Smart Startup – Smart Up
Chapter 2: What to Prepare to Start a Business
To start a business,
you not only need a desire for success,
a burning dream,
a strong will to rise,
but the most important thing is a “warrior” spirit ready to fight
to win no matter how many failures,
trials and hardships.
It is the process of carefully preparing everything
before officially entering a challenging race.
Many people think that the real race of a startup is a “battle”
with many competitors,
however,
the truth is quite the opposite.
This race is more about upgrading
and improving yourself than what belongs to the outside.
You still have to fight for what you think is right
and also because the life of an entrepreneur is not always smooth
and easy.
You have to overcome a difficult,
challenging journey to reach the other side of victory.
As a warrior,
before going to battle,
you must equip yourself with a brave spirit
and the necessary abilities to be able to win any race.
Are you willing to work 12 to 16 hours?
Are you willing to work one-and-a-half to twice
as long as the average public employee?
Are you willing to work for free
so you can better serve your customers,
before you can get more money from them?
Are you willing to give it all for only customer satisfaction?
Are you willing to stay up all night
and work around the clock just to complete a job required
for customer loyalty,
not because it’s a job you love?
Are you ready to overcome all dangers with just a glimmer of light
at the end of the tunnel
and you are determined to get there quickly to find the light
for your business?
And more than ever,
are you willing to accept failure
to do better with the famous motto of Hyundai Group founder Chung Ju-young:
“Never fail, all is just a challenge.” ?
The best part is that before starting a business,
most successful entrepreneurs prepare all these things
for a journey of thousands of miles
and have yet to see the destination.
But they kept moving forward.
As Steve Jobs said:
“Stay hungry, stay foolish”.
And that saying is really for young people
who are passionate about starting a business today.
Now, you are ready to stand at the starting line,
so what do you need to prepare to start a business next?
1. Financial plan.
Finance is the first condition
when you start your own business.
Whoever you are,
you will understand that no one starts a business
with an empty pocket.
Since you are no longer receiving a steady monthly salary,
you need to at least have a certain amount of money
to support yourself
in order to fully focus on starting a business.
It may not be pleasant at all,
but it’s obvious when you’re starting out
and even if you already have a full-fledged business.
Many years ago,
a successful businessman came up
with a business philosophy that not everyone understands:
The business owner is the one who pays everyone
before he pays himself
not the one who pays me first.
First, the business owner must be the one
who pays the production department
to create products that benefit customers.
Second, business owners have to pay people doing business
– marketing – marketing – advertising
– shipping to sell their products to customers.
Third, business owners have to pay for business system management departments
such as accounting,
human resources, etc.
Fourth, business owners must pay those
who bring optimization in the operating system of the business
to reduce costs as low as possible.
Fifth, business owners have to pay taxes
and those involved in business finance.
In the end,
the business owner gets the rest…
and the business owner is rich
because this part of the money is usually the bulk,
even though it’s the last.
There’s an important question:
If you don’t have a pre-startup financial plan,
where will you get the money to pay people
before you pay for yourself?
Prepare a financial plan for your personal
and business in a minimum of six months,
even according to the advice of those
who have started in Silicon Valley,
18 months.
Support from family
and a parallel job will help us through this difficult first phase.
But this does not always bring advantages to the early stages of a business
because the support from family will not be
as valuable as the money you save yourself and often,
you will spend it more profligate.
Besides, having a parallel job will relieve your financial pressure
in the beginning,
but you know:
when you do two things at the same time,
you will not be fully committed to your startup plan.
You will have to split the time
and effort to be able to complete
both things well and as a result,
you will not be able to do both well
because you do not invest enough time and effort.
It can be seen that starting a business is a difficult period.
Therefore, saving is not a bad idea
to start a business towards success.
That means you have to minimize all your expenses.
Live a simple life to fulfill your entrepreneurial dreams.
Do you think stepping out into a startup will give you a head start?
However, sometimes things will turn out quite the opposite.
To help you visualize the startup story
and why it is important to prepare a complete financial plan
for yourself and your business,
I would like to tell you the following story:
There was a donkey walking on the road,
because it was not paying attention,
so it fell into a hole.
It’s a garbage pit,
people around often dump garbage there.
At first,
the donkey was very upset,
he hated receiving the leftovers that fell on his head every day.
However, it soon realized:
it could use the leftovers.
So day by day,
it ate leftovers from humans to overcome its hunger,
and at the same time stepped on that garbage to slowly rise up,
closer to the crater,
until one day,
it jumped on the face soil after a long period of time underground.
The journey of an entrepreneur is essentially
“going up from the ground”
and it is also the surprising story of a startup that few people expect.
