Challenges of New Business Start Ups

Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited is great book for anyone thinking of starting a business venture. Gerber describes how most businesses are started because people are fed up with their boss, or think they are doing all the work already so why not work for themselves. He states that every small business consists of three main characters the technician (the doer and builder), the manager (the planner), and the entrepreneur (the dreamer, visionary). There are life phases in a small business the infancy phase which is the technician’s phase, the adolescence phase which is when the business owner gets some help, beyond the comfort zone, and, maturity and the entrepreneurial perspective.

Starting a business is very much time consuming and exhausting but it can definitely be worth it. Not everything in life is made to be easy and that should be the reminder when deciding to make a huge life decision. In order to start a business there are many routes to take and different options to consider. Making the decision to start a business should not come over night but rather a well thought out plan that involves many tough decisions. As with any decision, it is in a person’s best interest to carefully consider based on the pros and cons of starting a business during today’s market. Carefully examining the pros and cons is essential and should not be taken lightly. In the business world, there are countless factors that contribute to a successful

Most people don’t even try to get to the next level and accomplish something greater. And because of that, this attempt at starting a business and reaching something greater, can exponentially boosts your value.

Business has been an interest of mine since I was a child. From selling lemonade at church on Sundays as a 9-year-old to starting a successful retail business as a young adult. I founded and operated a successful retail business for seven years. It was featured on August 2008 edition of Glamor magazine and the 2008 October/November edition of Siempre Mujer magazine. My customers included an Olympic runner and a few celebrities, but most importantly It allowed me to be a blessing to others by being a part of various non-profit organizations.

As my high school career approaches an end, I stand in the position of an artist painting a new portrait. Creating a lifestyle which follows with successes and failures, but with hard work I’ll do the best I can to make my golden goal of becoming a successful business owner, a reality. Graduating with a masters in business, to begin my entrepreneurship career, has became the first goal on my list to creating a picture. There will be restrictions trying to corrupt my ability to achieve and succeed in attaining my goals, but through experiences I have confronted first hand. I learn from experiences which changed me for the better.

A start-up can be described as ‘a business or undertaking that has recently begun operation: grew from a tiny start-up to a large corporation’. (Anon., 2014). The key point here is to grow from a tiny business which denotes starting small. Meanwhile Merriam-Webster dictionary makes it more action oriented by describing a start-up as “the act or an instance of setting in operation or motion” or “a fledgling business enterprise.”

The Graduate Management Admission Council’s “Alumni Perspectives Report” chronicles a rise in the number of business graduates who start their own businesses. Entrepreneurs are growing younger, better educated and committed to applying business skills to their own startup ideas. [3]

The word “startup” has become ubiquitous in American vocabulary. However, there is really no common understanding of the definition. Wikipedia defines a startup as “an entrepreneurial venture, typically describing newly emerged, fast-growing business.” Yet, if you look further, you’ll find that different people mean radically different things when they use the term.

In the end, I would like to say that starting a business is not an easy job as it requires a lot of investment as well as risk. I would like to quote

Jennifer Fitzgerald said, starting a company is a lot of things. It’s a humbling learning curve. It’s long hour. It’s trail-and-error and rejection and triumph. It’s also one curveball after another (Fitzgerald, 2016). Entrepreneurs must truly passionate about what they do and willing to dedicate everything, relinquish their time and energy to make their vision come alive.

Becoming a business owner is one complex process one could undertake since aside from discovering a person’s self and entrepreneurship spirit, one needs to understand key business practices, importance of business models and how to position a start up business in a competitive advantage.

In this book the author has discussed the secrets of becoming a successful business owner and the differences between working to earn money and having your money work for you. In the first few chapters the author talks about how money works, the art of negotiation, communication, and importance of having connections, and knowing the right people. The next few chapters of the book are about the operation of any business; the process, human resources, marketing, sales, and finance. The last part of the book is about strategy, seeing the big picture, and planning.

A startup, is basically a stage that comes after the brainstorming process has occurred, where an individual or group of individuals try to come up with a solution for a complex problem, by improving an existing idea or coming up with a completely new one. More than that, it is a sense of being able to give something back to society that can either educate them better, or improve their lives. A startup is indeed a way to indicate someone’s passion, and their will power to initiate a large scale project. Therefore, another way to look at startup, would be entrepreneurship, which

“Regardless of the subjective thoughts of start-ups’ founders, start-ups failure is the dissolution of team, or cease of operation for some reasons. All these results mean start-up failure.”

I was fortunate to have been mentored by a very successful entrepreneur who started, grew, and sold his business for millions of dollars to the third fastest growing environmental company in the US. A few years later, we were asked to come back to help the business regrow the revenue back to the pre-sale values.