The Secret of Successful Entrepreneurial Life

Have you ever noticed people around you always hungry to do something big? Some people have that itchy bug in them. They never sit back, never give up on their dreams, always hungry of something incredible. They constantly and tirelessly try to pursue their dreams no matter what happens, you won’t be able to make them stop. These people are the real heroes, the real entrepreneurs who would do anything to achieve their goals in life.

An entrepreneur is not someone who just want to become a billionaire in nights, entrepreneurs make the society a better place for everyone. They develop such things which leaves a positive impression on the society. Entrepreneurship is not an easy task at all. Entrepreneurs have the ability to make something from nothing.

The way they think, dream, do things is totally different from other people. They are people like us but their mindset is totally different from us. They are ambitious, strong decision makers, hardworking and never giving up on their dreams/desires/goals no matter how hard the wind of difficulties and failures push them back, they will stand tall, keep pushing themselves against all the odds.

Entrepreneurs set their plans to start a business from the ground without getting upset on the difficulties of an entrepreneurial life. You would have many sleepless nights, you will get failed 100 times but your motives will keep pushing you hard. That’s how any entrepreneurial life is.

Before you dig into the entrepreneurial life and start creating a business plan, you should know some major aspects of the entrepreneurial life. In this article we will describe the entrepreneurial life cycle in detail so that you will get a clear idea of what you are going to do if you choose to start a business.

Entrepreneurial Life Cycle

  1. Seed
  2. Startup
  3. Growth
  4. Establishment
  5. Expansion
  6. Maturity
  7. Exit

Let’s discuss these stages one by one in detail so that you will get a clear idea of each stage.

1. Seed

This stage starts when your business idea is born. As a famous quote says “the drive for independence starts with an idea”. In this stage, you set a clear idea of the business you are going to start. You need a strong mentorship in this stage which will help you grow your idea further.

Mentors can be some business persons, teachers, family and friends. Get yourself clear about each and everything before moving to the next stage. You need to verify the feasibility of your business idea. Discussions with industry specialists and business associate will be more fruitful for your business idea.

In this stage you shall understand the whole business perspective. You will also need to clear your mind on several things related to business planning including staff recruitment, financing and ownership structure.

2. Startup

During this period your business will not generate any revenue and it will incur significant cost. You will need investment to work further on your idea for which you will need to present your idea to different investors. You should prepare a clear vision and mission of your business idea before presenting it to investors.

If everything goes well in this stage of your business idea, then you can step forward to the next level. This stage is crucial for starting a company, most start up fails in this stage and their ideas vanishes with the time. One must be very careful at this stage.

The best solution could be communicating with industry owners and market people. Usually, startups take their product to market and take customer feedback. Listening to the feedback will back you up and you can make improvements according to the customer needs.

Once you are able to take your product to the market level and start selling your product to a significant number of customers and the number of your customers get higher with the passage of time, you enters into the next stage of your business which is called “Growth”.

3. Growth

When your product start making huge number of customers, eventually you will start earning a lot of revenue. Now you will be able to cover your expenses. But, in this stage many businesses go into trouble because when the founders of the company see such success they get over confident.

The company needs its owner’s attention to resolve multiple issues. These issues can be administration issues, customer’s satisfaction issues, product management issues and employee’s daily tasks management issues.  This is the time when the owner shall take the issues seriously. Decision making ability helps here. Owner shall start hiring new employees to fulfill the customer’s satisfaction, manage the product, observe and complete the employee’s daily tasks and get the feedback on the new products and improvements.

This is the stage where company’s founders need to be very careful. Lack of attention can make the product fail. This is the time when the company’s owners should invest in innovation and advertising to cope with the increasing competition in the market.

4. Establishment

We can say that a company is now in a standardize stage when it reaches to the establishment level. Because the company has now smooth revenue generating products and has a stable amount of revenue to invest in the company’s growth as well as on the employee’s growth. Now the division head can hand over some major responsibilities to the company’s management.

5. Expansion

When your company successfully gone through the above mentioned stages, it enters into the expansion stage. You can have two options in expending your business i.e. geographical expansion or product expansion. You need to analyze every aspect of the market demand.

If you are thinking to expand your business geographically then you need to develop the higher market level products. You shall be aware of your odds and even and the market demand and other competitors at the same time. Same goes for the local expansion. You need to choose how you are going to expand your products in local market?

You shall be very careful and take every step to meet the market requirements. If you don’t do so, your company can go into the failure.

6. Maturity

When your company gone through the expansion stage successfully, it enters into the maturity stage. Maturity of a company can be categorized by its revenues, stable sales of the products and stable profits.

At this level the company do not afraid of losing revenues because the maturity level of a company begins when it generates a huge amount of revenues. Maturity stage can also be categorized as the strong market competition. Because when companies faces a strong market competition, there are chances of losing the market shares. Due to which most of the company owners try to find out new business opportunities. 

7. Exit

When the company’s goals achieved, the owners then decides whether to expand their business or exit their part in the company’s investment. An exit of the company can be made in two ways, either sell the company to some other company who has the same scope or sell it to the financial investors.

So now you see how hard an entrepreneurial life can be? At times you will fail and disappointed, but you will have to stick to your goals. You will have to keep pushing yourself for the growth of your company and yourself.

Conclusion

The conclusion can be in the form of two things. One is, you learn a great deal in your life by not giving up on anything that matters to you and eventually after a lot of difficulties you will get fruitful results. Second is, everything has an end. You start with nothing, then you become something and then you feel like you have done your part in fulfilling your dreams.

This article was originally posted in StartUps Opportunity.

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