Three Simple Keys To Starting A Business
If you want to start a business of any kind, there are three key objectives you need to figure out.
I’ll tell you what they are in this article. For those of you who have ADHD or a lack of time, here they are:
- You need to provide a relevant service or product to your customers.
- You need to provide that service or product to a high standard.
- You need to provide that service to schedule, and deliver a finished product as and when you’ve said you will.
I’ve alluded to these rules numerous times throughout the site archives, but I’m tired of having nowhere to point people to when I write the “three rules,” hence this topic.
Let’s go through the three rules and see what’s going on.
You Need To Provide A Relevant Service To Your Customers
When you start at zero, thinking, “How on Earth do I start a business and how do I make money?” this is your first port-of-call.
It doesn’t matter whether you want to work in a particular industry or create a particular product. From rock star to accountant, you need to address this issue.
Who is going to buy your product or service?
Why do they want it?
How many of them are there and is that number sustainable?
The last question is a tricky one and you’ll never be sure before you start. However, if you answer the first two questions, you’ll get an idea.
It seems straightforward when you read it aloud, but people get stuck on this all the time.
- An author writes a novel about coming to terms with their innate desire to be a walrus in seventeenth century Russia.
- A guy wants to start a business selling $800 T-shirts to poor people
- A band wants to release their album – which they’re labelling the most brutal death metal album everywhere
- A girl wants to be a YouTube celebrity doing…. Something or other?
All of these business ideas are going to it a brick wall because they haven’t answered the simple questions above – who is paying, why are they paying and are you going to get paid enough to continue?
The answer for your business might be yes, or it might be no.
If it’s no, then it doesn’t matter how attached you are to the business idea, it’s a waste of time.
Speaking of whether people will pay you, there’s one determinant that stands above all others.
You Need To Be Able To Provide Your Service Or Product To A High Standard
Companies spend billions of pounds every year trying to think of stupid gimmicks that’ll get them 0.005% more of the market share in their target industry.
You, as a would-be entrepreneur, can’t afford to do that. Luckily, you don’t have to.
Your packaging, branding and other icing-on-the-cake ideas are secondary to this one thing: provide a high quality product or service.
Again, it sounds simple. Too simple, in fact.
Yet you’d be surprised how many businesses completely and utterly fail at providing a decent service.
There are authors writing books on subjects they know nothing about. There are internet marketing companies who start up because they’ve read a terrible forum thread about how you can cheat your way to page one of Google. You’ll find spammers, scammers and people who have no idea what they’re doing in every industry.
If you do the opposite to that – and create a simple service or product that fills a need, then you will never have to worry about finding customers. They’ll find you, and they’ll keep coming back.
If your product does what you say it will, then your marketing materials will write themselves.
When your product or service is high quality, your customer service is easy and pain free. (For the most part.)
If you can’t provide a high quality service, then you aren’t ready to start a business. Come back when you are.
You Need To Provide The Service/Product To Schedule With All The Trimmings
Most freelancers are terrible at sticking to a schedule. Don’t be like them. If there was one thing that helped my writing business take off in the first instance, it was that I stuck to a very fast turnaround schedule with no exceptions
When you have your own business, you bear the responsibility of providing your service or product. Nobody else does.
It doesn’t matter if you’re sick. Nor does it matter if you have issues with your computer. When somebody says, “I need this done in a week” and you agree to do it, that’s that.
Again… it sounds simple. But businesses go out of business because they don’t follow this rule.
Just this week, I rang someone about spending potentially hundreds of pounds on their service.
“We’re a bit busy… we’ll call you back later.”
… I waited for the rest of the day. I even put it down to them letting my business slip their mind. So I gave them another day.
This company never got back to me.
Now, I am happy to spend money when I need to. My wallet was out, and if they’d rang back, I probably would have spent money there and then. Nope. A simple clerical error – or a lazy employee – has cost that company a lot of money.
Similarly, until recently I spent money every month on an online marketing service. I put in a single support ticket for a simple problem I was having. I got bounced around and after five days, they told me, “we’re not sure what the issue is. Sorry, bye!”
My subscription was cancelled, and I went to a competitor that night.
Companies provide a poor service or poor support all the time in every industry. Don’t do the same.
Final Thoughts
To reiterate once more, here are the three rules:
- You need to provide a relevant service or product to your customers.
- You need to provide that service or product to a high standard.
- You need to provide that service to schedule, and deliver a finished product as and when you’ve said you will.
These all seem like common sense, but that’s all there is to creating a business.
In following the common sense rules above, you will outcompete most freelancers and other businesses in your niche. Everything else is icing on the cake.