Starting a business is not about going high,
you are actually on the ground,
so you need to get through this time quickly
to get on the ground and walk normally like everyone else.
The only difference is that when you get on the ground,
you will go faster,
stronger,
more sustainable…
And that is the value of the entrepreneurial journey
before building a successful business.
For the same reason,
you need to have a good financial plan to cover the entire journey.
Simply put, this amount of money saved should be enough
to support you and help you focus on your startup.
It is the most necessary preparation that you need to start today.
There is a difference between making money,
making money fast and getting rich starting from a startup.
Basically, any job is to make money,
whether you are employed,
owned or invested,
the important thing is to make money.
But if you just focus on making money,
you won’t get big money.
Making money fast is another form of making money,
but more about opportunism than intellectual work.
With the type of quick money,
you must always look for opportunities.
Making money fast is not sustainable and long-term.
Getting rich starting from a startup is different from making money,
because in the early stages of starting a business,
you do not necessarily make money,
but even lose money.
Starting a business is also not making money fast
because starting a business is getting rich sustainably based on the value
and quality of products/services
and business projects.
This whole story is to help you understand that:
to start a business,
you need to prepare a good finance plans.
In short,
you need to do everything you can to survive
the early stages of your startup.
Ready to spend as frugally as possible
before the business takes off is a wise choice of successful entrepreneurs.
2. Marketing plan.
Did you know that marketing is an important part of a successful business model?
Because of the importance of marketing,
there was a time when people equated “marketing” with “business”
when translating both words as “business”.
And people often understand business
as the same thing as marketing.
There is a great saying about business:
Every company will collapse without customers.
And marketing is the process of creating opportunities to get customers.
If manufacturing is the way to create products,
then marketing is the way to create opportunities to get customers.
And if customers don’t use your product,
it’s just trash.
Marketing is the most important stage:
the method of creating opportunities to bring customers
to the business.
A business will never fail if it knows
how to implement the right marketing plan from the beginning.
People often mistakenly think that marketing
is a form of supporting customers to buy
and therefore marketing is the next step after producing a product.
The reality is quite the opposite,
marketing must exist before the product,
while there is the product,
and still exist after the customer buys the product.
Marketing is the process of finding a need,
satisfying a need,
and creating a need.
Thus, marketing appears in every nook
and cranny of a business model,
from the top to the bottom,
pre-sales,
during the sale,
and after the sale.
And finally,
starting a business
without a marketing plan is just “preparing for suicide”.
Think of ways to bring your product/service to your customers
before you even have the product/service in hand.
Don’t let a product/translation situation happen service has been born
but you still have not found a way to bring customers to your business.
Do you need a budget to implement a marketing plan?
The answer is yes”.
Therefore, the financial plan is the first step to prepare
(as mentioned above)
for you to implement your business in a feasible way,
and implementing the marketing plan is one of them.
Even when the business has completed the first stage,
marketing is still-will- always be an activity that goes along
with the existence of the business.
I would like to give you a very good marketing maxim:
“If you don’t do marketing,
your business will be forgotten by customers”.
Many years ago,
some businesses were considered “boss” of a field,
but now few people remember their products,
but instead,
people remember other products with the same function.
What is the difference here?
They do not spend a budget to implement a marketing plan.
A business that does not do marketing will not be remembered
and no one will buy anymore;
customers have switched to using other products
instead because this brand performs continuous marketing.
And this says:
Preparing a complete marketing plan is the next important step
to starting a business.
If you don’t do that,
you will probably fail miserably
and be forgotten by your customers.
Make the smartest marketing plan that best suits your startup’s limited budget.
3. Sales plan.
After marketing, sales is a really important step
to bring a business up.
If the marketing department withdraws the business’s money to the customer,
the sales department withdraws the customer’s wallet for the business.
That’s also why,
the sales department plays an extremely important role
when starting a business.
If marketing is an expense,
then selling is revenue.
If marketing creates customers for businesses
through communication channels,
sales create money
for businesses by exchanging product value for customers’ money.
If marketing focuses on the value and long-term vision of the business,
then selling solves the immediate problem:
cash flow,
how long the business exists and how far it can go.
Marketing and sales are both focused on the customer.
If marketing focuses on creating opportunities to bring
products/services to customers,
sales focuses on bringing products/services to customers.
In short: marketing and sales cannot be separated.
In the first stage,
preparing a sales plan is the next wise step for entrepreneurs.
While the marketing plan tells customers how your business is,
what products/services you are selling,
the sales plan will let customers access your products/services.
Sales is an extremely important part of the startup stage,
so the first thing you need to do
when you build a team for your business is:
Create a salesperson and a sales manager.
