How To Win Clients Your First Week In Business

Entrepreneurs often have the mentality, "If you build it, they will come." And often they are disappointed. Just because you launch a company, you can't expect clients to be knocking down your door, begging to sign up for your service or buy your product. Building a company and generating revenue takes time. I advise new entrepreneurs that it often takes several months -- if not longer -- to win that critical first client.  

So imagine my surprise when I received a note from my colleague Melissa Ford Holloway announcing she had four clients and four prospective clients in her first week of being open. How is this possible?

Here are the strategies she used in getting her business off the ground immediately.

Boost your confidence. Many new entrepreneurs are hesitant to go “all in” at first. What will their reception be in the marketplace? What if no one wants to hire them? What if everyone else has a better product or better skills?

But Holloway was able to launch with confidence -- and display that to prospective clients -- because she knew how she stacked up.

“Over the past few years at the agency where I worked for four years, I had to fix freelancers' work on several occasions. It hit me that if they are getting work at their skill level, and my skill level is higher, I had nothing to fear," she says. 

Network strategically. You don’t want to wait until after you’ve launched your business to look for clients. Start planning in advance. 

“A few weeks before I resigned from my last full-time job, I thought about people I've worked with in the past who have moved into senior roles,” she said. “I started booking coffees and lunches with people I could trust not to spread the word that I was on the move.”

Those people were able to provide immediate advice and referrals -- and the first day Holloway updated her LinkedIn profile, she received several inquiries.

Don’t be afraid to cold call. We’d all love to have clients begging to work with us right away, but at first, you may need to grease the wheels. Some hesitate to try cold calls, but when done well, they can be an effective option.

“I started phoning up advertising agencies to ask who I would need to meet to discuss my work as a freelancer,”Holloway said. Once she was able to connect to the right people, Holloway asked for their email address to send a short note along with her CV. And most agencies responded well to this strategy.  

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/236217

Why Entrepreneurs Should Plan For Failure, Not Success !

Image credit: Shutterstock

Starting three companies -- two of which didn’t take off the way I envisioned -- taught me that while entrepreneurs should dream big, it’s essential that we also plan for failure. More than 90 percent of startups fail.

And recognizing this right off the bat will prepare you intellectually, emotionally and financially, if your venture doesn’t succeed.

Planning for failure doesn’t make you negative or paranoid. It makes you smart. First, there's a huge difference between preparing for failure and thinking you’re going to fail. The latter is highly discouraging and curtails growth. The former, on the other hand, is about being practical and thoughtful about all of the possibilities that may occur. In some ways, it can even encourage entrepreneurs to progress because being prepared quells fear and prods you to keep going.

I always plan for worst-case scenarios, considering how they may affect my team, their lives and how to mitigate them. For example, I need to think ahead: What if we were to lose one of our largest clients? How would that impact our cash flow, company morale and what would my investors think of the company’s outlook? It’s difficult to think of these scenarios, but I believe it’s necessary to plan for it. In some cases, planning for failure helps me anticipate challenges so I can prevent them from happening.

Additionally, being honest with yourself and thinking about potential failure enables you to identify mistakes that you’re making in your business, so you can correct them more quickly along the way.

It helps you be more objective. Starting and running a business can be a very emotional experience. Your company is your "baby,” after all, and it’s something that you’ve poured a lot of heart and passion into. Forcing yourself to be prepared for the worst can help balance that out. How? Planning for failure or thinking of an exit strategy pushes you to be less “clingy” with your company. It forces you to look at the facts and unpleasant possibilities (no matter how difficult), thereby enabling you to be more analytical and objective.

Being a bit disassociated from your company also gives you more perspective because it allows you to look at it from the vantage point of your investors or customers. This, in turn, helps you generate ideas or even catch errors that you may have missed being too close to your business.

Toward the end of my first company's existence, my co-founder Andrew Waage and I forced ourselves to evaluate the business from a customer’s perspective, and we learned that the solutions we were building simply did not solve a problem that was big enough. We set our emotions aside and closed the business because when looking at the facts, we did not have a business. We would have not had the courage to face our failure so quickly if we didn't plan for it.

Recognizing that you might fail keeps you on your toes. Acknowledging the possibility of failure prevents you from being complacent. Knowing that at any point your venture could take a wrong turn keeps you from resting on your laurels, which means you strive harder and don’t let success lead to hubris.

