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Build Your Boats Before You Need Them
Written by: John JantschArticle Overview: A lot of folks thinking about starting a business spend all their time doing the typical start-up stuff like incorporating, finding office space, and designing business cards. All good and needed steps mind you, but don’t neglect the most important step.
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Free Download - Weekend Favs May Twenty One By John Jantsch |
Build Your Boats Before You Need Them
A lot of folks thinking about starting a business spend all their time doing the typical start-up stuff like incorporating, finding office space, and designing business cards. All good and needed steps mind you, but don’t neglect the most important step.
If you are employed today and thinking about going out on your own, start talking to prospects first, start exploring your ideas with them, start asking them to become clients - before you ever open the doors. In fact, if you can swing it, offer to work for some potential clients for free, before you take the leap. (If you have a job I am certainly not talking about moonlighting at your employer’s expense.)
The thing that many start ups neglect most often is market research. Many failed businesses are so because they never figured out how to get profitable customers. I’m not saying that you spend all your time on research, you know I want you to take action, but you’ve got to start hanging out with your prospects and seeing what it takes to earn their trust and you should do this way before you must do it to eat.
Too many potential small business owners are waiting around for the day when they have a big enough nest egg built to jump right into the deep end while they try to figure out how to build their boat. If you play your cards right you might just get to wade into the safe end of the pond with a sea worthy boat in hand the day your open sign turns around - that’s the leap you should be looking to take.
Article Tags: boats, designing business cards, doors, failed businesses, job, leap, market research, moonlighting, nest egg, office space, profitable customers, prospects, small business owners, start ups, ups
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About the Author: John Jantsch RSS for John's articles - Visit John's website John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing - The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide (foreword by Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth) published by Thomas Nelson - due out in the fall of 2006 He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system and Duct Tape Marketing Authorized Coach Network. His Duct Tape Marketing Blog was chosen as a Forbes favorite for small business and marketing and is a Harvard Business School featured marketing site. His blog was also chosen as "Best Small Business Marketing Blog" in 2004, 2005 and 2006 by the readers of Marketing Sherpa. Click here to visit John's website What Gets Measured Gets Converted Gets Results Followup Is the Momentum Building Power Tool Engaging Your Collaboration Universe Fail in Favor of the Customer Does Your Firm Suffer from Feature Creep |
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