My entrepreneurship journey is now in its twelve years. Before the leap of faith into it back in 2011, I was in corporate for ten years. This coming October, I will be 50. I’ve experienced success and failure, made millions and lose some, made new friends and lost a few too across my journey.
Yesterday, I had a long conversation with my friend, a web developer. It lasted for more than 4 hours. His name is Amirul. He is instrumental in creating a content-sharing platform called 300th for a friend of mine which was soft-launched back in August 2022 and it was officially launched last January 2023.
We talked about that website he built and his business in general. I learned a lot from his stories, and it is about the same as mine. Being a 50-year-old guy, I don’t intend to work forever. But I intend to make sure that income will continue to be there for me and my family forever. My modus operandi is always to stay away from being too attached to the businesses I created, create strong value out of them and eventually earn a decent income from it. I’ve done this before and made my money. And this time I am going to do it again—with a simple newsletter.
The safer way
Here is the route I am using to make it happen, and at the same to ensure that I minimise expensive mistakes in the future.
- Take time to come up with the business idea, then draft an extremely detailed business plan. It has to be a very, very detailed plan and I am putting everything that is in my head into it. I make sure that I do not leave anything behind.
- Creating value. The business I am building must stay relevant forever and to achieve this, I need to know my target market and solve their current problems through the products or services available on my website.
- Identify the right benchmark. The idea that I have here, has been done by other people already. It’s not new. Whatever idea we have today, somebody out there might have done it already and this is a fact. So, what I do next after I have the idea is to find the people or brand that has done it, observe how they are doing it, identify the reason behind their success (or failure), and make mine better.
- Monetisation and exit. In the business plan, these two elements are as critical as the business idea itself. How to make money, what are the ways to generate income, are those incomes sustainable and how best to exit from the business when the time comes.
- The business plan must have many versions, with regular updates as I go along. When drafting the business plan, I will insert the latest information I found from my readings, observations and input I get from my conversations with other people, into the plan. This kind of input will always be there each time I changed to a new book, when I come across new articles, meet with new people for coffee and so on. That being said, my business plan must stay fluid and flexible — always be updating.
- Find a cut-off date and start executing it. Usually, I will put a cut-off date and start working on the execution part of it. In my case, the cut-off date here would mean, I will need to share the plan with my website development colleague and build the website. Before reaching the cut-off date, I need to be confident that whatever mistakes I am going to do after this, will be expensive and cost money. On paper, the mistakes will still be free but not when executing the plan.
- Understand who will execute the plan. Here you have a few options. One, it can be you and you alone. Two, you can create a team to work on it together and reap the fruits together. And three, you hire people or freelancers and pay them to work on the execution. In my case, I usually go for the second option since I play a long game.
- Continue to update the business plan, with minor add-ons. If I don’t continue to update it, I might miss out on the latest or valuable features. So, when the website is being developed and completed, I will continue to refine my business plan with updated information and details in place.
- Soft-launch the business and officially launch it. Once the website is ready, I will run through the user experience test with my website development colleague to make sure everything is smooth and there should be no hiccups. This usually takes me a month or two. Once satisfied, I will then soft-launch it. During this period, I will invite a number of close friends to give it a test, use it, and send me their honest feedback for improvements. This alone will take easily one or two more months. After all the rectifications are made, I will straight away enter the market by officially launching it.
- Continue to refine the business plan with the latest finding or input and make the business better. Once the traffic starts to come in, people are using the website and purchasing the products or services offered, I will find a few more small issues, bugs and challenges which theoretically were missed. This is the time we start to redo certain processes, make certain changes and take out unnecessary things to ensure the user experience is better.
- Fundamental is finally done, and now it is all about growth. With all these done, I am now ready to hit the market big time and grow the business to the next level. This is where I will be spending big on marketing.
Conclusion
The above methods are proven and tested. Being 50, the last thing I want is to get my hard-earned money burned. Losing money is not an option. I’m sure this applies to you too.
Should I plan to come up with a new business, I am going to use these methods and take this route till the end. Maybe you can take some ideas here and build your own steps to build yours. I don’t play short games but long ones. If you prefer the same style, you will see significant results out of your effort here within 18 to 24 months. The result is worth the wait.
Remember, continue improvising and do not rush the process.
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