Ever grown tired of having too much month at the end of your money? Sick of counting down the days until your pay check arrives? Tired of putting your hopes into the weekly lottery draw? Well, there is a way to ease these stresses of everyday life: become your own boss and pay yourself!
To do so, any would-be entrepreneurs must listen to the needs of the modern world and find a gap in its market to exploit, and the entrepreneurial world of today is ever-changing, fast-paced and shape heavily by the use of online tools, so that’s a good place to start. Social media, for example, is a key component in the successful delivery of a product, used by business leaders as a way to communicate with customers and employees — it’s a brave new world! And bravery is what it took Sabri Suby, CEO of digital agency King Kong, to get where he is today. Despite the infancy of his company (it’s only two years old), Suby now claims to have revenues of close to $4 million; pretty impressive for a company that was born on a computer in a bedroom, don’t you think? And Suby isn’t the only entrepreneur to have changed his life: Chris Williams of Aginto Solutions sensationally went from homelessness to running the successful website design company. And if you don’t believe me, click here!
But enough of the stories of inspiration: you want to know how you can do it, right? Well, unfortunately, there is no exact formula to follow in becoming an entrepreneur, but that’s not to say it can’t be done. In the age of the digital entrepreneur, for Suby and Williams it was all about using the online tools that were at their disposal to help them in finding their unique selling points, and you can too. Forbes have offered a comprehensive list of platforms and programmes that are great to utilise, of which can be found here.
However, more important than any list telling you what to do, is doing it yourself!
Know your goal — why are you doing this?
Listen to your heart — what idea makes it flutter every time you think about it?
Do the market research — where can your little idea fit into the big, wide world that it will be entering?
Utilise your USP — how best can your idea’s unique selling point be used as a tool to wedge itself firmly in the gap you’ve identified?
But don’t lose sight of the original goal — when you are in a position to do so, operate using the 80:20 rule: 80% working on your product, 20% marketing it.
The next step is scaling your company from startup to leader in the field and taking yourself from ‘solopreneur’ to fully-fledged entrepreneur; for now though, well, baby steps. At the moment, just focus on getting yourself into that gap!
