10 tips for starting your own business

If founders want to start their own company, then there is advice “en masse”. These range from dealing with business plans to questions of financing or sales. Here are ten tips for companies in 2023 that have emerged from my conversations with founders.

Business: Tips for getting started

1. Clarify what will drive you

Ask yourself why you want to start a business. Making money or earning money alone will not be enough as a drive and will not be enough to concentrate on your business idea.

Because money can be made in many ways. And notoriety alone only makes your company great in the rarest of cases, so it is not enough to drive it. You should therefore know where your inner motivation comes from.

2. What problem is solved by your company

The best companies identified a problem and offered a solution. Starting a business is never about just “having a business” or doing something that other people are already doing.

It’s about being innovative and providing a real, existing human problem with a solution that, at best, hasn’t been offered by anyone else before.

3. Create a product or service that is timeless

Many founders jump on current trends. You can make good money with these. The problem, however, is that every trend ends at some point. For this reason, it makes sense to think about which product or service is constantly needed, i.e. it is not subject to any trends and is therefore timeless. These are offerings that generate great value, can be marketed over a long period of time, and can be developed and improved over time.

4. Build processes and systems early on that are scalable

As a founder, you are initially responsible for the operative business, marketing, finances, strategy, products/services, human resources, etc. So you take care of everything.

However, since more and more employees will (hopefully) take on more and more tasks over time, it makes sense to establish business processes and systems as early as possible that can be easily expanded and scaled.

In this way, processes and systems keep up with corporate development and do not have to be constantly replaced during the growth phase.

5. Make sure you have a good team

In the beginning, the team of founders and employees is small. However, this also means that mistakes in the selection of people to complement the small team can quickly have serious consequences. Skills and knowledge are important in these people, but even more important is the right attitude, the right mindset.

So you should make sure that these people understand what the idea of ​​the company is and what vision it is pursuing, share this, can work independently and also recognize which work has to be done “out of order” and that they understand that ” Working by the book” is not an option in a young company.

6. Communication is the be-all and end-all

In my conversations, I hear again and again that communication plays a crucial role, especially at the beginning. Many things are not clear in a young company, tasks are not clearly distributed, responsibilities are not yet established and processes are not yet resilient.

In addition, it is often only the founders who have in mind where the entrepreneurial journey should go. Clear, fast and, above all, authentic communication ensures that everyone in the company is on the same level and has the same level of knowledge. In addition, it avoids the fear that the founders will “cook their own soup”.

7. Always be ready to change direction

Very few companies start with an idea and a direction for implementation and then continue along this path in a straight line for years. Rather, sooner or later the moment will come when it becomes clear that a change of direction is required.

This can relate to the product or service, how the customer is addressed, or the overall direction of the company. Whenever such a case arises, be ready to run a hard-hitting and honest analysis. And if you realize that the direction is not correct (anymore), then have no problem changing it.

8. Take care of the main problems as soon as possible

Founders have to deal with many challenges. These are often evaluated equally and then processed with the same amount of effort. But that makes no sense, because many challenges are not threatening the existence of the young company and can rather be easily solved.

It is therefore crucial to identify and solve the few problems that threaten the company and, in the worst case, ensure that the company disappears from the market. These include, for example, external shocks that affect entire markets, monetization problems or a bad impression on customers. The focus must be on these.

9. Get advice from people who know what they’re talking about

As a founder, you will get advice from all possible directions. But these often come from people who, strictly speaking, are not allowed to give you any advice, especially because they have never founded a business themselves.

This is of course a little easier for someone like me, who has already founded three companies, than founders, who often cannot yet assess whether the guide really knows what it is talking about. There is a simple test: always ask whether the interviewer has ever founded a company himself.

If he says no, then listen to his advice with due caution. Ultimately, nothing beats hands-on experience when giving advice. And if you want to position yourself well in terms of advice right from the start, you should look for a mentor as quickly as possible.

10. Become a “people magnet”

From my conversations with founders and also based on my own experiences, I can emphatically say that founders should invest a lot of time in contact with other people and in maintaining relationships with them. By that I don’t just mean contact with people who help you advance professionally.

Because often one does not know what can result from a contact. The general attitude towards building relationships with other people is therefore important. I experience again and again that the focus is on the development of the product, the completion of the marketing campaign or the search for an investor and not the general contact with people.

That’s a big mistake. My last and perhaps most important tip for you is therefore: prioritize building relationships with other people and become a magnet for other people. Because when the challenges increase, then it will be other people who will help you to overcome these challenges. So happy is someone who doesn’t have to look for people who can help when the challenge is already there.

Tips for starting a business: Closing remarks

I experience again and again that the successful start of a young company is not usually about the product or service, the marketing campaign or the pitch, but rather about the right mindset of the founders.

Of course, it would be presumptuous if I said that the above tips for companies have said everything there is to say about the right mindset. But in practice, I experience again and again that founders have a head start towards success if they not only have the above points on the screen, but understand their importance. Experience has shown that everything else then becomes a little easier.

Also interesting: