We’ve started a small-scale business last year and struggling and trying for few months, it doesn’t go well. There are many aspects of its failure and I have tried to jot it down.
Lack of Planning:
When we started, we had an idea. we jumped directly into the pool of ideas and inspirations to make it a reality. We certainly lack to sit and drill down every possible bit of the business. We inspired by the online consumption of the business but didn’t dig more into what makes it run a successful online business other than just a Shopify website and social media accounts. We tried to keep everything simple to keep going but we’re wrong. we need to drill down every piece of detail to make it work.
Right approach:Understand the niche first. Get complete hands-on on the terms and technology. Fill as many excel as much as possible.
Drill down every possible detail. make it more objective. Vendors, payment gateways, communication mediums just like a full-blown jigsaw puzzle. Ask questions to yourself from vision to operations, from marketing to target customer before lazily shifting it to later stages.
Test the idea before starting. All the glitter is not gold. Few businesses with a niche won’t work because of the small economy in that market.
Starting operations as soon as possible:
We made the mistake of hitting the floor as soon as possible with the idea. without fully testing it, without making ourselves mentally committed to it. The operations didn’t work. we shifted the place of work. we went from online to offline. we went from dealing with young customers to taking businesses/organizations’ bulk orders.
Right approach:
Take your time and prepare yourself first mentally, socially, and economically.
Don’t go live in a go. Operations are a tiring process and if a single chain is missing, the whole network goes off.
Lack of Clarity on Products and Target Customer:
Other than lack of planning, we are so much illusioned into the idea that we almost forget to make ourselves clear on the product and the customer who’ll use that product. We just wanted to get it done, make money and forget it. it doesn’t work that way. even in that small niche, the product is the backbone. if the product fails, everything fails. we shifted the target customer and didn’t understand it fully, make us fail to get any order to run further operations.
Right approach:
Model both the product and the customer who’ll use the product. If you don’t have clarity on both, nothing will work.
The product must be accessible, easily acceptable, and cool enough. if it isn’t, other than family and friends, nobody going to use it.
Deep Pockets:
In the initial days of our planning, we made a capital estimate to get started. but to run the operations, both online and offline, doing experiments, run ads and campaigns, freebies, and partner with influence to market the product, it sufficiently needs some deep pockets to keep it sustainable and running efficiently. Deep pockets and willingness to spend even if see the losses every day makes you worry about the whole idea of the business, without the capital, all resources will dry up very soon.
Right approach:
In the part of planning, plan for at least 6 months in advance to run operations, sales, marketing. Prepare yourself for the losses and jerks.
Keep the capital in the buffer for ad-hoc stuff.
No Leadership:
All of us took some responsibilities, and communicate quite well but nobody is willing to take a central position to lead the business, we certainly lack vision but we went directionless and can almost reach the level of being shut down. Nobody is willing to take ownership and we end up either messing up things or losing some business. There’s no central owner or authority to dictate that was much needed.
Right approach:
Take your responsibility but choose a leader. Clear-headed and decision-maker.