Essentials For Every Business

I remember when I was younger, I dreamt of working for myself, to be my own boss. I thought it was a life filled with less work, better pay, and a more, how should I say it, chill life. It wasn´t before I got older and started high school that I understood that being an entrepreneur means that you will work 80 hours a week, just to not having to work in the 40-hour 9–5 regime. Being an entrepreneur is hard, yet why are so many people restlessly pursuing it? It may have something to do what my dad once told me;

Being an entrepreneur is hard, and most people who try to create their own business fail. Why? That´s a hard nut to crack, and thousands of people around the world have tried figuring it out, yet, we still don´t know exactly why someone fails and someone succeeds. Even when they do the exact same thing on a daily basis.

As there is no proven way to succeed, it is important to think about what you can do to upper your chances, and that is what this article is all about — covering the factors in the business startup that you can do something with.

By not customizing education to focus on online entrepreneurs and online business development you leave out the opportunity to lower required capital ten folds.

Value Proposition

First things first, you would need to have an idea or an offer of sorts. Okay, you got that, great. Yet you should really put time and effort into thinking about what do you actually provide value. What exactly does your product solve? How do you help people with that you offer? In what way does it benefit them? When we talk about the value proposition, the focus is how are you unique from the competition.

Key Activities

You got the value proposition nailed down, amazing. Now, what specific activities do you need to perform to be able to create and run your business on a daily basis? Do you need to do some marketing? Do you need an R&D-department? What do you need? Make a list of all the things you can think of in order to create your offer and run your business.

Key Resources

By making a list of activities, you will be able to identify what resources you need to perform them. You have different types of resources. You have natural resources that are part of a particular area’s ecosystem. They are the basis of all activities, including the production of goods. Human resources are the people who provide the knowledge and labour required for the utilization of natural resources. Capital resources facilitate the use of natural resources. All three types of resources are used together to produce goods and services, aka, your offer, your business.

Key Partners

Acquiring all of the required resources may be hard for you to do alone, so whom may you partner up with to speed up the acquisition process? Do you have a friend or family that want to join you on your entrepreneurial journey? Do you have a mentor that want to join? Is there anyone who can help you to get to where you want?

Cost Structure

By identifying the activities, resources, and partners that will help you to provide the value proposition you have in mind, you should be able to lay out a map of the different expenses that follows doing so. It is important to know where the expenses are, how to minimize them and keep them stable.

Customer Segment

So you know what to provide, to whom are you going to promote this to? Who is your ideal customer? Why? How will your offer help this exact customer segment? Are they young, managed, old? What gender should you mainly focus on? Have you analyzed your customer segment to see if there are anyone targeting the same audience, and have you researched the different possible positions you could take in that market?

Customer Relationship

To be able to have a truly sustainable business, you will have to think about the customer relationship. Brand awareness, identity, and personality. How do you communicate with your customers and audience? Are you formal or not? Being able to establish a personal relationship between your business and your customers may be positive, or not. Analyze, think and create a plan for what type of relationship you want to have.

Channels

People have different preferences depending on their interest. Depending on niche, industry, and market, people will have a different threshold for being promoted to. It is your job to research and finds the best way to approach your target audience. Will you cold call them? Will you advertise on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn? How do you get your message and value proposition in from of the eyes of your customer?

Revenue Streams

As you have everything laid out, it is essential to evaluate how you´re going to monetize your business. Will you have a one time fee for your product or services? Will it be subscription based? Will it be something to purchase online or offline? Will you have more than one product or service? If you will have several, are they all in the same price segment, or will you do different price tiers?

As mentioned, there is no proven way to success. All we can do as individuals are to make the effort of trying to upper our chances. The Business Model Canvas was developed over 5 years by a guy called Osterwalder and his team. They thought that the elements mentioned above are the most crucial factors for any business, and should be something every business owner should focus on, while getting started, and after the house is full.

Hope you learned something and got new insight from this article.

– Harald

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