Opening a business involves working hard. Very hard.
Whatever the type of company, the sector and the activity, there will be many sleepless nights, many mornings awake ahead of time, a lot of negotiation and a lot of ‘ant’ work that aims to make your idea a viable business project and, above all, profitable.
In the collective imagination we always think of an entrepreneur locked in his office outlining every minute detail of his business, but the reality is quite different.
In his day to day, a fledgling businessman ends up spending more time outside than inside his office.
And these are some of the activities that end up taking you the longest.
1.- Search for financing
More and more companies are betting on the bootstrapping philosophy, consisting of being born without external financing and growing very slowly until obtaining profits without accumulating hardly any debt.
However, there are still a majority of companies that in their first steps have to make a more than significant investment to face the first payments while struggling to achieve, in the medium or even long term, the desired profitability.
2.- Customer search
Okay, so we’ve opened the business, now what? If it is an establishment facing the public it will be necessary to do some ‘marketing’ and try to get people to enter, but if it is a B2B business (‘business to business’) in which the clients of a company are other companies , it will be necessary to do a job of convincing and, above all, a lot of sales.
To do this, the entrepreneur will have to initiate a round of contacts with potential clients who may be interested in the service it offers. And if he is in his initial stages, he may not have commercials, so he should be the one to take over the sales.
3.- Meetings
Even when the structure of a company is small, there are many stakeholders that an entrepreneur must also deal with on a daily basis: the employee he has, the one he wants to sign, the clients, the suppliers …
That is why many times a company, even If you don’t have a large office, you should expect that every few minutes you will have to meet with all the people who, in one way or another, will make your business prosper.
4.- Consulting
Many times we see entrepreneurs as a kind of superhero who is in charge of absolutely everything that happens: from the international expansion of their activity to the last invoice received.
However, the reality is quite different, since the good businessman is the one who, sooner or later, knows how, when and to whom to delegate.
Several of the first tasks that will surely be delegated will be administration, finance, payroll, procedures before the Public Administration, etc. That is why any good entrepreneur ends up hiring an advice and resorting to it many more times than they would surely want.
5.- ‘Networking’
Sales are important, but day to day too. And it will be on those occasions when the entrepreneur must expand his network of contacts, talk to other entrepreneurs, meet potential investors, competitors, etc.
Networking, therefore, will be essential. Who knows if a new customer or a new source of financing emerges from a casual café?
