6 important steps to becoming a successful entrepreneur

The most common question I get asked is how do you become a successful entrepreneur. I’m not professing to know it all and god knows there are much more successful people than me, but here go 6 steps you can follow. 1. Come up with an idea that can genuinely help people in some way. You don’t have to be a saint and come up with water/food supply for Africa (though that would be great). You can come up with anything that would help a certain group of people in preferably a new way. e.g Solar Radio, Trackable pet collar whatever... 2. Plan how it would work and write it down. What numbers will you produce/serve and how much turnover you will have in 1,2,5,10 years. PLAN IT ALL and WRITE IT DOWN. 3. Write a really good business plan, covering all aspects of how you see it and how you will grow. If you have no money, this will help you get a loan or funding. 4. Make sure you make a profit! I can’t speak for others that go on not making a profit for years (as that doesn’t make sense to me) but whatever you do, you need to make a profit ideally within a few weeks. Otherwise you are leaving it to many factors out of your control. How much profit, depends on the industry but I would always go for a venture with more profit than a venture with more turnover (personal choice). 5. Do your market research and make sure you get people’s input and ideas. Don’t go into things blindly. 6. Have an exit plan. This point 6, is not a big deal to me personally as I enjoy what I do. But I can tell you that most successful entrepreneurs have an exit plan from the early stages. I was offered £££m for one of my businesses a few years back and I turned it down as I was still enjoying running it. Subsequently, it lost quite a lot of value! 🙄 Do I regret it? Not at all as I still enjoy running it and know that it will be back up to where it was and more when I have time to concentrate more on it. So, forget about my insanity and make sure you have an exit plan. Good luck !