33 things you should know every aspiring entrepreneur

In 2007, Mark Manson moved from a cohort of salaried employees in businesses. Now he admits that if he was then asked how his business will look in five years, he could not say anything. Like most aspiring entrepreneurs, he just wanted to quick and easy money. And I certainly did not expect to have to work so much. And that business will bring him so much pleasure.

Therefore, Mark gathered this list for newcomers to the business, so that they were at least a little, what they face.

1. Sell. Not tranzhirte money

The obvious advice for me current. My first business was launched powerful, so I decided to reward themselves unnecessary trip to Buenos Aires with friends, which squandered most of the money earned in the first six months.

Less than a year later I was down and pleaded with his ex, so she resolved to live with it, not to be on the street. Do not repeat my mistake.

2. Get on your free time

Most people who want to start their own businesses, complain that they do not have enough free time. Between work, hobbies, and family obligations they still have a maximum of an hour or two a day to sit down and come up with a new business idea, where you can get rich.

No, no and NO. If you have the feeling that in his spare time you work a second job, you lose, do not even start.

Take what you like - to analyze sporting events, gardening or carving - and try to earn money from it. This is the most reasonable starting point. So you do not give up their hobby, and expand it.

3. Connect with other entrepreneurs

You need to surround yourself with people like that, where you want to be like. If all of your friends - a boring office plankton, you will unconsciously feel the social pressure and will remain the same boring office plankton.

Such friends will not understand your ambitions, or even be offended, and envious. Find people who are in the same condition as you push and motivate each other.

4. Quit their jobs as soon as the opportunity arises

Burn bridges. Do not leave yourself no option for a retreat.

5. Do not be shy

The desire to do something, that's up to you no one has ever done, requires a certain degree of ill-founded belief. You should be prepared:

• turn into an object of ridicule;
• ring up dozens of potential customers and convince them that you can do the job better than anyone else;
• advertise your new product for people who are unaware of its existence;
• promises to deliver your unique product or service, even if you still represent weak, how to do it. But it then must figure out how to do it.

You should not hesitate.

6. To hell with your business idea

Mark Cuban once said that for every good business idea, you have to imagine that the same idea is at 100 other people who are already working on it. Business ideas are not important. It is important to design.

Many people are proud of themselves, because they have come up with a cool idea. But the most successful companies, if you look at history, rarely based on new ideas. Google - not a new idea. Facebook - not a new idea. Microsoft - not a new idea. Just these companies have coped with the implementation are better than others.

7. Read less, more business

Try to read only when you need a specific solution for the problem that you are facing at work. No need to read about marketing, because you think that you have to understand marketing. It's damn boring. Read about marketing when your new project will need a marketing strategy. reading suddenly becomes much more interesting.

Often people read about what they want to do, instead, to really do something. Reading is useless without enforcement.

8. Test, test, test

You do not know anything until you have tested it. Each seminar on marketing, which I attended, and every book on marketing, which I read stated that the need to raise prices. Nevertheless, the split-test, which I spent at his books on the site, showed that the book with the low prices do not lead to lower income, but on the contrary, attract new customers, get more positive feedback and bring more traffic to the website.

9. Be eccentric

You can not stand out, if no different from the rest. Pay their strangeness to their advantage.

10. Constantly think about your brand

The reality of today's economy is that any information, product or service that people need, there are already dozens of options. The deficit is gone. Differ only at the price or quality of the competition - almost unrealistic strategy for entering new markets.

Only brand can dominate the market.

Your brand defines how will the relations with clients or customers. It is for this reason that they come back to you, and do not go to your competitors that offer exactly the same services.

11. Offer is not a product, and a sense of

Steve Jobs He said he always wanted to Apple products give consumers the feeling, rather than just functionality. Today, Apple's, perhaps, the strongest brand on the planet. That's what I mean when I talk about the obsession with brand: Reach sensations that you can offer customers not only information and the product.

12. Believe in what you are doing

Otherwise, even if you will succeed, you will find yourself stuck on a regular boring job. But this time, you have created it yourself.

13. Your business will grow. Allow it to him

No one turns to do everything right the first time. Or the second. Or the twenty-third. Think of Thomas Edison or a Michael Jordan.

The market is constantly changing and what worked last year may not work this. You can not stay on top of success, if you do not evolve with the market. Do not tie yourself to one idea or the initial business plan.

14. Forget about Tim Ferris

If you will be work 4 hours a week, Your business will keep for ten years. As well as increase the likelihood that you will miss a lot of opportunities and become so unbearably dull as your whole life.

