First Year of Entrepreneurship - Survival lessons for every newbie

Entrepreneurship is indeed not an easy task as the struggle begins the next moment you decide to start your own venture. As every newbie in the market is pulled back by the statistics of the startup failures, the first year of the business venture seems to be crucial to make a mark in the industry to prove its existence.

The first year of entrepreneurship is a new chapter that the business owner starts in his/her course of life. This is the phase during which the new industry owners take some life-changing decisions and goes through some nerve-wracking experiences.

These new escapades will eventually form a learning journey to bring out some fruitful outputs at the year-end. But how as a novice you will have the right direction to have a longer-lasting life of your venture? 

Below are some of the guiding actions to note that can help your business survive through the thriving path of the business lifecycle.

• Keep the soul of your startup alive

The first thing you need to keep in mind for yourself and the company is to keep the business soul alive. By soul I mean, the passion and the vision which has made the small idea to convert into reality.

It's often seen that the business owners and the team seem to be motivated and will work gracefully for a few months and as the time passes every task is taken for granted and is procrastinated to affect over-all work of the company.

The only solution to it is, you have to keep revising your goals to the company employees and create some short term goals for them to achieve. This will keep up the enthusiasm in them and also help you get some small achievements for the company.

• Make sure your business plan is on track

You have created a full proof plan of execution. This plan is the output of great research and is created by keeping the company goals and vision in mind. As you work, and the time passes by, the flow of work might get out of the planned execution path.

Keeping an eye on the work-flow and the timings of execution based on the priorities will help you gain the outputs which you have mentioned in the business plan. One miss and everything connected to that specific task will get affected and the flow of execution thus will be delayed by a major task failure.

• Hire motivating team

The next thing you need to survive your first year of entrepreneurship is a happy and passionate team. Being a startup it's hard to get some really hardworking and dedicated employees.

Building a team where you get the positive vibes of getting success together is the best thing to have as an owner. These are the people that are the beams of your building empire and will help you as a support system during every up and down of the company. Thus having positive, supportive and motivating team members is what a startup needs to survive through the odds.

• Create a good social media presence

Social media is the other biggest area for a business to sustain in the market. With the increasing use of the internet and social media, having a good brand image on these platforms can greatly help the business to collect a good market value and some number of customers that can help the business grow over time.

The other usefulness of having a good online reputation is it makes it easy for the owners and the team to understand customers' needs by directly connecting to them through these mediums. This will help you personalize their experience to give better customer service.

• Get some results 

You are a startup, in order to survive in the competitive industry which you have entered, having some numbers and executed innovation becomes important as you are near to completing your one year in the industry. 

These numbers and achievements will act as a base to how high you are going to fly in the coming years. Be very concise in what you want as your output, make sure everyone in the team is productive to give their part of the contribution to company success. Make a work process, very organized and well-planned to give specific output to each effort and activity that your team is undergoing.

• Be ready with some funding 

The last and the most crucial factor that decides a startup success during its first year is the number of investors it has gained from its pitch to fund the business for the next successful execution of the business ideas.

Investment and cash flow management is a great survival lesson every business owner should master and whether the business is new is well established. If you have a great number of backup investors ready by the end of the first year, you are ready to make your high jump with the start of the next year with some new ideas and plan to give something new to the industry.

Summing Up

Having a business idea is just a start to the never-ending journey of the business expedition. The real struggle starts when the actions are to be taken to execute those thoughts and ideas. As the initial stage of any journey is said to be hard, similarly, the first year of any business is said to be the most daunting to pass and as it comes with its own sort of difficulties.

Following the above tips, you will get a good flow into your business and as it will help you survive through the hardships of the first year of entrepreneurship.

Author Bio:

James Vargas is an experienced business expert, consultant, and manager at Get Everything Delivered. With the 1.5-decade corporate experience, he is now sharing his guidance with IT start-ups to grow with his startup growth program and team-building activities.