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This week on The Big Idea with Elizabeth Gore, Hello Alice CEO and Co-founder Carolyn Rodz joins Elizabeth Gore in the premiere episode to answer one of the biggest questions for small business owners: How do I get started? In the video above, Rodz provides three key tips for entrepreneurs who are looking to get their start in their professional pursuits.
Yahoo Finance’s The Big Idea with Elizabeth Gore takes you on a journey with America’s entrepreneurs as they navigate the world of small business.
This post was written by Lauren Pokedoff
What is your advice? Someone's sitting here. They're in their corporate job, or they've been a mom, or they are a US veteran, and they're coming home. They're like, I want to start this business. I mean, what give me the three steps of just how do I start?
I would say the first is get really clear on your why. Why are you why are you providing the solution that you're providing? And why does it matter? Why do your customers actually care that that's out in the world?
Two is to run that value proposition across as many people as you can and ask people to poke holes in that. Go to perspective investors, even if they're not going to invest today, just talk to them. Go to your prospects and customers and talk to them. Ask them to poke holes. Ask them what's terrible about it. Go to your friends and family. They're going to be really honest with you. Take all that information. A lot of it's going to be terrible advice. A lot of it's going to be great advice, and it's your job to extract the gems out of that and say, okay, here's how I'm going to pivot and adjust this plan. And then three is dig into the financials. Understand how are you going to capitalize this business? Know that it will take 10 times longer than you think it's going to take everything in that business.
10 times more money probably.
It's going to be much more expensive and much slower than you think. So provide yourself a really healthy buffer. Right. And draw a line in the sand of these are the milestones I need to hit to continue forward with this business, so that it's easy to make that jump, that when it's when it's not working, you're really clear with yourself that it's not working, it's time to move on or make a significant pivot or that's a green light to move forward.
This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.
