I have met many brilliant and entrepreneurial people in my life who have had grand ideas for a businesses. They enthusiastically give me details about their ideas and some actually go through with them. I can see they’re determined to succeed and yet I’ve seen many of them fail. It’s often the ones who don’t know much about the ins and outs of running a business that stumble. Here’s why.
Having a great idea for a small business and the determination to see it through is great, but you still need to take care of the fundamentals. It sounds so logical, but it’s easy to get carried away by the big picture and forget to focus on business basics when you start your journey as an entrepreneur.
Martin Hosking, CEO of clothing design marketplace Redbubble, shares this sentiment. Living through the infamous Tech Bubble has made him a practical man. When Hosking started Redbubble, he was determined not to get carried away by a dream of what he wanted the business to become and to ensure he had the basics right first.
He told Business Insider Australia:
“It was always important that Redbubble had strong fundamentals: margins, scaleability, a clear value proposition… Having survived the dot com bubble when companies did not have these things, I did not want to replicate that experience.
“This meant we committed to raising enough money to get it off the ground and also committed to both the vision and businesses fundamentals. Without the vision the company has no reason to exist. Without the business fundamentals the company has no ability to exist.”
Head over to Business Insider Australia to read more business advice from successful Australian companies.
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