Entrepreneurship should not be understood as a sprintbut a long-distance race. Entrepreneurs must start their businesses with an eye on the long term. There is no rush, it is not a competition. They are building a business that they want to run for many years.
However, judging by the Eurostat data that indicates that 62% of entrepreneurs cease their activity before reaching the age of five, it seems that there are still many gaps when starting to undertake. Also worrying are the data published by the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (Cepyme) which show that, while salaried employment grew in the month of March, the self-employed fell for the third consecutive month (-0.04%), registering a year-on-year decrease of 3,041 self-employed workers in manufacturing (-1.5%), 2,600 in hospitality (-0.8%) and 19,900 in commerce (-2.6%).
Keys to business profitability
First of all, it is essential get to know the ideal client in depth. When a person decides to start a business, they should ask themselves what type of person they would like to work with and, once they have it well defined, it is highly recommended that they interview people who meet those characteristics. It is about knowing your target audience very closely and knowing what their needs, fears and dreams are.
Secondly, and thanks to all the free technology available, the entrepreneur can validate his business idea through the creation of a valuable educational content. They can be posts on a single social network or a free resource that is downloaded in exchange for your email. It must be a brief and specific answer to the need that your client has. If, for example, your client wants to look better with the clothes they wear, you can create a brief guide to identify which clothes favor them according to their figure and daily activity, with examples of outfits that serve as inspiration.
Third and last, the task will be to design a minimum viable service, a reduced version of the official service, so that you can test it with the first customers minimizing risks in case it does not work as expected.
If, for example, you were thinking of launching an online course, you can do a first edition where all the content is broadcast live via Zoom. This way you can check the effect on your customers, receive their feedback and avoid wasting time recording videos that don’t work later.
Triple validation method
These three keys are what make up the “Triple Validation Method”, the step by step that the business mentor Lucía Jiménez Vida has designed to help other women to undertake with an essentialist approach, focusing on what is truly important and creating guarantees so that their businesses are profitable and can work with their first clients in less than 12 weeks.
“When we start a business, we usually find all kinds of recommendations on the tactics that we should put into practice to attract clients. They tell us about reels, funnels, ads… and a multitude of tasks that only divert our attention from what is truly important: getting to know our ideal type of client well, identifying their needs and offering them a service that solves them”points out this mentor.
For this reason, through its programs, Jiménez Vida is committed to the business essentialism. “We advocate less is better. We reduce the number of objectives, demands and, therefore, tasks to focus on the vital and put aside the trivial. We define our goals and focus on what leads us directly to them, without wasting time or working more hours than we really need, so that we can create time to take care of ourselves and enjoy life”.
