11 Hacks to Successfully Transition from Employee to Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is a long journey and requires you to hustle. You will have to do multitasking and might have to learn new skills. You will have to break the mantle shackles and follow the discipline of an entrepreneur. It is a way of life. Be ready for the failures. It is not important that how many times you fall but it is important that how fast you get up after you fall. There will be no office politics and no one to push you up. Following hacks will make your transition easier.

1. Identify your niche: It is the first and most important aspect of entrepreneurship. It is the intersection of what you love (your passion), what the world needs (your mission), what are you good at (your vocation) and what you can get paid for (your profession). This is known as an IKIGAI (A Japanese term), a reason to get out of bed every morning. It is not as easy as it seems and your whole journey depends on this. Riches are in the niches provided there is money in it. But you should not go into analysis paralysis. I would suggest you to read the Book IKIGAI.
2. Networking: It is lonely to be entrepreneur. You won’t have Lunch time discussions or chit chat at coffee breaks particularly when you are solopreneur. Here you will be working on business and not working in business. It is a total mental shift and mental rewiring. You are driver behind the business. So you should do networking with likeminded people. It is rightly said that your network is your Net worth. It is worthwhile to join the networking groups like BNI or networking group of your Industry.
3. Have a plan: To be the winner you are born to be, you must plan to win, prepare to win and expect to win. The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare. Don’t just jump into bandwagon of entrepreneurs but enter with clear cut plan. Motivation will wither away with few reality strokes but if you have a plan then it’s easy to sail through.
4. Have a mentor: If you want to be successful entrepreneur then Learn from the experts. Keep hanging around people who have done it. Every successful person has a mentor. Be it a successful player or a successful Business person.
5. 05. There is no right time to start: There is no perfect time to start. There will always be some challenge and there will always be an opportunity in challenge. Economy will go up or go down. There will be challenges at home front or children are too young or too old. You cannot wait for the so called perfect time. Choose your time and make it perfect.
6. Have Long-term Vision with short-term Goals: As an entrepreneur you should have long-term vision but make quarterly goals and achieve it. If we have annual goals then there is always a chance of procrastination. Since you are not reporting to any senior you will take it easy and delay the goal implementation. Aim Best not the biggest. Life is a series of short term successes.
7. Be Fixed on Goals but Flexible on implementation: Always be fixed on goals and don’t change your goals. But you can always change as to how achieve your goals. Be stubborn on the vision and Flexible on details.
8. Have Patience: It takes time for the acorn to turn into Oak tree. As it is rightly said Rome was not built in a day. There is always something called turnaround time or gestation period. Don’t let anyone kill your dream. There are lots of steps between an idea and Product. All Big things start small. There is nothing called overnight success. Lots of days and nights are gone into a person before that night when he becomes an overnight success.
9. You have to be Life-Long Learner: Up your skill. You may finish School but you should never finish education. Business development and personal development go hand in hand. Be a good wordsmith. Improve yourself daily and be your better version every day. Small improvements everyday consistently over a period of time leads up to Large improvement in results.
10. Identify your constituency: If you are selling to everybody then you are selling to nobody. You have to identify your constituency. It is easier to serve minimum viable audience. In the beginning you have to target early adopters of that minimum viable audience. If you don’t position and build your customer Avtar then market itself positions you and it may be your optimal or right position.
11. Learn Sales: No business or entrepreneur  can survive without Sales. Nothing works without sales even if you have the best of the product. Even when you hire a team you cannot control the team unless you know sales. Sales is the most noble profession as it is the only department which brings in money and rest is all expenditure.
12. Build a Brand: In the business of the future people will buy from the Brands. If you are hobbypreneur then you will have to build Brand around yourself. Show up often. People recognize faces more than Logo. Your Logo is not your brand but you are a brand. People buy from people they trust and branding builds trust.

13: Build strong community: Business in the future shall be driven by communities. Build communities around your product and nurture them. It is easier to upsell and cross sell in community.

What is your opinion?