for convenience.

• 1 Business and Entrepreneurship
  • 1.1 The E-Myth Revisited
  • 1.2 The 4-Hour Workweek
  • 1.3 The Millionaire Fastlane
  • 1.4 The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building A Business When There Are No Easy Answers
  • 1.5 Start With Why
• 2 Startups
  • 2.1 The Lean Startup
  • 2.2 The $100 Startup
  • 2.3 Zero to One
• 3 Marketing
  • 3.1 Traction
  • 3.2 Trust Me, I’m Lying
  • 3.3 Tribes
• 4 Soft Skills and Miscellaneous
  • 4.1 The Obstacle is the Way
  • 4.2 Think and Grow Rich
  • 4.3 How to Win Friends and Influence People
  • 4.4 Predictably Irrational
• 5 Summary

Business and Entrepreneurship

These books are focused specifically on creating and running businesses to build wealth.

The E-Myth Revisited

The E-Myth Revisited was published a few years after the original (The E-Myth), and is focused on small businesses.
The main concept is that most people who start businesses run them with an employee mindset. They understand the technical jobs, but don’t have the big picture knowledge to create a smoothly functioning and profitable business.
This book emphasizes adopting the right mindset to build processes that will allow an entrepreneur to run their business, rather than work in it.
It’s an easy read, and largely focuses on a hypothetical business case study.
Keep in mind that this was written before the Internet was really a thing, but the principles still apply.

The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek is the book that really made a name for its author Tim Ferriss.
It tells the story of how he was able to turn his supplement business into a lifestyle business.
Instead of working 40+ hour weeks, he was able to reduce his workweek to around 4 hours, while still remaining profitable.
He did this through a lot of streamlining, delegation, and automation. He’s also a big fan of leveraging the Pareto principle.
The book details everything he did to transform his business, and shows you how you could apply the principles to your own.

The Millionaire Fastlane

This title scares off a lot of people (including myself) at first, because it does sound like a get rich quick book.
But it’s far from that. Give it a chance.
The first big chunk of The Millionaire Fastlane focuses on the author’s background, and how he studied average people who went on to achieve great wealth.
The purpose, above all else, is to remove the mindset that the path to wealth is to get a job and invest money safely. DeMarco loathes the thought of only having wealth when you’re too old to fully enjoy it.
Instead, he proposes the “millionaire fastlane,” a track to unlinking your time from money. This is the only way to achieve exponential wealth growth.
Despite the terminology sounding a bit sketchy throughout the book, the writing is captivating, and the principles themselves give you a lot to think about.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building A Business When There Are No Easy Answers

I love books written by authors who have had sustained success; It gives the writing more credibility.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things was written by Ben Horowitz, who’s one of the most respected entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. That raises the bar of your expectations for this book and you won’t be disappointed.
In particular, this was written for CEOs, and entrepreneurs who want to be CEOs.
It mostly focuses on how to be an effective leader. This includes both how to decide what needs to be done, how to define it clearly, and how to get others to help you accomplish it.
Ben also has written a ton of posts on his blog, I highly recommend reading a few to see if you enjoy his writing style.

Start With Why

Start With Why is both focused on business, but also on psychology and mindset.
The main message is that all great leaders do one thing differently than others. Instead of focusing on what they want to accomplish, or how they’re going to do it, they start with why it’s important.
This conclusion is based off of research that Simon Sinek (the author) did, looking at leadership traits of people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Steve Jobs.
If you’re looking to build a brand, movement, or even just be a more inspiring leader, this book will have at least a few great takeaways for you.

Startups

Startups are a special kind of business, so I placed these recommended reads in their own category.

The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup is a framework developed by Eric Ries. It’s a great book to read if you feel like there’s too much luck involved in creating a successful business.
It’s very different from most business books, because it focuses on a scientific approach to validating ideas, building products, and selling them.
The core concept and motivation behind the book is that most people get a business idea, spend months or years building it, and then find out that no one even wants to buy it.
Instead, Ries proposes to get data as soon as possible, and keep revising your idea and product until it matches what a market really wants.
This approach will help you minimize wasted time and investments, and give you a better chance at creating a thriving business.

