The Challenges You Must Overcome to Turn Your Small Business Into a Big Business

By Pierre Jean-Claude

You might have a small business today, but you don't want that label for the life of your business. When entrepreneurs make endeavors, they are looking to create a business that will rule the world one day. However, every business has to face some struggles in the beginning that it must overcome to become a big business. The way you handle these challenges decides the fate of your small business. Today, you will read about these challenges and the solutions to them, so if you are a small business, you can set the foundation for its success.

Knowing the Target Market

One of the biggest issues with most small businesses is that they don't know their exact target market. Sometimes, they don't know how to narrow down to the target market. This is a huge issue because you could have a perfect product, but you might pitch it to the people who don't need it. Keep in mind that people who don't need your product won't buy it even if you try to give it to them for free. On the other hand, people who need your product will be willing to buy it even if it is priced high. For your business to survive, it needs to start selling as quickly as possible, and that's why it is important to find your target market before launching your product.

Solution

The first step of identifying your target market is to know your product well enough. You have to ask yourself some important questions about the product and write the answers down. For example, you have to ask yourself "what existing problem does my product solve?" You also have to know if there are any other solutions available in the market for the same problem. If yes then you have to see how your product is better than them or how you can make it better. Conduct surveys on the street and social media to know the personas of the best buyers of your product.

The Right Type of Marketing

Businesses, small and big, have huge parts of their budgets allocated only for marketing purposes. However, the modern technological advancements have proven that a big marketing budget does not translate to successful marketing. So, you might have done a great job in identifying your target market, but if you approach them in the wrong way or through the wrong channel, you will not be able to reap any benefits from even the most potential market for your product or service.

Solution

Identifying your target market should help you identify your marketing methods and channels too. For example, if your product is for people aged over 50, you would not want to make Instagram the prioritized marketing channel because only 18% of the users on Instagram are aged above 50. Similarly, any product that targets executives, marketing officers and professional people should be promoted on LinkedIn before any other platform. After knowing the buyer personas, you should also select the type of marketing that best suits your potential audience. If you are creating a hip-hop music video for marketing to retired individuals or an opera video for 18-year olds, you are doing it wrong. Use website analytical tools to know what appeals or does not appeal to your website, visitors. Base your digital marketing campaigns on data-this is the era of data-driven marketing.

The Funding Problem

If there were no funding problem, every person who thinks of a unique idea would have a business. In the real world, funding is always a problem, and it is exactly the point where the journey ends for many aspiring people in business. However, it is not always the lack of funds that kill many small businesses before they even start. In fact, the important part is how much dedication you show in arranging those funds. Sometimes, people have the options available, but they do not knock on all the doors.

Solution

First, you have to know all the options you have available for arranging the funds. If you are not okay with arranging funds through the bank or in the form of a loan, take a look around at your family and relatives. You will be surprised to know how many of the people in your circle will be ready not only to give you the investment you need but become a part of the endeavor. The crowdfunding options are also there. You don't even have to go to the investors personally today as you can visit a platform like funded.com and arrange funds online.

The Right Leadership

You can't make a business successful unless you have the right leader in place. It is not completely untrue that the attitude of the leader sets the attitude of the rest of the employees at a company. If you lack confidence in your leadership, you will end up hiring people who lack confidence in themselves. One of the biggest problems with most small business owners is that they can't convince themselves to delegate responsibilities. They believe in their skill so much that their mind never accepts that someone else can handle the responsibilities too. They end up taking the responsibility of everything on their shoulders and mismanaging things at the end of the day.

Solution

The first thing that needs to be fixed here is how you think. If you find it hard to delegate responsibilities, get rid of this habit as soon as possible. You can't handle everything as the business grows and so you have to create a team right from day one. Do not hire people just because they can do the job-hire people who share the same vision as you. Do not settle for good employees because finding the best ones is taking time. Do not try to take matters into your hands all the times. Listen to everyone that's part of the team and the decision making process. Have a great relationship with your employees.

Setting the Price

One of the most difficult decisions for a small business owner is to set the price of its service or product. When you are a small business, you can't afford to have a full-fledged marketing department. Of course, when you have a marketing department, they can set the price of your products, but when there is no marketing department, you are the one to take this decision. Price your solutions too low, and you might not make any profit at all. Price your solution too high, and customers might never buy your product.

Solution

It will be tremendously helpful in this scenario to take a look at your competitors and how they have priced their products. Secondly, you have to know a simple rule to set the prices of your products and services. You first set the price to cover your costs. Once you have started covering your costs, you set the price to cover the costs and make a profit. Once you have done that successfully, you start adding your "value" to the price. You should also know the buying power of your target market so you can keep the price within their comfort zone.

These points cover pretty much every big challenge that a small business comes across. Keep in mind that some of the challenges might be exclusive to your business and industry too, but if you can overcome these common challenges, you can cover the industry-specific difficulties as well.

