Moving from the ideation stage to the execution stage defines the real success in an entrepreneur’s life. But the gap between the two is not so easy to abridge. This phase is full of doubts and uncertainties. Will my model work? How will I compete with the existing players who have already reached a significant position? What can be the reasons of my failure? Questions like these keep hovering around in the mind of an entrepreneur. Even if he/she starts off, the dilemma is not completely wiped off until he reaches his goal, which again can’t be explicitly defined. External uncertainties and setbacks are always there to give a nervous breakdown to an entrepreneur. With more and more startups failing every day, the concern becomes even serious.
I Agree. Perfect clarity of mind can’t be achieved ever. But that should not be the reason which will pull back an entrepreneur from starting up under any circumstances. How will you know if your model will work or not before putting your feet into the shoes in reality? Just dreaming to make it happen and anticipating new ideas everyday won’t land you anywhere.
Here are the 5 tips to manage your uncertainty and step ahead to build a viable product.
1. Market research
The basics of a business is how one research about the internal and external factors. Once one finds and settles on an idea that s/he wants to execute, it’s time to analyze the strength and weaknesses of his own and his competitors in particular. The weaknesses of the competitors should be explicitly encircled and worked upon. That is one way to make a venture stand out from the rest. Again just working on weaknesses won’t help. It’s equally important to focus on strengths, nurture it more and grow stronger in that niche to subdue uncertainty and risk.
There are times when startups launch their product but it is only after launching that they realize that their model, though unique, is not needed by people. So, years of hard work in vain! It is crucial to develop a product/service by keeping in mind customer’s view point and not ones’ own views that it will work.
It is often said that if a product already exists in the market and doing well, it gives an insight that the chosen model is viable and hence the risk of failure is reduced tremendously. Wait, I didn’t mean that I favor copy-cat models. The society definitely needs lots and lots of innovation but that should be developed by keeping their needs in mind.
2. Identify problems and plan to do something different
An entrepreneur is different from a businessman because an entrepreneur satisfies the needs of the mass by bringing in innovation. The idea with which s/he starts comes only when s/he finds a problem and wants to change it. More often than not, he realizes that the execution has already been done, especially if it’s a service. So, what to do in that case? The answer is- Winners don’t do different things, they do the same things differently. So, yes, innovation is the answer. Entrepreneurs need to work hard to identify the weaknesses as well as strengths of their competitors and work on it to make a better product. If the vision is clear, if the passion to solve a problem of the society makes an entrepreneur relentless and determined, and if s/he knows clearly what his customers want, s/he is sure to succeed.
3. Develop effective strategies
Uncertainty steps in when there is no proper strategy or innovation or execution. More often than not, either the start up fails or is forced to start all over again from scratch. Does it really justify the mammoth amount of hard work that s/he does? So, it is very crucial to have a strong business plan before stepping into the market. Moreover, it is salient to have alternate business strategies which s/he can switch to “easily” if some of his/her plan doesn’t work. The thing that is required to keep in mind here is strategies should be related to each other in some way or the other so that s/he doesn’t get deviated from the actual goal. This also saves time. It happens quite often when too much of innovation leads the entrepreneur to forget what his actual motive was. So, plan your strategies well through a thorough market research.
4. Find your initial customers
Let’s say an entrepreneur has launched his/her product and now s/he is unable to find customers. What is the result? His/her confidence starts dipping in and clouds of uncertainty starts hemming in. The reason can be either poor marketing or bad strategy or inadequate market research. So, the foremost thing is to make a beta product and get some initial customers before delving into the market with the final product. Once there are some customers, marketing also becomes easy as the model is more likely to get accepted.
5. Perseverance
Entrepreneurs need to be persistent enough till they achieve the desired result. They need to remember, ‘Rome was not built in a day’. It’s not only hard work but also patience that paves the way to success. It is quite obvious that uncertainty will roll in every time he/she faces failure. But this is actually the test of time which if an entrepreneur can successfully withstand, s/he is sure to reach the top. Any startup cannot become a gold laying hen in just a couple of days. They should always seek gradual development because rapid success is more subjected to fade away. A real entrepreneur is the one who learns every passing day from his experience and failures and embraces innovation in whatever s/he does.
The whole journey of entrepreneurship is all about uncertainties but entrepreneurs get used to it. However the thing is they overcome it anyway because the idea they have delved into is their passion and not work. Entrepreneurs face uncertainty with resilience and pragmatism and that gives them immense power to vanquish unpredictability.
