If having a business is the dream of many people, not everyone becomes an entrepreneur, and for good reason! Do you want to know how to become an entrepreneur? This article is for you: to put the odds on your side and help you bring your entrepreneurial project to the end; here are some tips.
Unsuccessful projects, lengthy administrative procedures, complex legal formalities, and difficulties in obtaining financing have gotten the better of many people of goodwill. Here you will find the answers to most entrepreneurs’ questions.
How to become an entrepreneur?
1. Make a personal assessment.
Before embarking on entrepreneurship, take the time to ask yourself about your project, your personality, your constraints, and the reasons that lead you to think about starting a business.
Are your motivations for entrepreneurship sustainable?
A desire for independence, the need to materialize an idea, to carry out a project, and your will to undertake should not be linked to a difficult situation and a temporary frustration in your work but a long-term vision of your professional activity.
You have decided to start your own account because you have an idea in mind:
- You are going to provide a service
- You are going to market a product
- Or maybe you have a revolutionary idea
Whatever your initial idea, your product or service must respond to a real need or problem. Without it, you will have difficulty finding customers willing to pay you.
Take a few minutes, and ask yourself (trying to be as impartial as possible): “What need will my business meet?”
- Is this need present? Have you ever felt it personally? Or observed in your surroundings?
- Are you sure there is demand for this need in the area where you will settle?
- Are people aware of this need? Or are you going to have to show them?
- Are people willing to pay to satisfy this need?
Depending on your business, these questions are less difficult to answer, and their degree of importance varies considerably. Indeed, if you want to open a tea room, your premises’ location will be decisive. On the other hand, analyzing the need is essential if you want to create a startup.
Do not worry if the first answers are not encouraging: it simply means that you should adjust your project (and better to realize it today than in a few months when you have already invested efforts and resources ).
What are your personal constraints?
Whether it’s financial limits or obligations due to your family’s organization, identify any brakes and blockages in the realization of your project to better overcome them or adapt your project accordingly.
Many entrepreneurs, when they testify, explain to us that they hesitated and wondered if it was “the right time” to start. This is all the more true for entrepreneurs who decide to create a startup.
In reality, the perfect moment never comes. This is why it is essential to ask yourself objectively: what do you need to get started?
Ask yourself what your resources are: it is essential not to focus only on what you lack today. What are your strengths? Your contacts? Your skills?
Which entrepreneur are you?
While there are as many different personalities as there are entrepreneurs, certain character traits can help you in entrepreneurship. From the start-up process and throughout your business life, it is better to be determined, persevering, have good physical and psychological resistance, and be a good manager. Beyond your personal skills, do not forget to check the legal procedures by informing yourself on how to become an entrepreneur.
2. Have an idea to develop
You still need to have an idea to go from a simple desire to undertake to create a business.
To clarify your project, consider your wishes, your centers of interest, your previous personal, associative, and/or professional experiences, and possible constraints. For example, opening a cleaning business requires more or less extensive training depending on your target, which involves a financial investment. It’s also difficult to consider starting an interior design business if you don’t like human contact or opening a hotel establishment if you don’t want to work on weekends.
If the idea may evolve as you proceed, you must determine the field of activity in which your company will operate and deduce from it any training that you will need to complete your knowledge and/or to engage in a regulated activity.
3. Bring your idea to the market and test it
Once the idea has been found, ensure it meets your future customers’ needs. To do this, do a market study by asking yourself the right questions:
- Who is the target clientele? Individuals, professionals, children and/or adults, etc.
- Who are the competitors in the market? What prices do they charge? Do they have the same clientele? What do you bring to this market?
- If your idea is an innovation, does it meet unmet needs, and is it useful? How to protect it?
- Where to expand your business? Internet and/or shop, for example.
- Are you considering the possibility of taking over an existing business?
In addition, other companies may be already providing solutions to the exact needs or the same problems as those you are targeting.
This is a good sign: of course, you will start with competitors, but it also means a demand for the solution you are offering.
Then ask yourself, what are these companies? What are their particularities? What types of customers are they aimed at?
And most importantly, how will your products or services be different? Why will your customers prefer to use you rather than your competitors?
Thanks to all these questions, your primary idea may have evolved, but you now know that it has potential for the target market, and you can start writing a business plan.
Study the product or service well
You must understand well what you offer (solution – product – service), gather all the necessary information about it, and constantly strive to develop and make it distinct. You also must understand the target audience and be keen to present what you have innovatively and distinctively.
4. Determine the target segment and choose the right market
Choosing the target segment for the nature of the product or service you provide is a cornerstone on the way to your success, as not every product is suitable for everyone. You should know that each product or service has an audience interested in it and that the places where this audience is located differ from one product to another.
Create a suitable market for your product
After determining the appropriate segment to present your product, you must create the appropriate market for yourself and create a marketing strategy for this product or service that matches your financial resources and target segment. And you have to realize that you must be in the common places for your customers and provide them with what they need innovatively and differently to outperform your competitors.
Beyond the economic potential, consider considering the initial investment required. What legal status of a bar? What training to provide? What insurance should I take out?
How are you going to bring customers to you?
This question is not innocent: you may have a great idea that meets the fundamental need of your customers, but if you can’t make yourself known to your potential customers, your business will not take off.
This aspect is easy to underestimate: we say to ourselves that it will be enough “to create a Facebook page” or “to have flyers printed”.
Take the time to think carefully about the means you will use to promote yourself.
- How many customers would you like to attract in the first 6 months? The first year?
- Do you think the tactics you have identified will attract this number of customers?
5. Develop a Cost Structure
To justify the creation of a business, your idea must be financially profitable and allow you to live from your activity.
It is then a question of deepening your market study concerning your customers, your competitors, and the goods or services offered while developing the financial aspect:
- What capital is needed to start your business? What will be the recurring expenses? Purchase or rental of goodwill, equipment, stocks, trademark or patent registration, costs related to business creation formalities, creation of a website, intervention of professionals to draft your statutes, your general conditions of sales, etc
- What will be the rates you will apply? And the gains you hope to derive from it?
- When will your business be profitable? Beyond what time frame do you think you can get paid?
Thanks to these elements, you can make financial forecasts and determine if you need external financing.
Whether using crowdfunding, bank or family loans, or even state aid, a clear and complete business plan presenting your products and/or services, your analysis of the market, and your development strategy will help you highlight your project.
Alongside your company’s finances, this analysis will also allow you to anticipate the impact of starting a business on your personal finances, as the absence of remuneration is frequent in the first months of activity.
6. Choose the most suitable legal structure.
Depending in particular on the field of activity of your company, the capital required to start the activity, any financing needs, and the presence of partners, the choice of the legal form of your company will be different.
Whether it is a matter of choosing the form of your business and carrying out the appropriate creation procedures for each structure (drafting of statutes, registration of the company, etc.), the support of professionals is recommended to provide a solid foundation for your business.
7. Surround yourself well and build a network
Even if you undertake it alone, creating a business should not be a solo project. It is possible and sometimes essential to associate yourself with other people (partners or shareholders) to benefit from complementary skills. Still, it is also necessary to be assisted by professionals in realizing your project.
Choice of the legal form of your company, your general conditions of sale and/or use, the legal notices of your website, employment contracts, or the filing of patents and trademarks, it is essential to know how to delegate to experienced professionals.
You benefit from the best skills in each area and develop your activity serenely while being relieved of the administrative procedures that can waste your time.
