How To Start A Business - Early To Rise

Accelerating Your Retirement: Start Your Own Business
By Michael Masterson

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When starting a business, you can drastically reduce your risk of failure by becoming an expert in two areas:

First you must understand everything you can about the products and/or services you will be selling.
Second, you must become competent (and eventually masterful) at the specific marketing skills you need to sell them.

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When it comes to launching your business, don't reinvent the wheel. Come up with a product and a marketing position that is 80% to 90% the same as what your most successful competitors are doing. Remember, there is a good reason that they are successful. By investing 600+ hours into learning the product/service part of the business and another 600+ hours on the marketing, you should already have a good idea about why things work. But you aren't yet an expert. It takes much more time (about 5000 hours) to do that.

And that's why you have to proceed with caution - one small step at a time. Yes, you should try new things, but as I said they should be only 10% to 20% new. Taking this sort of conservative approach will not limit your growth because you will be able to "catch up" later. If you aren't careful and try something entirely new and different, chances are it will fail - however good you think the idea is. Remember: the key idea is this: until you've had 5000 hours of experience, you are not an expert. Don't act like one.

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8 Important Things to Know About Business

Apart from starting (and sticking to) a what is already working (and not getting too fancy), I've discovered eight secrets to making a start-up business work.

1. Business doesn't happen until you make the first sale.

2. The single most effective way of entering a new market is to offer a popular product at a significantly reduced price.

3. It's ultimately about selling.

4. When choosing a business, select one that can be grown without your personal involvement.

5. Have an exit plan.

6. Focused effort is more effective than a diversified approach to business building.

7. Let your winners run and cut your losses short.

8. Pareto's Principle (the 80-20 Rule): 80% of your success comes from 20% of your resources.