Small businesses have managed to make thousands of ‘rags to riches’ stories during the last decade. Martha Stewart, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell and Jeff Bezos all have two things in common. They are all successful, and they all started from small businesses. They have proven that you don’t need big investments to make it big. Even with few hundred dollars, even you can be the next big thing in small business. You can start it from your own kitchen or your college’s dorm room, but there are five tips you need to remember.
Creative and Original Ideas
The first thing you need is an idea. It can be a product or service. It has been proven through out time that most successful business idea is the most unique one. Take Facebook for instance, although many social networking sites were available at the time of its launch, only few unique ideas such as applications gave it a winning edge.
Usable product/service
No matter how unique or original your idea is, it is not likely to attract the public unless they know the use. Food and cosmetic products are some of the most appropriate examples. No wonder people have made millions out of fruit jam and chocolate cookie business.
Quality of service/ product
Just because you are starting as a small business doesn’t mean your customers will settle for lower quality. Once you step into the business, your competition is with the giants of the industry. If you want to be like them, you have got to beat them both in term of price and quality.
Plan to Grow
Your business won’t grow unless you plan for it to grow. Growing your business includes improving your services with time and expanding your customer base. Never underestimate the benefits of improving your business functions and process through technology. Technology offers pace, accuracy and customer satisfaction.
Proper Marketing
Marketing sounds a bit too expensive for small businesses. However, you must not forget that if you are offering unique product and excellent services, your customers will automatically do the word-of-mouth marketing for you. Yet, going online is a great marketing tool for businesses these days. Not only that it is cheaper than other electronic media, it also brings more exposure than any of them.
So remember, while most people think of a small business as a small family operation, with the right mindset, you too can go from rags to riches. Creative and original ideas, quality, ambition and proper marketing are the key ingredients in your rags to riches story.
These are excellent tips. Underlying all or most of them is the proper mindset. The small business may be “small” in the beginning, but it is important to have an expansive vision. What are you offering that adds value to people’s lives? What are they missing that your company is delivering to them? What is the cool factor or the wow factor?
Amazon is such a great example of all of this. I still remember the early days when they sold mostly books. I thought it was great to be able to get books online. But look how far they’ve come. These days it’s more of a challenge to imagine what you can’t get at Amazon.
Five of the most perfect tips.
I do agree with every single one of them, yet one thing is missing, in my opinion. That is “Dedication”. I guess that somewhat fits in the “Plan to Grow” tip, but dedication is extremely important, so I would create that as a whole different tip.
Without dedication, there’s no guarantee that you’ll stick to your plan until the end. You could give up without dedication, you can back down without dedication, and you will fail without dedication.
Thanks for an awesome post!
Having a good product is essential because without it you will fail. When you are sure your product is good only then you can proceed to marketing it. Without proper attention and sometimes money invested in marketing, you will never have a successful business.
I think any business should be focusing more than 50% if its time on marketing its products everywhere.
Like angelicagapit pointed out, dedication is also crucial as you need to believe in your product before others can believe in it. Believing in your product means you will follow up on your plan and see it through.