Not all entrepreneurs dream of building a massive empire à la presidential hopeful “The Donald” or sports mogul and Shark Tank super-heavyweight “The Cubes”. Some just want to establish a financial empire that can stand the test of time. To provide themselves, their family, and perhaps a few worthwhile charities with some of the comforts that more-than-enough money can bring into people’s lives.
While the old saying goes “you can’t do it on your own,” there are more than a few entrepreneurs out there who’ve built massive companies from the comfort of their homes or through many days spent surfing the web on their laptop at the local Starbucks.
Here’s 3 simple and very easily replicated tips for starting such a business on your own:
1. Don’t over commit too early on
Henry Ford offered the first Ford vehicle, the 8 horsepower Model A in one two-seater size and one color (red). He didn’t do this because he was so arrogant he believed that everyone in the world preferred that particular shade of red, he did it because he wanted to test the market first before tweaking his automobile design to suit a wider crowd of consumers. He’d also blown most of his $25,000 budget on designing the car, leaving him with a little over $200 left in his pocket. After the success of what he called the “World’s Most Reliable Machine in the World” Ford amassed enough profits to improve on the design and offer a larger engine in the special addition “AC”, before moving onto the model B, C, F, T and so on.
Take a lesson from Ford and don’t put every single financial resource and every moment of your time into over-complicating your product line until you’re sure what the market wants. And keep the middling middlemen out of the way initially at first too. Too many voices spreading information about your product to consumers before you’ve established the brand can spell certain disaster. This process creates a disconnect from your consumers that you can nay afford during the early stages where consumer trust and feedback are so important.
2. Automation will save you time and money
What can I say about technology today? It provides you with nearly everything you need to run a remote business from anywhere on the planet you choose. Why not use it to your advantage?
Need an out-of-the-box ecomm store? Shopify, Squarespace, 3dCart, Volusion — all offer an easy way to get your product out to market. Why waste time with developers who’ll demand upfront fees, payment upon completion, and regular maintenance fees. Let these online services take care of coding problems and security for you (for a small fee of course, but it’s worth it early on). You can build an incredible site in a few years after you’re making so much money you have to start finding ways to spend it all!
Same goes with your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., advertisements. Use ad and post schedulers, social media companies, and split testing software so you can set and forget things that don’t require your constant attention.
Last, sign up to Zendesk or a similar one-stop customer service solution, so you’re not spending hours a day fielding mundane support requests.
3. Be a smart outsourcer
Site owner, Ivan Widjaya knows how to leverage his time effectively to make sure that you, his loyal visitors, get all the SMB-related content you’re looking for — without him needing to be online 24 hours a day! Don’t know his exact secret. But we’ve worked together for years now and he manages to make thousands of posts a year to his main blogs, schedule and complete Q&As with industry bigwigs, deal with an array of outsourcers, and still manage to run other online businesses that most of you don’t even know about.
You’ll have to bootstrap a lot of things yourself at first, but once you have the flow down — your product, marketing, administration, customer service — whatever. You’ll want to start sourcing people who can help you manage your time more effectively and grow your seven-figure business. Social media should be not only paramount as soon as you start building, but also one of the first things you outsource.
You can’t put a value on time lost due to being tardy creating a social media presence for your brand…
It’s all about finding the right people: designers, writers, social media experts, video producers, editors, and on and on. Whatever your business needs, there’s someone else who can do that. And at a fraction of the cost to your time, patience, and health. Don’t skimp on your VAs or your PR team, who’ll help you build your social media campaigns.
Comment if you found value in this post.
Or even if you didn’t. I don’t care. Just let me know you’re listening out there!