How long does it take to start a successful business

How long does it take to succeed in business

I think a successful business needs more than 10 years, entrepreneurs know this law mentality will be better, at least not to do 3 years, 4 years after the company has not been listed, or has not yet reached a stable state of success on the loss of confidence in shame

A lot of entrepreneurs in fact, entrepreneurship is too simple to think that entrepreneurship is a one-year start-up, two years of financing, three years the company can go public, they think that every investment will be successful, and are invested in the first year, the second and third years can be listed.

In fact, entrepreneurship is a very difficult thing, the reason why we seem to often see successful companies, such as listed companies or the international top 500, it is because only these successful companies will be reported by the media, will be celebrated by others, and a large number of unsuccessful companies have been silent, you have not heard more likely to see.

Why is entrepreneurship a very difficult thing? Because entrepreneurship is from zero to one from nothing, to build a company that did not exist, and to make this company can survive, grow, and even become one of the best in the industry, to generate a lot of sales and earn profits, this is actually a very difficult thing.

A few years ago, there were a lot of people snubbing college graduates if they couldn't find a job to start their own business, and I couldn't agree more, a person who couldn't even find a job to start his own business, how could he do that? The job search is actually just a department in a large company as a position, as long as the job duties to fulfill the job you can be competent, but entrepreneurship is not a company to build up, or just established a company, you need to go in with the company with the growth of the difficulty than to find a job part-time work most of the time. I hope all entrepreneurs can understand this before they start, and the success rate of entrepreneurship is very low, some people have counted that the number of companies that survive more than 3 years should be no more than 25%, and the number of companies that survive to 5 years is even lower. In my experience over the years, a large number of startups have actually been struggling near the break-even point, in the common parlance, has been half-dead, and every year hard work is in the payroll for cash flow and worry about it, and really be able to make a company to have a stable income and profit is a very difficult thing to really be able to make the company to go public, it is more of a small probability of the event.

Some time ago, A-share just broke through 3,000 listed companies, but as far as I know, there should be more than 70 million companies registered in the industrial and commercial system, and there are 3,000 of them listed in the 70 million, so it is obvious that the success is a low-probability thing.

It's hard to start a business, it's a small probability of success, and if you want to start a business, how long does it take to succeed?

I think any successful business needs more than 10 years, every entrepreneur, if you know this law, the entrepreneurial mindset will be better, at least no longer do 3 years, 4 years after the company is not listed, or has not yet reached a stable state of success on the loss of confidence in self-humiliation.

What is a successful business? I think there are 3 criteria:

First, industry leadership. You must be one of the best in your own niche, whether you are doing hardware or software, the market share should be ranked in the top 3, if you can't be one of the best in your niche, and then you can't call it a success.

Second, sustainable growth. This year can not grow 30% more than last year, next year can not grow 30% more than this year, ups and downs of the enterprise can not be called successful, only sustainable growth of the enterprise is a successful enterprise.

Third, respected. The enterprise is not respected by their own employees, respected by peers, respected by the community. To be respected not only performance should be good, the enterprise should also pursue the values of the right way.

Industry-leading, sustainable growth, respect for the enterprise is a successful enterprise, to become such a successful enterprise needs more than 10 years of time, short-term can not be done. Some of the start-ups we are familiar with now have actually been established for 6 or even 7 years, and they can't actually be said to have been successful yet.

Entrepreneurship is a long-distance running, can not be run as a sprint, do not start at the beginning of the time to make your full strength to sprint, once you run a sprint attitude to run a long-distance running, then you must be the first to fall behind that one.

Any successful business needs to go through four stages of development, each stage of development takes about three years, of course, if your ability is strong, good luck, you may use two years, a year and a half to finish one of the stages of development, but the development of each stage of the enterprise can not cross.

Only by doing a good job at this stage and accomplishing the mission at this stage can we move on to the next stage. This is the same as our people, everyone's growth has to go through childhood, adolescence, youth, into adulthood. The meal should be eaten one bite at a time, and the road should be taken one step at a time, so the growth of life and business development are the same, to develop one stage at a time, only to complete the mission of each stage, the things to do are done, you can cross into the next stage to move forward, and no one can say that I crossed over to the youth period from childhood at a time.

The first stage of business development is the start-up period.

The core task at this stage is to find a source of revenue for the business. Specifically two things: make a product that someone is willing to pay money for, and find a way to sell that product in a steady stream.

Our ancestors do not call entrepreneurship, called business, in fact, speak very thoroughly, the first stage of enterprise development, is to buy and sell up to make a person willing to spend money to buy the product and find a way to sell the product constantly. It is only after these two issues are resolved that a business will have revenue.