Never became too self-satisfied. Remember it takes years to build a company and one simple mistake to bring it all back to nothing. Never lose sight of that. It's important to stay focused and hungry.

Planning for failure makes it easier to move on. Preparation can help soften the blow in the event that your company hits the rocks. Looking back, I don’t think I would have been able to move on quickly from my unsuccessful ventures if I hadn't prepared for the possibility of failure.

When my first startup didn't take off, Waage and I were prepared to deal with the circumstances. We had planned for it mentally, emotionally and financially, and decided we weren't going to take it personally, which was why it only took us two weeks to recharge and start our next venture.

No one wants to face the dreaded “F” word, but even the most successful entrepreneurs experience their share. It’s simply part of the game. And, who knows? It could even serve as the foundation for something far bigger and better. 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233275

Successful Entrepreneurs Do These 5 Things Daily

There is a saying that there are only three types of people in the world: those who watch what happened, those who wonder what happened and those who make things happen. 

Entrepreneurs fall into the last category, of course. They are change agents, people who don’t see the world as it is but as it could be. Entrepreneurs don’t sit on the sidelines and wish for a better world. Rather they go out and create it. They don’t wait for things to be different. They are the difference.

Being forward thinkers, entrepreneurs continually push themselves to become better and do better. They are game changers. They ooze confidence and inspire greatness.

Today is a great day to become an entrepreneur because the price of admission into this elite club is free and yours for the taking.

Do you really want to succeed as an entrepreneur? Follow these five steps and you’ll be well on your way to developing the leadership qualities it takes:

1. Willingly fail and reflect. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” goes Samuel Beckett's line. It's not always easy, the trying again part.

Another important thing is taking time to reflect on what went wrong. In the book The Call of Solitude, Ester Schaler Buchholz says, “Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out.”

In his book, Fail Up, radio broadcaster Tavis Smiley recalls lessons he has learned through reflection. He sheds light on these so-called failures that were, in hindsight, his best teachers.

You’ll only learn by failing over and over again. When you do this, you’re able to grow. And in spite of life’s inevitable setbacks, you’ll come out the victor.

2. Embrace and confront your fears. According to author Brendon Burchard, fear can be categorized in three ways, which all relate to pain. The first is loss pain, which happens when you’re afraid to move ahead because you fear you’ll lose something valuable.

The second is process pain, which inevitably occurs every time you try something new. You have to go through the process of learning to deal with it.

The last is outcome pain. This involves not getting the outcome you desired.

Burchard insists that people need to overwhelm their fears. Just as an army invades its enemy from every side, a person should do the same with fear, attacking it from every side, as if going to war. 

For Shark Tank host Barbara Corcoran, public speaking was her Achilles' heel. But she overcame it by going to war. She volunteered to teach a real estate night course in front of a small group of students to overcome her fear.

3. Practice self-discipline. This is the ability to delay instant gratification and the ability to work hard now to reap benefits later. When Academy Award-winning actor Jamie Foxx was a boy, hisgrandmother routinely made him take piano lessons even though all he wanted to do was go outside to play. He had no idea that those lessons would lead to his eventual success. To this day, he continues to hone his craft and disciplines himself to practice playing the piano for two hours many a day.

No one sees the years of hard work you might put into an endeavor. They only see the outcome. If you want to reap the rewards of tomorrow, you must put in the work today.

4. Get some sleep. Shortly after the debut of her eponymous news site, Arianna Huffington collapsed from exhaustion and lack of sleep. She’d been working 18-hour days because she was so committed to growing her company. When she collapsed, she hit her head against a desk and found herself lying in a pool of blood.

In her book Thrive, Huffington details the ordeal and says it was a painful wake-up call. She knew she had neglected sleep and took steps to correct it.

When you get the sleep you need, you’ll feel more energized, charged and ready to tackle any problem entrepreneurship throws your way.

5. Give to others. In his book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success,Wharton Business School professor Adam Grant teaches the idea of generosity in a professional setting. 

For centuries, people have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work and sheer will. But things have changed. Success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others and how much we give them.

According to Grant’s research, the most successful people are those who consistently give. Grant takes this to heart so much that he not only puts in long hours as a professor, but also as many and sometimes even longer hours giving and helping others. 

That ancient book, the Bible, was right all along: Happiness comes from giving.  

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/234052