Entrepreneurship for millennials seems more like becoming a rock star or sports star today than actually “grinding” a business out today. Entrepreneurship comes with its own set of challenges and wins. What transforms these challenges into wins is how we handle them at your set of risks. Exercising prudent financial habits while setting up your venture is a crucial aspect of any entrepreneurship that often gets overlooked. While the majority perceive the world of finance as a black box which is filled with complex terms and jargons – it need not be the case for everyone. Instead of letting that clout influence your judgment or even worse – make you run away from it, let’s try to dig deep and simplify your take on personal finance to make life easy and turn your financial understanding into strength for the business that you intend to build. Experience Matters
Here are some of the tricks for all the Millennial people who are seeking to Get into Entrepreneurship/Startup
Practice Frugality
Always make sure that launch your startup in the market at least 2 years after thinking and starting. As it helps to thinking more on your idea and work on it. If you fall in this category then you need to spend some more time on understanding the importance of prioritizing your expenses, budgeting, and planning since it will go a long way in helping you build your business
Raise Money from Family and Friends
Raising money from investors and VC funds might be a day to day task nowadays, however, many of the well-known industrialists today which includes Infosys CEO, Mr. Narayan Murthy have stories about raising money from their family and friends first. It requires a lot more hard work and determination to pitch your product to people who have known you for long and understand your motivation to build a business. It helps in validates your idea, boosts your confidence and brings your idea to fruition before bringing investors onward.
Pay attention to your credit
Now more than ever, millennial small business owners are skipping loans in favor of getting into business with personal credit. Their age, business size and annual revenue may prevent them from qualifying for any of the financial assistance. Hence, using a personal credit card may be one of their few options.
After a couple of years in business, these same millennials will be able to return to financial institutions a little older and wiser, with bigger companies and some earned revenue on the books. But, returning and seeking a loan with outstanding debt on a personal credit card isn’t a good idea.
Make Technology your Friend
Maintain proper income of inflow and outflow, for your personal use, even when you’re working and not actively pursuing any of the entrepreneurship activity. By using some of the user-friendly mobile apps, one can easily get a detailed analysis of an insight into the categories of personal expenses. Always use technology that help you in maintaining history, financial records and in analyzing your spending patterns.
Evaluate Fallback Options
When the things were getting tough, the tough get going. One of the foundation stones of entrepreneurship is the ability to plan all the fallback options which are drawing out only enough to float around will contribute in extending the runway for a couple of months only, however, financial capital is needed for the organization’s for the growth of long-term. Apart from directly raising money from Venture Capitalist funds and angel investors, one can explore options of participating in b-plan competitions, startup fundraising competitions, and applying for business loans etc.
Seek mentorship
Go to every networking event you can and look and talk with successful entrepreneurs, or, at the very least, ones who are a bit further down the road from you, and ask a lot of questions and take feedback from them. Most people don’t mind talking about themselves and are often willing to offer some advice. The hardest part is usually mustering up the courage to ask for help.
Persistence never fails
Never ever give up. It’s a cliché, but perseverance is the most important quality any entrepreneur can have.
Separate your emotions
Don’t just simply tie your self-worth to a failure. It’s an emotional roller coaster being an entrepreneur and when your morale is low, dark thoughts can easily eat through self-esteem. As an entrepreneur, you’re going to experience a lot of failure in your life. The ups and downs never end, so it’s better to learn how to ride the waves of ups and downs. Try to separate your emotions from results, whatever it will be good or bad.