The $100 Startup

If you’re not interested in making tens of millions, but would rather create a business that allows you to live comfortably and with freedom, The $100 Startup is a must-read.
Chris Guillebeau started by finding 1,500 people who have built successful small businesses (earning $50,000+ per year), without a large investment. Many cost less than $100 to start, hence the title.
He chose the very best of those to create case studies and identify patterns that others could follow to achieve similar success.
In short, he found that people were able to find an intersection between their skills and knowledge and what the market will buy. His writing makes it clear how these connections were made, and with a little thinking you could do the same.

Zero to One

If you feel like all the good ideas are taken, this book will change the way that you see how businesses fit together in a market.
It’s written by Blake Masters based on direct input from the well-known entrepreneur (and billionaire) Peter Thiel.
Unlike The $100 Startup, Zero to One focuses on creating startups with huge potential.
Instead of taking an idea that’s already been done and improving it, he proposes a thought framework leading to true innovation.
He proposes to niche down and find a problem that only you (or very few) have the unique perspective, skills, resources, and timing to solve. In doing this, you essentially create your own monopoly that no one can replicate.
This is definitely not a “how-to” book, but he does offer practical steps.

Marketing

Being able to create a product is useless if you can’t get anyone to buy it. Marketing is an area that most entrepreneurs struggle with, but these books will help you understand how to use it effectively.

Traction

Anyone can build a product, but it’s difficult to get people to use it.
Traction is all about gaining traction, more specifically, choosing the right marketing channel using a 3-step process called “Bullseye.”
Those 19 channels include blogging, SEO, content marketing, and so on.
This isn’t a revolutionary book, but it will certainly clear up where you should focus your marketing efforts on.
Alternatively, you could just read a ton of blog posts written by the most respected marketers, but consider this book a shortcut that will save you some time.

Trust Me, I’m Lying

I wasn’t sure whether or not to include this book on this list, as it’s kind of depressing.
Ryan Holiday is a highly successful marketer, and wrote Trust Me, I’m Lying to really expose how modern online media works.
He clearly explains and shows why you see so much clickbait, even on what used to be respected websites.
With that understanding, you can either use it to manipulate media to your business’ benefit, or just develop better reading habits.
Either way, it’s an enjoyable read.

Tribes

Seth Godin has written a collection of great books, but Tribes is the one I chose to include on this list.
The concept of a tribe is a group of people that are connected together through an idea, a leader, or each other.
This book does require a lot of thinking on your part if you’re going to get a lot out of it. It’s not explicitly practical.
Godin analyzes different “tribes” and explores how they work, in particular, the leadership. If you have a cause or purpose that you’d like to lead and build a tribe around, this is a great book to gain a few insights and show you what to think about.

Soft Skills and Miscellaneous

A lot of your success won’t be determined by your hard skills, but by your social skills and mindset.
The books in this section are not necessarily business books, but will help you be more successful, both in and out of your business.

The Obstacle is the Way

This is the most philosophical book on this list.
The main goal of The Obstacle is the Way is to help you react to failure as well as possible, and turn it into success.
There are several interesting stories included of famous historical figures like John Rockefeller and Ulysses S. Grant.
If you feel like you take failure really hard, and it’s crushing your motivation, this is a good book to read to start to reframe some of these events.

