Why 98% of all businesses eventually fail? People claim all the time that their wonderful business died out because they “couldn’t find enough capital” or they couldn’t “find an investor” or they were “undercapitalized”, do you know what the best way to capitalize your business is?
Make a profit.
The reason that those businesses failed is that they should never have been launched in the first place. They never had a clear idea how they were going to make a profit and how they would make money for themselves and for their investors.
Market Research: Market research can help to reveal key aspects of the competitors’ products, services, marketing strategies, and target audience. Using this information within your own campaigns can help to lead in the market over your competition and add value to your business or brand. A proper market research alone can strengthen the foundation of your business idea.
Previous experience: Startups are an entirely different experience. Having been through that before makes a huge difference. Investors are particularly wary of people who haven’t been through a startup before.
Validation: There’s the plan, and then there’s people, events, users, subscribers, letters of intent, usage data, milestones already met, founder backgrounds, and other information that validates the plan. It’s easy to type words and numbers. Without validation, they are just that.
Traction: We may be guilty of stating the same thing twice, between validation and traction. But both words come up often. I think of traction as progress, people who care, branding, and then of course all of those concepts I included with validation.
Resources: One thing is what you type as words and numbers. Another altogether is what you can actually deliver. You either have what you need or you can get it. I’ve seen lots of competent business plans that called for way more startup money than the inexperienced would-be founders had any hope of raising.
Attitude: A professional and positive demeanor will get you further than any business plan in my opinion. Remember that ultimately you are doing business with people. At some point all the number crunching you do in the business plan mean nothing unless you are there to help alleviate somebody’s pain.
Be honest and fair in your dealings: Make sure that people get more in usage value than you charge in monetary value for your product or service. Do your research and see what they need. Then make sure you can provide it at a fair price.
Be resilient to downturns in your business too: There will be a good number of them when you start out. Just remember that it is all part of the process of building a business and don’t let it get you down.
Branding: Branding will play a huge part. First you need to get clear on what your brand’s core values are. What makes your business different than the competitors? What does your brand stand for? Once you have this, you want to be deliberate in designing the customer’s experience when they utilize your product/service. Customer experience leads to sales which leads to profit and it all begins with branding.
Make sure Your Business Plan is accompanied with these virtues and thoughts as well.
