Being an investor and entrepreneur, when you are willing to start a new business, you just require the greatest approach for business startup ideas to utilize.
Finest startup business ideas always come with a lot of your startup business growth. People nowadays always follow their dreams fulfillment and then pick out their passion for investment. Investors are always willing for best startup business ideas in order to feed their passion. To understand this approach of starting a business better and further, we have interviewed Bill Cook, a well-esteemed and skilled digital marketer and advertiser, to explain his understanding and process. Read along to find what he has to say about it.
A Little About Bill Cook
Bill Cook is a hardcore marketer with particular interest in the digital medium, and has been fortunate to work in all three mediums of advertising, as well as software houses. He believes all these experiences have been significant in understanding the tech eco-system and acing the creative & strategic side. Now, after working for quite some years with CMOLDS, he is up for a new challenge of empowering local businesses to grow online and build a community of marketers who could interact and collaborate effectively with a pure purpose of helping each other.
Business Startup Idea – What Should Be An Entrepreneur’s Approach?
Here are the 12 questions we asked the expert that you can ask yourself to validate your startup idea — before you commit significant time, money or other resources to its launch:
What tempted you to choose the Entrepreneurial life?
Bill Cook: Well, entrepreneurship is a glittering term that interests massive amount of people nowadays but in fact, it is very hard to live the life that most of the people cannot even survive for six months. The idea of putting everything at stake to pull off an idea is surely fascinating but the process it requires and all the compromises you have to make in order to become an entrepreneur is absolutely suffocating. To be honest, everyone has their own capacity, strengths, and energy, but a basic framework to have a successful entrepreneurial life is very simple;
A- Be clear about your goals and set measurable KPIs
B- Put high focus and accountability on improving your health
C- Increase knowledge as much as you can
D- Always stay ready for setbacks, don’t dwell, push your limits, keep your head down and keep moving
How did you psychologically prepare yourself for the business startup?
Bill Cook: Look, self-awareness is the key to progress; most of the people, admire entrepreneurs for having all that they have and ignore all that they went through to reach that place they are today. Digesting the fact that there’s a serious amount of work required to create a successful business and believing religiously that there’s no miracle going to happen along the way is how you prepare yourself psychologically.
What is the most essential ingredient to start a business & grow it successfully?
Bill Cook: Every kind of business that exists in the world today has a purpose behind which is called the “Why” of the business, most of the businesses today are too obsessed with “Who” they are which is the reason they fail on the internet. When you emphasize on the purpose your business serves, it automatically attracts people because it cares more about them and less about your ABC company, human nature loves empathy and I truly believe that it is the most essential ingredient to grow a successful business.
How should you start your business? Solo or with a team of partners?
Bill Cook: Of course it is a team game but let me remind you a fact, the business that you own is your brainchild, so it is very important to be 1000% sure about the person you are offering to be a co-founder or any other key position, because nobody can care about your idea as much as you do, therefore it is super important to pick only those people who are absolutely passionate about the purpose you are serving.
How much do you need to invest in the startup process?
Bill Cook: I think there’s no benchmark for that, everyone has a different financial situation and they know it the best, but of course there are certain requirements that vary business to business and those investments are necessary, but money should be optimized to maximize the return and I think sense of urgency is high with less money and it doesn’t let you sit back which enables you to push limits because you have to survive and that’s the situation when you bring out your best.
What’s the right time to launch a startup?
Bill Cook: If there’s an existing problem in the society that your idea is solving, then you should not wait for the right time, otherwise someone else will grab the opportunity, businesses like UBER & Air BnB didn’t require the right time because they were the right solutions people were waiting for, while they didn’t even know something like that would solve the problem but it came as a disruption and changed the consumer behavior to book a ride and room, therefore they grew exponentially in no time. But, if you are not sure about your idea, then you are supposed to dig deep to find out the potential before taking any further steps.
How important it is to know about financial processes while launching a startup?
Bill Cook: I think it is so much important to know the financial processes in order to keep effectively track of the money going out and coming in. If you have never studied it or you are bad at it, go take a tuition or get someone who teaches you the basic concepts.
How long can you survive before the business starts to generate money?
Bill Cook: It very much depends upon the funding you have got, either you are going all in with your savings or you have an investor on board, you really need to optimize each penny you spend, even if you have a fair bit of investment, you should not relax and keep spending because in the long term it is going to affect highly when your business faces setbacks. So the bottom line is; ‘Hold yourself super accountable for spending money’.
How to validate the startup idea?
Bill Cook: You can find people interested in the niche you are starting in, talk to them, tell them what you are doing and they will give you the best feedback, in these discussions you can hit major breakthroughs, something that you are stuck with, some process, some mechanics, those focused people have the ability and power to get you out of that and this is how you validate your idea, only the people who are relevant to your idea can give you honest opinion and you are supposed to respect it big time.
What should be the marketing strategy for a startup?
Bill Cook: As much as you want to brag about the groundbreaking idea you are launching; marketing that wins, works the other way around. Create a lot of content around the purpose and usability of your business idea, distribute it efficiently throughout all the channels that your target audience uses, when you are clear about your target audience and the purpose you are there to serve, people automatically take notice and you don’t really require those lengthy sales pitches.
Any piece of advice for young professionals and entrepreneurs?
Bill Cook: Honestly, I myself am still learning and seeking pieces of advice all the time. But one thing that I had learned at a very early stage of my life was that you should not do something that doesn’t aspire you, the long-term effects of perusing a career that you are not passionate about are disastrous, I am not saying you will necessarily fail, but you will not be able to hit that great potential that you can achieve by following your dreams, so, we are blessed with this one life and I advise you to make the most out of it by living it for yourself and not for proving to somebody else.
Imran Abdul Rauf is a Digital Marketing Strategist, employed at CMOLDS, and specializes in content marketing, email marketing campaigns, lead generation, and other aspects of digital marketing. A content enthusiast by the day, and hardcore gamer by night, Imran is also a regular guest contributor at some of the top tech and digital marketing platforms.
