7 Tips for Entrepreneurs Ready to Launch a Business
Entrepreneurship is the ultimate roller coaster. Having been through building a business twice now, I can attest to the fact that some days I’m high as a kite and other days I’m filled with fear. To ride out those wild swings, and to end up on top, it takes a lot of help.
It can help to talk to other entrepreneurs. I recently spoke about this with Justin Beegel, the 28-year-old founder of Infographic World, an information graphics company based in New York City. The company, which launched in 2009, is experiencing triple-digit annual revenue growth, and Beegel has learned a lot along the way. Here are his seven tips for entrepreneurs ready to launch their first business:
- Have an amazing support system: If you don’t, go find one. I don’t mean just your parents. Make sure that you have a few people in your life that you can go to, who know what you’re going through, that you can bounce ideas off of, have point out things you’re doing wrong, and just talk to in general. Without the support of my father and my best friend who started a company a few years before me, I probably wouldn’t have made it out of my first year in business alive.
- Expect utter hell, and you’ll be just fine: Any glamour you see in movies about entrepreneurial success, just do yourself a favor and pretend you never saw it. Taking the leap to start a company sets you up for the most indescribable ride you can possibly imagine. When it’s your company, you live it and breathe it, every day, all day. The day has no beginning, and it has no end. It’s just always there, as it will likely consume your thoughts all the time. When things go wrong, you will feel like you are a failure and that the world is crashing down. I know this because I’ve experienced that feeling about a dozen times in the five years I’ve run Infographic World. Half of those times came in the first 18 months, as the beginning is the most turbulent period. So, though nothing can prepare you for this journey, just expect a rocky ride, and you’ll be ahead of the game.
