I’ll like to welcome you guys to talenz.com where we discuss about the art and science of starting up a small business and being a singapore entreprenur. I do believe that there are indeed many resources out there about earning money and also about starting a business, which might get you stuck with this question: where do I start?
Before we get to the bottom of that question…
Let me share with you the greatest challenge of starting up. Most of a time, a group of people or an individual have this great idea that they want to start a business with. They do obsessed with the great potential that their idea bring.
So without much experience and money, they went ahead and looked for venture capitalists (VCs) to government grants so that they get to start off their business.
And if they are lucky, or they did their due diligience and came up with a proposal which impress the government body or the VCs. After much time spent to do research or to come up with statistics to prove to the investor that with their capital, the business is able to earn tons of profit, become the new change of the world and simply earns millions of dollars of revenue, in time to come.
In order to be convincing, and to persuade the investors to even look at the proposal and consider,the business owners have thought about every highest possibility that this project may succeed and become the next “google” kind of status. People tried to come up with the most innovative ideas… not business.
Common “proposal” questions like:
- What’s your USP (unique selling preposition)?
- What technology or patents do your business have that no other companies have in the region or world?
And so for inexperienced people who are starting up, they become engulfed in this struggle: the struggle of pitching the idea, and not to actually run the business.
After many years of starting up businesses (I had my fair share of failures), I realised that the number one problem that all small businesses face is: the ability to sustain operations.
As you guys probably heard about this: 9 out of 10 businesses failed during the first 3 years of their commencing. And 9 out of 10 of the remaining failed within the next 5 years.
What this simply mean is that businesses are simply unable to become profitable.
Think about it.
If you followed the above path, you are bound to become a startup that sounds nice, looked nice (especially in proposals) but… unable to bring in profits. Unless you are really a top-notch scientist, programmer, doctor who truly discover the ‘out of the world’ secret weapon that no one else in the world (even google’s and microsoft’s tons of PhDs…) knows about it.
Then you should quickly spend all your money (go beg steal borrow if need to) to patent it, because it surely works? Don’t you think so?
However, most of the time, startups don’t already have that kind of technology ready. Yes, they are planning to achieve that status when they get the money from VCs or the government grants.
Most of the time, this become more of a Research and development (R&D) company instead of a running business. And it almost always turn out to be 1 of these 3 options:
1) Succeed!
2) Halfway there or I don’t know… I need more funds
3) Failed and we can’t sustain
Yeap, as you can guess, it’s always number 3.
That’s simply because startups or business does not know how to make their business profitable!
It sounds kind of ironic, but business might mean different things to you and me.
E.g:
-Is a hawker a business?
- Is MLM a business?
- What is entrepreneurship?
You might have went to success talks, read self development and business books. The matter of fact is that there are tons and tons of truisms out there, which if you’re not careful, you might get mislead by them.
Let’s say: Business is like war.
And if this truism become the gospel truth in someone’s mind, then it will determine how they do their business from dealing with customers all the way to every single aspect.
So what I want to say is that be careful what you hold true in your brain. Some times learn how to step back and hold an uncertainty point of view towards everything in life and business, including advice that comes from your mentors or someone whom you respect.
Nope I am not telling you to disrespect them.
Listen to them. Learn from them.
Go out to the real world, apply and test these ideas.
Then decide from your own judgement and the test results that you get.
Alright, I’m going off to a whole new discussion in which I will talk about it some other day.
Let’s get back to the definition of business or entrepreneur.
A lot of people get too caught up with the idea of being an entrepreneur or what. I used to be. I thought it’s like a glorified kind of label.
But as time goes by, I realise that the number 1 matrix for business is still: profitability.
If your business has not even know how to become profitable (more than break even), you simply can’t sustain. No other information about marketing, accounting, joint ventures, advertising, hiring and press release, productivity etc will ever help you because you can’t earn money.
Is it time for us to stop being too caught up with the meaning of being a true or fake entrepreneur and stop to really think how can we be profitable in the first 1 year, 2 years or 3 years?
There has always been information about business building courses, which talks about advanced marketing strategies, hiring structures etc.
As you can see literally, they are business building. Courses that builds onto a ‘business’.
So get your business fundamentals up and running first, before we even think about things that builds onto it.
Now… I see lots of confused minds around after reading this. In the beginning of the article, you are trying to tell me how to get started. Now you have just confused me even more!
I understand that.
At this point of time, before I reveal to you what’ my definition of starting up and being an entrepreneur, I want you to think about why do you want to start a business?
Or for those who has is a current entrepreneur or who had failed before, ask yourself: what has been stopping you in the past to make a decision or to take an action which is profitable?
And, do you guys have the clarity in mind of what you need to do every single day? Do you have a clear plan in your head, knowing what you need to know to become profitable and know how to find it out?
Go back and think about these questions. Most of you guys are clueless about these issues, you might want to start a business, or you might have gotten some funding and still do not know how to become profitable.
Find out why you want to come into business. And when you have that burning desire of why you want to do something, read on to my next article, in which we will continue to take a look at what is the true definition of entrepreneurs and the pitfalls that most people fall into when starting up.
