Lessons from a collection of business ventures.
I still recall that day like it was yesterday. Midnight, streets flooding with falling snow, a shivering jaw, cold fingers, and my phone rings. I was coming back from a whole day spent in Uni and the remainder of the day spent running around doing errands. The total income that day was in my pocket - UAH 20. Hardly a dollar.
I remember arguing with my dad about the things I was doing. Mom had always asked me to stay away from business, my dad had taken multiple defeats in his businesses, and I was hellbound on creating my own empire. That entire day was just another in a series of efforts to create a new business. Some days went well, other days left me with a net profit of less than a dollar in my pocket.
I am not tech-savvy. I have no experience in start-ups. I never had the capital to start something big. Neither did I have any assets in this foreign country to set as collateral to get loans. All I knew was to start small and make it big. I did it well.
One of the things I hate is how I was never able to reach the levels of ease that many do. I did all my ventures the hard way, and that is all I know. Recently, I got a mentor and things are looking better. Still, I tend to stick to my "brute-way" strategy and only that makes me comfortable.
There are a few things I always assert when it comes to creating a business. My first is "it can always be done with 0 capital". I live by this. It forces me to think out of the box. A start-up event is a good place to start. But since I have no experience with those, I tend to look for other ways to stick to my golden rule.
It is all achieved through a "filter" I have designed to keep me afloat in the game. "Hustle". The word drives me nuts. It means day in, day out, putting the work in.
What do I focus on?
Obviously, knowing the market. This doesn't take much. Every day you and I go out for one or the other reason. There is always an opportunity screaming at us, but we simply walk past it. But if you stop for just one second with a keen mind, it won't be long before you realize there is an opportunity hiding in plain sight.
Once I have the market in sight, I start manifesting the ways I can get my hands dirty in it. It is a time period of strategizing everything. From target audience, how to reach them, how to provide to them, how to mark up the profits, and how to stay one step ahead of the game, how to find the right people to get it done.
Connections matter a lot. It doesn't happen in a single day. The longest part of any business I tried was always in making connections. One day I run around the city entering random offices and meeting up random people on the street. The other day I am browsing the internet like a teenager hunting for his stolen bike. It is a game of chase.
It takes numerous tries, meetings, trial and error. Your first prospective partners aren't the ones you will end up working with. I have been in numerous situations where I ended up doing the entire thing by myself.
The most important is hustling your way through the mud. You jostle through every single event that takes place. May it advertising, finding an audience, meeting clients or partners, crunching numbers or even as mediocre as going out on the streets and distributing leaflets. Putting in the work, no matter what time of the day it is or how starved you are. Nothing beats that.
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