How to Finally Start the Business You've Always Dreamed of

Starting a business takes guts. While it all starts with a dream, the more important thing is what you do. There’s no use thinking about a business if the pen never hits the paper and the hammer never hits the nail.

To start the business you’ve always dreamed of, you have to stop dreaming and start doing.

Follow these four steps to start taking action today.

Design Your “Entrepreneur’s Routine”

You’ve probably heard the iconic stories that follow famous entrepreneurs—the endless hours coding in dank California garages, the countless nights sleeping at the factory, the hundreds of wireframes sketched out on dormitory windows.

While some of these tales have morphed into urban legends, the moral of the story still stands: your business starts with you.

What you put into your passion project will set the standards for your future employees and become the skeleton of a thriving company culture. Small business owners have to hold themselves to higher standards of work ethic and discipline. That means:

Sleeping less and waking up earlier than everyone else
Not stopping for any obstacle or challenge
Continuously enriching your mind and developing your craft
Seeking out new knowledge about your industry, product, and technology every day

An entrepreneur bound for success is hungry—and they won’t settle until they’ve satisfied that voracious appetite for success. They integrate these values into their everyday routines, creating day-to-day schedules devoted to their business. While it seems extreme, it’s this very intensity that inspires us today. What will yours lead you to create? What will your story be?

You may also like reading which entrepreneur made tractors before entering the sports car business.

Develop Your Minimum Viable Product or Service

Whatever your business idea maybe, it’s a figment of your imagination until you have a product or service that works. Whether that’s getting beta users hooked on your new app, a focus group satisfied with your skincare service, or a fully-functioning prototype, your minimum viable product (MVP) is your company.

If you don’t have an MVP, you don’t have a business. So you better get to work.

Surround Yourself with the Strongest Team Possible

A simple prototype or small survey of beta users will only take you so far. To truly scale your business into something profitable and impactful, you’ll need a team that believes in it as much as you do.

The ideal candidate for an up-and-coming business should be:

Resourceful
Enthusiastic
Self-sufficient
Trustworthy
Reliable
Creative

They should have all of this, in addition to having the education, experience, and skills needed to do the job right, of course.

While it’s tempting to leap into the hiring process with someone who meets all these qualities, don’t let a dream CV distract you from basic vetting processes like an online criminal background check (because that diamond in the rough might be rougher than you thought).

Get Your Biz Out There

Once you know you have a product that works, a strategy to scale your business, and a team to make it happen, you’re ready to get the word out. Don’t stop at traditional methods of advertising. Thanks to this golden age of connectivity, you can also use any of these digital methods to make yourself stand out:

A sleek website with even sleeker copy
Social media advertisements
Influencer marketing with a focus on targeted micro-influencers
An attractive LinkedIn page to draw in new talent
Social media profiles for your business to gain traction with your target market

Don’t Give Up

If your lofty business idea seems more like a pipe dream than a golden goose, don’t flush it down the toilet just yet. Starting a business doesn’t just take years of hard work and a brilliant idea, it takes confidence and courage to move forward despite immense uncertainty.

Don’t let the fog of the future stop you from making yours bright. Keep going. You got this.

Image Credits: istockphoto.com

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Nirupama Verma

Nirupama Verma is a self passionate blogger, managing a bunch of informational blogs. She has written a lot of informational content for several popular blogs.