Senkone

Rule Number Three – The successful small business entrepreneur needs to serve a specific target. You really do need to know what is unique about what you are going to offer. Do you have specialized knowledge that you are bringing to an industry? Are you addressing a need for a specific niche? If you Google companies that do the same thing as you and cannot come up with any differences, then you may not want to start that company and go back to the drawing board. Get the books positioning and differentiate or die to help with this process. This is not simply your unique selling proposition, it is what mental space do you want to go after in your prospects mind? If you look at a company like Kraft, they are very general and have a lot of different products but did you know they rarely hold the market share of any specific niche? And one of the few (Philadelphia Cream Cheese) that they do hold, not too many people know as Kraft? What market share can you carve out? In this economy there are those with the top 1 or 2 spots in market share and those suffering.

Rule Number Two – Get creative with your funding. Sometimes one of the worst things for an entrepreneur is a large budget or easy access to a large amount of money. When you don’t have a large pot to pull from, you have to be creative. What advertising can you get co-funded on? What are some ways you can trade or barter? What parts of the business can you incentivize? In this economy you can help and at the same time get cheap labor to do the things you do not want to do, this rolls right into the number one rule.

Rule Number One – Start with a successful end in mind and be happy with your desired outcome. Sometimes I see entrepreneurs start a small business to make some extra money but they have designed it in such a way that if it succeeds, they will be miserable, either with working too hard or doing something that they do not like. Assume you will be successful from the beginning and then grow into that success rather than simply make some money early on and not plan.

Applying these three rules to your plans as a small business entrepreneur will help guide you in the right direction but nothing is more important than taking action. There is no perfect time to do anything, there is only the time you have which is right now. If you know that what you are doing right now will produce for you less desirable results in the next 6 months then your biggest risk is staying put. Don’t wait for your hand to be forced, if you are thinking you should start working on a plan B, then start working on it right now. As the great Walt Disney said, “You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”

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