🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

Have a plan. Maybe you have heard this before, create one page about what your business is gonna be about, what's your product and services, what you think your market will be, what your pricing would be, and do some quick math if you can make money and have all that in a place. Start with a one-page plan.

Know yourself. Absolutely know yourself. You are the leader. At the end of the day, you are launching something and you have to innately know your strengths and your weaknesses and who you are and what makes you tick, and what you need. It's like you are the generator, you're the sole inspiration.

Build an email course. Building out an email course is the best way to have something of value right from the beginning and to stay in constant communication with your ideal client. It gives you a place to point people towards.

Go find the customers and talk to them. Never stop talking to them and just ask questions about their pain points. The thing that will make you successful or not is going to be - Do you understand these customers' pain points, can you find more of them, and can u solve them a solution.

Decide what kind of business you want. Be true to yourself. If you're an introvert or if you don't like managing projects or don't want to be a manager or whatever it is. If you just want to work 2 days a week. It's up to you to be real with yourself about that don't try to make something giant. Build what makes you happy.

Don't underestimate the power of personal branding. You go from nobody to suddenly somebody who a lot of people want to speak to and that really open doors because suddenly you got contacts, you can engage with them on social media people see that you're offering value upfront, you get to learn from them, you get to have really engaging conversations with people. There are just so many benefits.

Just go for it. There are a lot of inexperienced founders who take way too long developing an idea, getting a lot of opinions, and not just starting. That is really the number one thing, is go for it and get started right away. It doesn't have to be perfect you can always fix it as you go along.

Go take a course on what a start-up is. With high rates of failure, getting any startup off the ground is a time-consuming and difficult task. The courses can give you the help you need, equipping you with the skills and knowledge necessary to see your startup grow and prosper.

Charge for your work, charge something. There are some people who know what they are selling and are starting to sell it and there are some people who have no idea what to sell. Connect with people, and talk to people, which is hard sometimes, especially online and when you are remote. Dm them on LinkedIn, and email them to get their feedback.

Hire a copywriter first and foremost. The person who can really put your thoughts into words is a copywriter. It makes a big difference not just in influence platforms but also in the social communities. So it's nice to really be able to get your message across in a concise manner on your website, or when you're pitching just in general.

You need to become open because of the journey and the process of developing a company you're always going to learn. Be adaptable to change in a dynamic environment. So as a business person, you need to be adaptable to change and don't always be too headstrong. Listen to the advice of the others and take what is needed to be incorporated, don't be too closed.

We need to be clear about what exactly our motivations are, they could change over time. Your mission could evolve to a bigger one or a more narrowly focused one. The first question you need to ask yourself is why exactly you are doing this. What exactly motivates you will help you get through the challenges as the path is tough most of the time.

Fortune favors the brave. Those who take risks often reap great rewards; those who are courageous are often the most successful. Take a chance in order to get what you want.

Make sure that your finance is in a good spot. When you're trying to start a new company and you are financially stressed you will make really hectic decisions. Get more money than you think you need. If you need 50k to start this get 75k, you can always pay back the loan super fast. Have a plan in place so that strategically you can make confident decisions and invest in the company properly in t...

Launching is the big deal. So, making sure that there is the hype about what you are going to be offering in terms of service or product for the prelaunch is massive even if you are still a couple of months away, the build-up is really important.

You need to work on your business and not in your business. It's not the "what" it's the "who". It's not what you need to do, it's who can you help to what you need to do. Spend more time working on your business by valuing and educating yourself and the employees instead of just pleasing your customers.

Make sure the "Why" of your business is bigger than yourself. That's what going to motivate you to really get up every day when it's tough and hard and also help you to seek that community to support you. So, make your why bigger than yourself and be willing to pivot.

As a new entrepreneur, there is no such thing as work-life balance. It's working all the time, every day, every week, every month for a number of years and that's just the way it is if you want to be successful. If you want to work 40 hours a week don't be an entrepreneur. If you want 2 weeks of vacation every year and Christmas off don't be an entrepreneur.

The culture of your company is dictated by the first five people you hire so be very careful about the right attitude.

Be prepared to work. There's a lot more work than you realize, it doesn't matter what business you're getting into. So, if you don't like to work or if you're not willing to work, just go work for somebody else. It is a lot less working 9-5 for somebody else than is for an entrepreneur. If you're not willing to put in extra hours it's never gonna work for an entrepreneur.

Things take a lot longer time than you expect. Pati thought that in six months they are gonna have a super cool product in the market, people using it, getting revenue, and signing contracts but in fact, after six months they barely launched an app in which only three things were working. So basically things take time.

Put the customer in the center of your business. Focus on solving a problem for a customer. Focus on the pain of the customer. If you focus on what's keeping them from growing their businesses and doing their jobs every day, you can put those problems at the center of your business and your services then you will be successful because now you're solving the pain.

Spend some time building an operational business structure. Business owners, founders, or CEOs tend to hold everything in their heads and if you're going to be a solopreneur then maybe it's not the end of the world but if you got any sort of scale in mind you're gonna hit a lot of roadblocks when everything is in your head. So, getting things down on paper, whether that's a process, or operating p...

It's going to take you twice as long as you think, it will probably be 3 times more frustrating and challenging than you could imagine and it's millions of times more rewarding. If you stay the course, ask for help, and don't give up. JUST KEEP GOING.

Invest in your meta-skills. Skills like sales, leadership, technical skills, and creative skills. Find out the skills you're most resonant with, like are they interpersonal skills or creative skills, or technical skills, and invest like double down on the things you both love and have a real market value no matter where you go.