My first business experience began as a teenager, making peanut butter at home. It started as a simple school assignment I practiced for family consumption. After graduation, I decided to expand it. I bought packaging materials, nylons, and pins, and told my neighbors I was officially selling peanuts.
To my surprise, the response was positive. They appreciated the taste and quantity and began buying in large quantities. Soon, my aunt offered to help me sell it at her shop. Other shop owners also asked for it, and before I knew it, I was making a lot of money, and everything went on smoothly. It was a blissful experience.
Fast forward a few years, in my third year in university, my financial situation changed. I didn't have any source of income, and my expenses had outgrown the monthly allowance I received from my family. I became desperate to create a source of income and multiply my money as fast as I could.
That鈥檚 when I decided to sell fashion items online: dresses, shoes, and unisex wear. But unlike my peanut business, I started this with so much desperation. I had high hopes and was under pressure to make money quickly. So, I reached out to people who claimed to have business opportunities. I don't know how, but I trusted them and went into partnering with them. In this process, I was scammed, and half of my savings disappeared. The little inventory I bought remained stuck in my closet because I didn't have good marketing strategies. Every morning, I would wake up to stare at the unsold items, brainstorming ways by which I could sell them, but I couldn't actualize any of them.
After many trials and errors, I decided to take a break. To my friends and customers, it looked like I had given up. But internally, I knew I needed space to think clearly without pressure, fear, or anxiety. In the end, I realized that this process of slowing down was the first step I needed to sell out my goods.
Here are some of the most important lessons this experience taught me:
1.Desperation is a Dangerous Business Partner
As we all know, entrepreneurs often start businesses to solve a problem. It could be retirement, growth, or survival. If it's for survival, then the entrepreneur needs to be very careful and calculative because any action taken out of desperation might result in a huge loss.
2. Funding is Important
A good amount of money needs to be available to fund the business. This is because there's a tendency for the business to not go as planned. There might be no customers to patronize, or an issue that needs urgent financial attention might come up. Also, depending solely on business profits for personal needs will drain the business before it has a chance to grow. So, it is advisable to set boundaries between personal spending and business capital/profits.
3. Passion Without Plans is Risky
Being passionate about a business is not enough to keep the business growing. Every business needs a business plan. The entrepreneur needs to know her target customers and how to reach them. He/she also needs to have a vision and goals and have them in mind always. This will keep her on track whenever things get tough. Remembering why you started could be a good driving force to success. In my case, my only concern was to sell and make money. I had zero knowledge about my audience and didn't even have a goal, let alone a good business plan.
4. Taking a Break is Not Giving Up
Every entrepreneur needs to know this. There's nothing wrong with taking a break. I understand how competitive life is and how society expects so much from a growing individual, especially in my country. All we need to know is that everything we're doing is for ourselves. Everyone is watching, but none of them cares whether you make it or fail. It doesn't really concern them because they're also busy with themselves.
So, it is very okay to slow down. It might turn out to be the best way to regain clarity. My break gave me the mental space to reevaluate and move forward with intention. I re-strategized and became fully conscious of what I was doing. As a result, the goods I couldn't sell in months were sold out in two days.
At the end, I came to agree with the term that entrepreneurship is not always glamorous. It is full of ups and downs, wins, failures, and lessons. I may not have made good money from the fashion business, but I gained something more valuable, that is experience and wisdom.
So, how about you? :) Have you ever started a business out of passion or necessity? What lessons did you learn along the way?
