Being resourceful is the key to becoming a successful entrepreneur. Unless you already have VC funding, landing millions in contracts or have an established business, being resourceful is your best bet from going from the bottom to the top.
When it comes to launching a business, having an extreme focus is great and will bring you much success, but at the end of the day if you can only perform the one job that you are good at, you will need to hire people around you to pick up the rest of the slack, which in the case of a self funded startup, is a ticket to the graveyard.
Launching a web design business, you must have somebody to take care of graphics, coding, marketing, selling, accounting, budgeting, running errands, office supplies, and 100s of other factors that most people do not think about when looking to start a business or become an entrepreneur. This is where it helps to be resourceful.
Being resourceful as an entreprenuer means that you know where to go for all of these things and you know how to execute. Need an accountant to do your taxes? I bet theres an accountant out there that can use a new website. Find them and make it happen, if the ROI is justified.
Need to sell your services but can’t get away from the coding, find an out of work salesman, take him to lunch, prepare all print materials for them and send them out with a plan and a target audience. When he comes back with sales, split the money with him. Don’t want to do that – email a complimentary company that already has customers and perform services for them, saving both of you time and money. You don’t have to spend the xx hours tracking down a new client, which enables you to offer your services at a discounted rate.
Realizing time is the most valuable resource you have makes you become more resourceful. Most new treps don’t realize that most of their clients cost them more than they made them. The CAC (cost to acquire customer) goes through the roof when you are wearing all hats yourself. Leverage your resources and start noting the time spent on single tasks and begin eliminating everything that doesn’t directly make you money.
How can I justify this blog post? It took me 10 minutes and will most likely gain my website backlinks from other sites. Backlinking is a huge part of SEO and is very time intensive. In 10 minutes I would be lucky to find 1 relevant site and place a backlink. Does backlinking directly make me money? Yes. If my site reaches the top of Google for my keywords, I have an ‘auto salesman’ connecting with qualified customers right at the time they are looking into making a decision regarding a service that I provide. Bingo!
So keep in mind that when you are launching a business or working in one now, resourcefulness is the key to success and “having a guy” is just as good as “being the guy” as long as you can leverage time & money to make a profit on your investment whether it is time or money.