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"The E-Myth" - Key-note lecture by Michael E. Gerber

This chap is the man, What he speaks about business is gospel. Very inspiring to listen to and incredibly useful advice to apply to a new and existing business. Amazing man, and amazing book!!

How to Stop Being Unmotivated and Find Your Why

By T. Harv Eker

A question I frequently get asked by students from around the world that is so simple, yet very powerful is: How do I go from being unmotivated to motivated?

Unmotivated and Unsure? Find Your Purpose

The answer always boils down to just three letters and one word: Why?

Many people are unmotivated because they don’t have a why that resonates with them. They don’t have a REASON for being motivated. In other words, the lack of motivation is a kind of inertia.

The law of momentum states that a body in motion will tend to remain in motion and a body at rest will tend to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. This means you’ve got to get yourself moving in the direction you want! Furthermore, that’s why you’ve got to have your why. You need to have your reason for why you want to do what you’re thinking of doing.

This can relate to wealth, health, relationships, moving cities, and changing jobs; it could be about anything, but the bottom line is you’ve got to have a why.

Jim Rohn once said, “The bigger the why, the easier the how,” meaning that if we have a good enough reason or a good enough purpose for doing something, the how will come. You’ll get it done, even if it doesn’t make sense right away.

There’s a story I once heard about a slender woman who was driving with her son. Something happened with the tire, and while the son was trying to fix it, the jack fell and it pinned him under the car. He was losing his life, but somehow this woman lifted up the corner of the car for him to get out. How crazy is that?

Scientists have done research on this. It turns out we have the extreme and unique ability to push ourselves in times of need. It’s the why, or our reason, that prompts this ability.

Miracles can happen when you have a big enough why. Why is whatever you want important to you? For example, why is money important to you? Or why is wealth important to you? Why is freedom important to you?

My ‘Why’ 

People ask me this question all the time. They say, “Harv, you went through so much struggle early on in your career. Why didn’t you give up?”

The answer is because I had a bigger why than any struggle that I could entertain or have come over me. My why, although not overly enlightened, was very simple: I needed to prove something to my parents.

I needed to prove that they were wrong when they told me I’d never amount to anything, and that I’d be broke and begging them for money.

Again, my why is not enlightenment, because it stems from fear. However, once I started getting a little bit of a financial security, my why turned into something different.

I wanted to be able to do what I wanted with my time, my energy and my life. I didn’t want to have to be beholden to anyone or anything, and I just wanted to be free. All I wanted was freedom, so that became my why. Then I became fully financially free.

Let me give you one more clue here about your why, because it’s one of the most important things you can ever discover. First, your why should have two sides to it. First is you. Your why should serve you. Second, your why has to be bigger than you. Whether it’s for your community, your country, or the people in your business, your why needs to be big.

If you have those two why’s, one for yourself and one to help others or the world, you’ll be motivated.

Without a why, you’ll be unmotivated. It’s as simple as that.

What is your why? Why do you do what you do? Further, why do you want to be successful? Why do you want freedom? Leave me a comment below, I would love to hear from you!

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How To Grow A Successful Online Business

By Jon Allo

The secrets to growing a successful online business are not hidden away for a select few to know about. You can use information and facts that are freely available to stop wondering what works and build an online business that is successful.

Many entrepreneurs have gone before you and worked out how things work. You can follow what other successful online businesses have done and become successful yourself. Here are some key important points to follow.

Know Your Audience

If you don't know who your target audience are it will be difficult to get any result online. A lot of people think that the product comes first. But the reality is, it's better if you pick your audience before you pick your product. The more you have an understanding of the hopes, wants and needs of your audience the more successful your online business will be.

Solve Problems

If you concentrate on solving problems for your target audience, you'll be able to provide the products and services that they really want.

Market Your Products

It's important to market your products and service to your audience. If you don't, how will they know that they exist? You can market with free methods like blogging, publishing articles, creating and uploading videos to YouTube, emails marketing and posting to social media. Paid methods include pay-per-click advertisements, banner adverts on websites that your audience visit, and display advertising.

Generate Traffic

A successful online business needs visitor traffic to its website. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one way to get your website noticed by the search engines. It's essentially placing suitable keywords and phrases on your web pages so that the search engines can find them. It also relates to the practice of getting "backlinks" to your website from other websites and ensuring that your website can be seen easily on mobile devices.

Be Consistent

Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to building a successful online business. You don't have to publish a blog every single day or spend huge amounts of money on advertising and marketing every month. The main issue is be consistent. You can blog once a week, post on social media daily, and participate in conversations with your audience.

Continue Building Your List

Building your email list is one of the most important business prerequisites regardless if you're into affiliate marketing, an information product originator, freelance worker, business expert, mentor, or eBook publisher. That's because it's your own specific list of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer.

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