15. Blog - this is not a business plan

Do not start a blog to earn money. Keep a blog because you love to write. Keep a blog to share what you love. Neither blogger who earns millions on their content, not to start writing for the sake of money and nothing like that planned. It just happened. And it took years. Not months, but years.

16. You will need or a lot of time or a lot of money

Or a combination of both. Instant success does not exist.

17. Business - it's not about making money

Business - about the benefits and values. If you are able to earn on the fact that you personally have a value, you will never get tired to work.

If you want to convey to people the benefits that brings your business, money will appear as a side effect.

There is a fine line between values ​​and money. Sometimes you have to burn a lot of money to create long-term value. If you are more important than money, you never dare to take such a step.

18. Benefit of luck

Sometimes you will take, and sometimes not. So at all. It makes no sense to complain or to ascribe all the credit for himself. Benefit from that and the other.

19. Hire slow, laid off quickly

Cliche, but true. Especially when it comes to outsourcing. Almost every internet entrepreneur has a terrible story about outsourcing, including me. In short, you get exactly what you pay for.

20. Be prepared for the existential stress

A regular job stress is often associated with external approval - deadlines, meetings, presentations - and, as a rule, to your boss. This feeling of irritation, which manifests itself in the form of short but powerful bursts.

When you work for yourself, you no longer need to struggle for external approval. You change the external stress to an almost imperceptible, gnawing feeling that everything is going to decline and disappear in one day.

Yes, I wake up every day at lunch. I can work at any time. But when you work for someone else, you are not haunted by fear that one day you come to work, and your building will not be there. The entrepreneur thinks about it every day.

21. If you have no one besite, you're doing something wrong

Dan Kennedy once said that if by midday you no one was brought to rabies, most likely you do not earn money. My experience confirms that this is true.

22. I have said that all you need to check?

Seriously, half of the things that will help grow your business, it is impossible to carry out, if not regularly check their ideas on the market. Hell, do not even start a business until you have tested the idea.

23. 20/80 rule: Never forget about it

Amazingly, it works in all spheres.

24. Purchase a 1000 real fans

Several years ago, Kevin Kelly suggested simple concept for writers and other creative people working in the the era of the Internet: it is enough to convince 1,000 people to give you $ 100 a year to ensure you have a six-digit income. So you will be able to devote time to building up, and not just earning a living. The consequence is usually 100 current customers, if you work in the field of consulting and services.

25. As well as in the corporate world, networking - it's

Yes, it's still a great way to gain new customers or a job offer. But in the world of business networking makes it possible to know what things work for other businesses and borrow good ideas for your own.

26. Know yourself

I work best at night. I hate to structure and to do lists, half of which I then did not even take a look. I manage my time with the help of playlists in iTunes. Most of the things that work well for me, you will never find in the list of tips on time management. But I have arranged, I follow what works for me. And you do what is right for you.

27. Rule 1000 days

Rule 1000 days It reads as follows: in the first one thousand days after the launch of your own business things will go worse than your regular job.

28. If you feel like at work - it's wrong

You can earn money to do what I enjoy. Or do what you love to make money. You choose.

29. Do not get-rich-quick

All existing ways to quickly get the benefit or kill the prospects of your brand and customer loyalty or take you back to a situation where you are working on something, from what you do not burn your eyes and what you do not believe.

If you love something, what you do (and you have to love), and regularly invest in the development of business, then the list of your priorities, should not be a lot of money for expensive useless purchases. Raise your self-esteem in other ways, if you need it.

30. Enough talk, go and check

I have no answer for you. And you, too. So check and find out!

31. If a complete failure does not scare you to death, you're doing something wrong

I found that the more something frightens me, the faster you need to do it.

32. Treat customers like family members

They - the main reason why you are doing this at all. Treat them with respect. Answer included in the shortest possible time. Answer their questions. Give them free trinkets.

33. Business will become part of your personality, so choose wisely

"I'm going to do this for several years, earn a lot of money and loans that truly love" - ​​it never works, it is a myth. I originally got into the business it is and see dozens of people who are doing the same.

In the end I had to accept and acknowledge that I have built a career in internet marketing, I wanted to or not. And since I was attached to this career, I have decided to turn their assets into something than I am passionate about and I love to do.

When I created one of the first versions of its site, I gave up all his other business ventures. My monthly income is immediately halved. But I realized that if this is really what I want to do, in the long run it is worth it.

And so it happened.