Think and Grow Rich

This is an old book, but Think and Grow Rich has stood the test of time since being released in 1937.
Allegedly, Napoleon Hill studied successful individuals for over 20 years leading up to this book, as well as his others.
This book focuses on 13 principles that he identified in these people, that will lead to riches.
It has a nice balance between being motivational and being practical. One principle involves belief, and thinking clearly about what you’d like to achieve, which may sound a little like something that should be on Oprah. But then another involves careful organization and planning.
Of course some things have changed over time, but there’s a reason why so many successful people today give credit to this book.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

This classic, written in 1936, should be a must-read whether or not you’re an entrepreneur.
How to Win Friends and Influence People contains a series of stories and compelling arguments that will help you do exactly what the title promises.
Some of it will strike you as common sense, but just about everyone can benefit from learning how to connect with others better.
You will learn concepts that will help you get clients, maintain better relationships with them, and have happier employees. These ideas will benefit you in your personal life as well.

Predictably Irrational

Besides just being interesting, this final book has some direct lessons that you can apply to your business.
Predictably Irrational is all about weird human judgment and behavior. Why do we make poor decisions?
Dan Ariely analyzes a variety of psychological experiments to find out what drives certain decision-making paradoxes.

Summary

The most successful entrepreneurs never stop learning, and neither should you.
If you can read just one book a month, you’ll have finished all of these books in just over a year. Your entire outlook on business will be revitalized and improved.

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5 Life-Changing Decisions Successful Entrepreneurs Make Early On

 Becoming a successful entrepreneur is first and foremost a mental battle.

Countless factors go into determining how successful you'll be in the world of business. 

Having an unwavering determination, strong willingness to sacrifice, a high level of commitment, and of course the quality of your business ideas. All of these are going to have a very real effect on if (and how) you'll achieve greatness as an entrepreneur.

For instance, Tim Ferriss shared with me over on CreativeLive, that even something as seemingly insignificant as choosing the right friends has made a huge impact on his trajectory as an entrepreneur, investor, and bestselling author.

However, all of these aspects pale in comparison to the most basic requirement that so many would-be entrepreneurs fail to excel at: having the right mindset.

From my interviews with accomplished entrepreneurs and through my own personal experience, here are the 5 most influential mindset changes that successful entrepreneurs make early on.

1. Every Failure is an Opportunity. 

Setbacks are inevitable along your journey to the top. You need to decide very early on that any failures you encounter, no matter how large or painful, won't be crippling to your mental fortitude - they're merely learning opportunities. Nearly all successful entrepreneurs have had tremendous failures. It's their determination to learn from those experiences and continue progressing in their fields, that truly set them apart.

2. Complaining Gets You Nowhere.

When you do (you will) experience difficulties, hardships, and failures, you need to make a very conscious decision to never waste time complaining.

Collect yourself, take adequate time to fully understand why you failed, and pick apart how you're going to avoid the same mistakes in the future. After that, it's time to move on and tackle your next set of goals, otherwise you'll allow your mistakes to define you.

3. Discomfort is Essential to Success.

If you're not regularly pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, you're not growing as an entrepreneur. You're not learning. You're not discovering new and exciting tactics that could help you significantly grow your business.

Even when times are good, it can feel like the smart decision is to keep moving forward with what's been working in the past. However, that's not how you're going to achieve exponential growth. What's more, is that whether you know it or not, you have competitors out there who are willing to push themselves to their limits and they'll uncover faster growth levers than you will, by playing it safe.

4. Take Risks Often.

It almost goes without saying that entrepreneurial success is defined by taking risks--calculated risks, that is. Choose to be curious. Investigate why things are the way they are. Hypothesize how you can make them better. If you're afraid to challenge the status quo, or you're not interested in questioning why inefficiencies exist in your industry, you're not going to forge a path toward meaningful innovations that'll shape our future.

5. Believe in Yourself.

In the end, your success as an entrepreneur will be defined--more than anything else--by how much you believe in yourself and your ability to prevail over all obstacles you'll inevitably face. Don't allow the excuses of lacking an Ivy League education, having inadequate financial resources, and repeated initial failures go on to define who you are. Know deep down that you're going to be successful, commit yourself to making it happen, and nothing can stop you.

Source

The 15 Characteristics of Effective Entrepreneurs

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