10 things entrepreneurs wish they knew before they started - Part 2

10 things entrepreneurs wish they knew before they started - Part 2

When it comes to things I wish I knew, and what others knew, prior to starting a business the amount of knowledge is vast. Now this isn't to discourage you, but to let you know what you're getting into before you decide to set off and start your own company. We all started off somewhere and if you've been working online as much as I have, you'll wish you had done some things slightly different or a few aspects completely different.

Below is my part 2 of what I and a lot of other entrepreneurs wished we knew before we started a business on our own. It's a difficult journey, but you can do it the right way if you just think before you act

Here are 5 things I wish I knew before I started

1. Taking a vacation with loved ones or friends.
If you own your own company you know for a fact that there isn't much time to take off due to all the tasks you have to perform in order to keep everything going strong. When I started off I was working 16+ hour days and I really wished I had taken some time off and went on vacation.

Recently I went to Vegas for a few days and that was my first real vacation in about 10 years. Now I say "real vacation" because it wasn't like I was going to a different state for a wedding or someone else's event, I planned this myself just to have a good time, and that's a real vacation.

If you do become successful with your business you will quickly notice that you won't have much free time on your hands. Even if you start an online only type company where you can travel but still work as long as you have a laptop, you still won't have much free time. Maybe 5 years ago I was with my partner at his family's lake house for a month, but we were working 12 hour days still. It was really nice sitting on the back porch listening to the waves crash on the shoreline, but we were still working and couldn't enjoy it like an actual vacation.

Even if you are the CEO and on vacation, you will still be connected at some point. Decisions will need to be made and if you're the only one who can authorize certain things, you will need to be working while on vacation.


2. Hired employees sooner than later
When you're an entrepreneur you'll be doing plenty of things for your business and I would suggest to bring someone in to lessen the work load so you don't get overworked. You will also learn how to manage employees in a good way since you will only have one to start off. You will also learn how to fire someone if the time comes and you can figure out how to separate business and personal life along the way.

When you have an employee you will figure out how to train them in what you already know how to do. Think of it as you're training an employee and future manager who will take over what you're teaching them. You're basically training someone to train others so you can focus on other aspects of the business

I wish I would have had people helping me from the start instead of a few years down the road. I would have had much more free time and I wouldn't have had to work such long hours trying to do R&D as well as managing what was currently bringing in traffic and sales.


3. Hang out with other entrepreneurs
When you're running your own business you will sort of feel lonely. This is because even if you're popular, your friends and family may not know anything about what you're doing and that means you can't really have in depth conversations about it.

Having an entrepreneur group of friends will make it feel like you can bounce ideas off of them and get good feedback. You will also be able to talk business with them and they will be able to respond lol. So many times I've brought up something I'm working on with my girlfriend or a friend I'm hanging out with and you can just tell they're being nice by not saying "I have no clue what you're saying" lol.

If you don't have an outlet to talk with like minded business people maybe you should look into getting a desk at a co-working space or joining a group that meets up once or twice a month. The co-working space is pretty awesome because you can list what you do and see what others do as well. You can network this way as well with other entrepreneurs and that's the major thing with this because you never know who could help you out later on in life.


4. Have done in depth research instead of winging it
When it comes to a business, you need to have a good amount of information about what you're doing before you jump in. Many times have I heard people talking about business ideas solely on the reasoning of "I think I can make some money with this idea" and that's never a good reason to invest your time and effort. Some ideas may be great, but the niche takes enormous amounts of cash flow from investors or other means in order to be successful. Many times I've thought I was going to get into a good niche and quickly found out that I'd be wasting money for 3 months just to turn a slight profit Do your research prior to saying yes to something.

Do so much research that your eyes begin to fatigue from looking at a computer screen too long. Type so much that your hands begin to hurt and just when you're about to break, take a break lol. After you've recovered, get back to researching and figure out every single little detail about what you want to start doing and you will be extremely grateful that you did it later on down the road. You may look back and say "Man, I'm so glad I did all that research. I sure hit it big and it could have been due to all the hours I invested looking up little details" or you could be the person saying "I should have done more research in the beginning. I could have been 10 times more successful than I am now because I would have known what not to do".

Too much knowledge on a topic, niche, market, etc. is never a bad thing. Read everything you can, study the trends, figure out every little thing there is and then go for it if the juice is worth the squeeze


5. Prepared for scaling up
Unexpected growth is one thing that can actually hurt a business. If you're not ready to go from 10 sales a day to 100 a day, then you might be in a bad position. You need to be prepared for a huge boost in sales due to something going viral, your search engine rankings spiking and sticking, and various other things that could increase your sales.

If you're not ready for this, you could have a huge delay when it comes to shipping out items or getting things done in general. Your employees, or yourself, may have to work long hours just to get something done that they're use to doing in just a few each day.

It's smart to plan on how you want to scale upwards and do it gradually. This will keep you safe when an unexpected spike in sales pops up.



In Conclusion:
You'll never know everything there is to know about running a business or startin one up. If you follow the words I typed up in this CD you'll have a better understanding on what to expect when it comes to running a business. But again, you'll never know what's around the corner so it's always best to be prepared for anything.



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Razzy