Many people have jobs that are completely different from what they actually want to do. This thing makes me question existentialism─_a_ theory which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.
It is also a fact that many people are unfortunate enough to discover their full potential ever. But this never means that existentialism is wrong, it is the thought of “doing what you love” that scares most of the people from starting their own venture.
So, if you believe in existentialism and in the fact that we are the shapers of our own destiny; then you need to know what steps you can take to make your idea, hobby, talent or any creative skill turn into your own personal brand. Here I list three of them:
Evaluating The Success of Your Idea
The first step to build your business is to determine the monetary value of your idea and then work backwards to know if it will work. Backwards in the sense of getting the input from your target audience. The goal here is to determine whether customers truly want to purchase your product. Let me give you an example.
I have seen that many gym owners fail to provide true value to their customers. This means that most of the community areas rely on at least 3 to 4 of them running simultaneously side by side, where only a single one could suffice. And this is also true for so many other business models.
Now, suppose you are new to an area and want to open up a gym where 3 are already running. You want some form of differentiation so your idea is to open a 24 hour facility. Your first step is to calculate costs: Rent, equipment, staff, etc. Next thing to do is to calculate the membership amount. But doing the math is not enough.
Your major focus should always be if the people really want a new gym i.e. working backwards and not forward.
To do this you need to spend some money on event organization where you can have a one-on-one interaction with people to get a direct feedback. Know what people need from a gym and what they lack at the current moment. This can be a special class that they want or a different piece of equipment. In this sense you are making them create their own gym. If you are creative enough you can apply this technique to every business model.
Telling Your Story
People always want to know the why behind every if. So, if you want to start a business people would like to know why?? To provide a strong why you need to focus your story around building your business by the feedback that you received from the people.
Other thing that you need to take into account is the benefit of networking. Start by reaching out to people that you already know then use them to reach someone else, then ask them to introduce you to someone else and so on. This way you will climb the ladder fast. For example, if you publish blogs you need to make them visible across a variety of media channels who can mass market them to a larger audience. Just publishing them on the internet with a high keyword ranking will not be enough.
Building A Strong Social Media Team
If you have a good team there will be no need to spend money on digital advertising like facebook and google ads. You will be able to achieve everything organically. Let me tell you what we tried with our own bussiness.
We never spent a penny of money on Facebook advertisments, simply because we never had any. Instead we started by creating our own website using Wordpress, then we used Facebook to create our own business page and then connected them with each other. After that we spent our energy reaching out to influencers, and other connected businesses. Initially the success rate wasn’t high enough but after a few months of hard work people started responding.
We never restricted ourselves to Facebook only, we used every website, social media channel and blogosphere that we could lay our hands on like: LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter. It took us few months to build ourselves on these platforms but building our reputation here opened greater opportunities elsewhere.
Finally, we were able to get personal space on websites like Forbes, Inc and Huffington. It really helped us establish our brand on the internet more than anything that one single company blog could have done.
Once you have initiated the beginning steps properly everything else will seem simple. And when the money starts coming in your faith of making your business prosper will increase and you will be able to achieve something great.
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Vartika Kashyap is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016. She currently runs the marketing team at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.
Also follow our company page @ProofHub to get the recent updates about our tool, published articles, motivational quotes & presentations.
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