Jose Berlanga knew he wanted to own his own business from a very early age. What he didn’t know was what kind of business to start. So, he started by leveraging contacts he had through his father and made the best of it for as long as he could. He made moves.
That business was a success but ended because of a changing technology climate. Even though it hurt, Jose didn’t let that stop him and instead used it as a lesson learned that propelled him to even greater success with multiple companies and multi-million dollars in profits from varied industries and sources. He has even shared some of his learnings from over 35 years as an entrepreneur in book form.
What he learned and successfully utilized on his entrepreneurial path was that movement equals action, and action trumps indecision or waiting for perfect opportunities. Much like the shark, movement means life, and waiting for perfect prey means death.
Cast a Wide Net
When starting on the entrepreneurial path, your most valuable asset is yourself. You may have a great product or service but if you have no one to sell them to, or to partner with and help you deliver, you will be swimming upstream. So making yourself known in a wide variety of circles is key in building a network that can support your business growth, as well as provide additional opportunities in the future.
Many entrepreneurs may be hesitant to market themselves to others because of the danger of tying business results to the personality of the founder. What if the business fails? Will it mean the end of the owner’s path to financial and time freedom?
Not exactly. While an entrepreneur should be prepared for failures, and even accept that they will happen, they should understand that those losses are not failures, but instead opportunities to grow. With this mindset, it is easy to separate the ego of the owner from the results of the business. Any negative outcome only becomes a failure if it means that the person on the path refuses to try again.
So when it comes to tying your name or personality to a business, you must understand the difference between building up yourself and the business you own, versus branding yourself and the business you own. Jose believes that focusing on building up the business through focusing on the business objectives and products, and not on the impact that an owner’s name may have on the company. While it is good to have the clout that comes with brand name recognition, it can be fleeting, so building up your business with good bones on a firm foundation means it can survive a separation of personality from the business.
Adding Muscle to Good Business Structure
Along with good bones and a firm foundation, a business requires growth to sustain itself. Growth is always the hard part for any business owner, and it requires a certain dedication to the business pursuits, as well as the systems and structure that make it stand on its own. Growth is often where businesses fail, and a failing result can spell the end for a business.
Part of growth is the need to regularly, if not constantly, evaluate the signals that the market is sending about your business. To receive these signals, an owner must remain agile and open, not obstinate and stubborn, which can be difficult for new entrepreneurs to reconcile. After all, most entrepreneurs start on their path of ownership by creating something they cherish and are obsessed over. The business becomes their baby for good reason because the starting phase of entrepreneurship means focusing on the business as a primary. The goal may be to gain freedom for yourself through self-ownership, but it is a trade-off, especially during the start-up phase of any new business.
Listening to what the market tells you about your product or business means letting go of your darling for the benefit of keeping the darling alive. Owners who can pick up on these signals through regular evaluation are the owners who tend to stay in business, especially during turbulent times which necessarily turns your focus from looking years into the future to figuring out how to keep going after tomorrow. This regular evaluation is similar to exercise for the body. Exercise that will strengthen your business to withstand turbulent times. To see gains, it must be practiced regularly.
Running the Race vs Winning the Race
If you have a business you believe in and a product or service that the market wants, you are ahead of the game. However, at some point, you will reach a goal you have set for yourself and you will have to decide if you are building a business to win, or building a business as an exercise.
What I mean is, that most entrepreneurs set their initial goals for starting a business based on a feeling they wish to achieve. If they make one million dollars, they will feel respected. If they overtake a competitor, they will feel successful. But what happens when you make that million dollars or best a competitor? Will your drive to succeed turn off?
Not likely. Typically when an entrepreneur reaches a pre-designated goal, it just means that they move the bar to the next highest goal because they haven't won the race. They have merely reached the starting point of the next leg of the race. Trying to obtain a feeling through success in entrepreneurship is a futile pursuit because true entrepreneurs never reach the finish line. They either start the next leg of the race or try to beat their previous time by re-examining perceived failures and giving them another crack.
As an entrepreneur, we must make sure that we don’t turn the pursuit of business success into a neverending race. When those moments come, we must re-evaluate our purpose for starting the business, to begin with, and decide on what will help us feel fulfilled. That can mean helping someone else in your organization reach their own goals or giving back to a community that has supported you.
Photo by Oleksandr Sushko on Unsplash
This article was written by Neel from MaidThis Franchise, a remote-local franchise opportunity for people looking to escape the rat race and reach financial freedom. Learn more here.
