These self management success tips are perfect for starting your own business. They will help you feel organised and motivated. But they are useful for personal projects too – and impressing the boss at work!
See also: Top 5 tips on how to start a business while you’re still studying (written by one of our very own Youth Ambassadors Harvey Morton). If you want to make a difference, you can volunteer as a Youth Ambassador too.
Success tips for self-starters and young entrepreneurs
1. Get ready to challenge yourself
When you start a business or personal project you are going to learn from experience and challenge yourself all the time. It won’t be easy – but it will be satisfying, and you’ll learn and grow so much.
2. Choose a goal you feel real passion for
The best way to manage yourself and get organised with a new startup or personal project is to enjoy it. If you love something, it feels more like play than work. Laura-Jane Rawlings, the brains behind Youth Employment UK, says it’s her drive and passion for improving youth employment that helps her give her all to the mission. From passion comes motivation.
3. Prepare to take risks – failure is a step to success
What would you regret most – failing, or not trying at all? You can learn from failure, or challenges you maybe didn’t overcome at first. Failing is just a way to learn and get better. Name any business person you admire and they have taken risks. Sometimes they’ve failed along the way, too. But they achieved greater understanding.
4. Keep working on your self belief
True self belief is about having the confidence and motivation to believe there’s always a way. It’s not about wearing rose-tinted glasses and believing everything will magically be okay. It’s about having the confidence to give something you feel passionate about a go. Again, mistakes or challenges will happen, but if you stay calm and cool you are in a better frame of mind to solve those problems, small or large.
5. Have a clear goal
Have you got a vision for a startup business? Maybe you have a personal project you can’t wait to get cracking on? Have a clear picture of what you want to achieve. That vision will keep you going when you come up against challenges to overcome.
Top tip: Can you sum your goal up in a sentence? If you can, it’s more likely to be a clear goal. Something big, but simple enough that you always know what you are aiming towards.
6. Don’t be a lone wolf – explore networking and the art of asking
Seek out the company of people you respect and people who can help you in your mission to start your own business. You don’t have to do this alone. You can:
- Look for investors, grants and financial help
- Talk to careers advisors about options and next steps
- Talk to the job centre about various ways you can start a business as a young entrepreneur
- Volunteer and do work experience with organisations who can give you the skills, knowledge, experience and contacts you need to help you in your goals. Here at Youth Employment UK, we are honoured to mentor, support and enable our volunteer Youth Ambassadors with their personal/business projects wherever we can.
- Ask family and friends for help – maybe they can help you attend an event or build a website. Perhaps they can put you in touch with someone who’s in a perfect position to help you and your new venture
- Explore ‘the art of asking’ – if you don’t ask out loud for what you want, how will people in your network know how best to help you? It takes courage to ask for help, but this communication skill is a big part of having the confidence to reach out to others in pursuit of your goals.
7. Feel the fear and do it anyway
We all get moments of fear, especially when starting something new like a business or personal passion project. It might be:
- The fear of getting started
- The fear of failure
- The fear of not getting things perfect
- The fear of reaching out to others for help
- The fear of public speaking
- The fear of getting to grips with finance and the business side of things
Whenever you get that moment of fear, it’s just a part of you trying to keep you ‘safe’. But sometimes, being ‘safe’ means not trying something new, even if it’s something you really care about. Acknowledge the fear. Break big challenges down into little chunks you can deal with a step at a time. Every time you face a fear – like with public speaking – it gets a little easier each time. Overcoming areas where you feel anxious is like a muscle you can train. Experience makes it easier.
8. Manage your time and resources
Money.
If you haven’t got a huge budget, think carefully about the money side of things. What is the biggest priority? How much does it cost? Compare prices and value for money. Think about what’s important – is it having a nice website for your business, or would you achieve more with printing leaflets to hand out where potential customers will see them? You don’t need to have everything all at once – you can start cheap, with your bedroom as your office, and see how things go.
Time.
Managing your time is where getting organised is really important. Apply the 80/20 rule to everything you do. It’s the idea that 80% of your success comes from 20% of your hard work. So think about how you REALLY need to spend your time to achieve as much as possible, and focus on that.
There’s only one of you and startups or passion projects can really eat into your personal time, so make to do lists and always know what your priorities are.
9. Think before you act
‘Think before you act’ is such a big part of self-management and getting organised. Like the scout motto says, be prepared. If you research your chances of success you can solve potential problems before they happen. It’s already a bold step to start your own business or project, so it’s clear for everyone to see you have courage, confidence and self-belief. Match that with some legwork before you take a business leap of faith, and your project could be more successful – with less effort, less worry, and less fear of costs building up.
With every startup (and every passion project) it helps to have a business plan. This is a document that sets out what your business/project goal is and what your strategy is to make it happen.
Research is really important if you want your project to be a success. Who will buy into your product or service? Who will want it? How much can they afford? How would they hear about it?
The more you know about your target audience and how to reach/impress them, the more you can shape clear steps on how to achieve business success.
Time and research matters in getting to know your customers or audience. It’s better to take time than rush into something. You can spot challenges or obstacles nice and early, and think about tweaks to your business or project idea to make it have a greater chance of success.
10. Deliver more than you need to
This doesn’t mean exhausting yourself! But nice extras like great customer service or personal touches cost nothing and can help you stand out as an influencer or young entrepreneur. The more you leave a customer or target audience satisfied, the more they will recommend you or look to you for repeat business!
If you buy something from an artist on Etsy or eBay, they will often include a hand-written thank you note, or a sticker, or something that says they really care about you as a customer. They are delivering more than they need to. A hand-written thank you note doesn’t cost much, but it makes the customer feel happy and can create loyal repeat sales.
Any startup or personal project can feature clever little ways to impress:
- If you build websites as a business, customers are more likely to use your services again and recommend you if you have great customer service and answer replies on email, phone or social media quickly.
- If you are setting up a trade business like window cleaning or general DIY, little things like politeness, good timekeeping and tidying up after you’ve done the work cost you nothing but mean the world to the customer and can really help your business soar.
- If you are setting up a wedding photography business, have a set of smart clothes ready to wear to weddings so that you will fit in and look reassuringly professional.
- If you are setting up a cupcake catering service, you can – just for example – include a party balloon and pretty thank-you note with every order.
Have a think about little things you can add for free to help your business flourish. This extra level of care takes a bit of organisation and thinking in advance, but it can make a world of difference. Ideas include:
- Prompt and helpful customer service
- Being reachable in multiple ways (phone, email, social media)
- Great timekeeping (turning up on time, sticking to deadlines, letting customers know promptly if you are sick or there might be a delay)
- Low-cost extras that make you stand out (free hanging car freshener if you wash cars, hand-written thank you notes for indie product sales
- Respect for the customer – politeness, tidiness, transparency
11. Always do what you do to the best of your ability
Starting your own business as a young entrepreneur isn’t easy, but it can be very rewarding for your personal confidence as well as your professional development.
Remember – these self management tips can generally be applied to personal passion projects too, whether you are starting a band to setting up your own online magazine.
Self management is one of the five most important Young Professional skills, whatever you choose to do in life.
