Council Post: From Startup To Profitable Venture: Four Common Entrepreneurship Questions

World No.1 LinkedIn & Personal Branding Expert – CEO & Founder of Black Marketing – 1,000+ LinkedIn Recommendations, 4 Best Selling Books.

Approximately 90% of startups fail, which means only about 10% succeed. Scary, huh? I have created and sold four firms and am in the process of building my fifth to sell at some point. Other people buy houses and renovate them to flip and sell. Too boring for me! I like creating profitable niche businesses with true value to sell.

Here are some commonly asked questions when trying to establish a profitable venture and some key factors I believe entrepreneurs should think about. 

1. What type of business should I focus on?

Many people have a desire to be an entrepreneur, but most people don’t do it because they can’t decide what their business should be about. If you are in this situation, don’t become an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs have a passion for what they do. My first three businesses were all started in London and based around partnership marketing because, in my career up to that point, I had been very passionate about it. Partnership marketing is when two or more brands create a win-win marketing partnership. They give access to each other’s media channels and benefits, products and services, often at beneficial rates for the partners’ customers. 

When I came to Singapore to create my current company, Black Marketing, I was very passionate about the benefits and usage of LinkedIn marketing, the power of content (for good and bad) and the benefits of an outstanding personal brand. So, that’s what the business does for other entrepreneurs.  

Don’t start a business if you’re not passionate about what you want that business to be based on. 

2. Should I start with a side project or go all in?

The definition of an entrepreneur is to face risk. Nowhere in that definition does it say you will work full-time at a bank and have a side project that one day you hope will earn enough money for you to stop working for the bank.

Entrepreneurs go all in. They risk it all. Better to burn out than to fade away is our motto!

One of the reasons why I disliked one of the organizations I used to be a part of was because it was full of people who wanted to be entrepreneurs but still worked full-time at insurance companies, used to be entrepreneurs but found it too tough or couldn’t make it work so they went back to the safety of a consultancy or were handed the company down by their family. I didn’t consider any of these people to be true entrepreneurs who risked it all to create something from nothing. 

True entrepreneurs spot a niche in the market, and they go for it. They dive in, no matter what, and have confidence and ambition in what they’re doing. If you have any doubts about leaving that full-time job, then don’t become an entrepreneur.

3. How do I move beyond people I know for client referrals?

When you first start your business, you might find that friends and family buy your service or recommend people do so to help you get started. But to truly succeed, you need to go beyond this circle to people who have never heard of you. Without that emotional connection, then you will really find out if your brand is attractive and interesting to people.

This is where marketing comes in.

You need a company and personal brand that people will engage with. You need to communicate a proposition that tells people what you will do for them and at what price. You also need to convince them that your product or service is better than anyone else’s, has a better value or has unique selling points.

Testing and iterating this marketing on social media — whether through LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WeChat, TikTok, etc. — is the cheapest way of doing this. There is virtually no cost apart from your time. You will get feedback and data back quickly and find out what people like and don’t like about your marketing and proposition. You can then adapt your offering based on this to cater to the market that you wish to focus on.

4) When should I hire my first employee, or do I outsource?

This is the kind of groundbreaking decision that starts you on a path from a lifestyle business to scaling. If you don’t wish to employ anyone, then you can be happy being a lifestyle entrepreneur or outsource to scale. If you want to scale and are already looking at an exit and how you can monetize your business in the future by selling it, you will need a big team behind you, either outsourced or direct, to give confidence to potential buyers.

Employees will be your biggest risk and cost in so many ways. Your reputation is being communicated for good or bad through them. They can help you or hinder you. No one has perfect employees. It’s a question of how many bad ones you will have and what damage they will do to your business versus all the great ones you employ who will hopefully take you to that next level of business.

Employing people is also an opportunity cost. You have to train them, and that means you are no longer 100% focusing on marketing or the service. Instead, you are focused on getting other people to do that for you in the hope that you can scale up.

I have now gone down the route of outsourcing. I believe that it is the future of scaling a business successfully and globally. Outsourcing can be more cost-effective, and you can choose any resource from anywhere in the world to deliver. Deciding whether or not to outsource or hire employees is a tricky decision, and it can make or break whether you go from a lifestyle to a scalable business.

With all of these questions answered, I wish you good luck in your startup venture and becoming a successful and profitable entrepreneur. 

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