Selling is also considered the only way to bring financial resources
to the business.
Again, a very important issue:
If marketing creates customers,
then sales creates money for the business.
Without marketing,
it is difficult for an organization to sell successfully.
But in the early stages of a startup,
focus on sales instead of marketing.
Marketing is an activity that exists
with the survival of the business,
right from the beginning
until the business is still in operation,
but at the first stage of the business,
sales is the most important.
Starting a Business:
Nothing can replace selling.
4. Plan the use of time.
When starting a business,
it is very common to work 12 hours/day, 7 days/week.
If you think that starting a business means reducing time
as well as work,
you are completely wrong.
The truth is that when you start a business,
you do more than when you are employed,
even many times more.
Why so?
If as an employee,
you only serve one boss
– who is the current boss of the company,
when starting a business,
you have to serve many bosses
– your customers.
In your opinion,
is the time and work of serving one boss less
or more than the time and work of serving multiple bosses?
Be prepared to face the pressure,
because you will feel there is too little time
and will have to endure it for a long time
until the business succeeds;
But don’t let this go on too long.
Even a great man, there are only 24 hours in a day.
The difference between each person,
each startup business is the way to optimize
that same time to make a difference.
startup is really a working race.
An athlete participating in any race needs money,
time,
health,
a supportive environment and his own efforts to start
and finish the race.
Finish the race early or late,
Good or bad depends on the above influencing factors.
In fact, starting a business means that you prepare for a race
and will face constant hardship.
Why so?
Because a business
– a successful individual means a business
– that individual has to solve other people’s problems.
When you start a business,
your business has to embrace one or more problems of society
and solve them.
Of course, when you solve one problem,
you have another problem.
So, if you want to start a successful business
without working a lot,
it’s just a dream.
Keep dreaming,
and if you don’t,
start the race.
Make sure you are ready to enter a long race
and have prepared enough money,
time,
health and your own efforts before starting.
“The long way to know a good horse”,
start-up businesses will encounter initial difficulties,
but please persist in operating the business in
accordance with the vision and strategy set out.
The results achieved will be worth the efforts of you and your partner.
If you work well in the high-pressure environment
when starting a business today,
you will be well compensated with business results in the future.
Which group of people do you belong to?
Start a business to do nothing?
Or start a business to have more jobs than you currently have?
If you put yourself in the second group,
congratulations:
You have 50% of the preparation for success.
And the next 50% is arguably the most important:
Knowledge
Why knowledge
Because I want to emphasize the fact that prepare to know your business line
with all the aforementioned preparations.
Without knowledge (also known as knowledge),
you will never succeed with any business model.
Why is that?
Because new knowledge is the special factor
that helps you succeed with the startup model,
not something else.
Do you want to know why is that?
Read the next preparation.
5. Knowledge – the most important preparation.
Knowledge or knowledge of a particular industry
is the most important
and prerequisite for a successful entrepreneur.
So what is knowledge?
Knowledge is what remains after we forget it all.
Do you see anything strange
when we define knowledge in this way?
If there’s anything you forget but still remember,
it’s actually knowledge.
And this is the most important factor determining
whether you will be successful in the profession you choose or not.
Many entrepreneurs fail at every business model they touch.
And they don’t understand why.
The key point here is
because they lack knowledge of that business;
and it leads them to fail one after another,
until they find a business model that they understand well,
then they think of success
(I repeat, except for a few special cases)
Indeed, knowledge is the most important preparatory step
(although I put it at the end) for any successful business model.
Did you know that nowadays people are confusing knowledge
and information?
Information is what you only know about it.
Knowledge requires not only knowing
but you also have to understand what you know and to do that,
you need time,
not overnight knowledge can be formed.
Knowledge needs to be digested.
Imagine the story you know about the human eating process:
If you eat a certain food,
the digestive system needs time
to digest the food into nutrients.
Likewise, what you know is food and knowledge is nutrition.
Humans actually live on nutrients,
not food.
And that’s also why if you only have information about one business line,
it is difficult to guarantee that you will succeed
with this business model.
To be successful with a business model,
it is essential that you have knowledge.
Knowledge is the most important thing in business
If you do not have the knowledge to enter the business path,
failure is inevitable.
When you have failed, you will realize
that the reason you failed is
because you “lack of knowledge”.
Have you ever heard startup entrepreneurs whine like that?
However, it is a chronic disease of the businessman that still exists today.
“After reading the book,
I appreciate it very much
because the author has comprehensively presented the most practical knowledge to a young person
who has dreams and beliefs that are huge enough,
fire enough to turn dreams into reality.”
“SMARTUP => 99% EFORT + 1% LUCKY = SUCCESS”