This stage, most of the time we are in the answer around the circle, each of us actually know the correct direction of success, but if you want to be successful just know the direction is not enough, but also must know the exact bearing. For example, if we want to climb Xiangshan Mountain in Beijing, we all know that Xiangshan Mountain is in the northwest of Beijing, but to reach Xiangshan Mountain, it is not enough to know that Xiangshan Mountain is in the northwest of Beijing. We also have to know how many degrees east longitude and how many degrees north latitude is Xiangshan? It is only by setting this point on the navigation that we can find Xiangshan.

A business, if there is no one willing to spend money to buy the product and find a way to scale sales, is not to find a successful orientation, will always be in the state of sitting ducks, only costs, expenses, consumption without income, the company is not only unable to move forward, once the funds consumed by the company also failed.

For this stage of the company, the core point is to save money, break a penny into two halves to spend, can spend a penny, never spend two pennies, can spend two pennies, never spend three pennies.

If you make a product that someone is willing to spend money on and find a way to sell it at scale, congratulations, your business has passed the first stage of development and can enter the second stage.

This stage, the development of the enterprise, to pass is the market pass.

This stage also takes about 3 years, and the core mission is to sell the products you make into the market sales champion. You made the right product, and find a sales method, and you put the product really sell into the market sales first, to get the money back, to earn profits, this center is still separated by a long, long distance.

Sell the product to the country, your sales capacity, distribution capacity, after-sales service capacity to the country, can you find the general manager of the branches across the country, can they manage well? Theoretically, the cost of our product is how much, the future in what scale can be reduced to how much, and we actually really do that scale to really reduce the cost, here are separated by a Pacific Ocean, think and do the distance between very large.

This stage is actually the most important thing for companies to focus on. Since we already know what kind of products to sell, and how to sell, in other words, since we already know where the income of the enterprise from, where the enterprise`s profits come from, then we have to do the rest of the things is to focus all our resources and strength to sell this product, to earn income back, to earn profits back.

If we do these, the enterprise has been a stable annual income of more than 100 million, net profit of ten million enterprises, you can enter into the third stage of development, the expansion of the enterprise, this stage generally also need about 3 years of time.

The task at this stage is to make a second or third successful product. A company that wants to grow sustainably can't rely on a single product line, it has to have multiple product lines. This is a very big challenge, many people may think, since we do a good job of a product, that do a good job of the second product is not a handful of natural things? Big mistake, most people in the world will only serial, that is, at the same time can only deal with one thing, do one thing and then do another thing, to be able to do two things at the same time, do two or even three things at the same time people need to be very strong ability.

For the enterprise is the same, all the organizational structure to serve a product line is very easy, but at the same time operating two product lines tend to lose sight of the other, busy. If the difficulty of doing one thing is A, then the difficulty of doing two things in parallel is not A*2, but A*3, A*4. That is why we have seen so many companies succeed in one product and then fail miserably in diversification.

The core point of this stage is management, the company needs to design a scientific management mechanism, so that each section has a leader, and so that each section is put into work with an entrepreneurial mindset.

This is the third stage of enterprise development, if we do a good job at this stage, the enterprise is a simultaneous two or even three product lines in operation, each product line is one of the best in the field of segmentation, so that the enterprise is not a sustainable development of the enterprise? Obviously.

After the third stage of the enterprise into the fourth stage of development, to enter this stage of development of the enterprise is very little, but also very happy, this stage is the maturity of the enterprise.

This stage of the enterprise, it has the ability and must go to the construction of their own ecosystem, upstream and downstream in the industry chain, the left and right swim layout, the formation of synergistic echo within the system, the formation of their own moat, in order to sustainable long-term development, this stage of the enterprise has been the majority of the platform-level enterprises.

What is the main task of the enterprise at this stage? The first is to layout, the second is to "buy insurance". The so-called layout is to intervene in the field of those who belong to the scope of your business, or the future may be your field of business, intervention can be a variety of ways, shareholding or their own to set up a department, set up a company can be the way, but must intervene. Otherwise, once a new business up, your huge empire may fall down, just like the traditional cell phone manufacturers in the smartphone era before the arrival, if you do not go to do the layout, you do not go to the preparation of their own smartphone products, that when the smartphone has become a trend, and then the big manufacturers will be out of the stage of history, this is the layout.

What is "buying insurance"? The insurance is to participate in those areas that may subvert you and impact you, mainly by means of capital.

We often talk about subversion, a new manufacturer, subverted a traditional old empire. But at this time, if the subversive itself contains the capital of the original leader, is not the equivalent of not being subverted? It is better for a king to be subverted by his own blood-related descendants than by someone who has nothing to do with him, and in a sense, this is not subversion, but evolution and abandonment.

In many cases, technology and brand renewal is inevitable, and it is impossible to complete from within the system, it is inevitable to be subverted by the outside, what we can do, and must do is to make that subversive body flowing is our blood, even if it is part of it.

The core task of a mature enterprise is to carry out extensive layout and buy insurance to ensure sustainable growth. Of course at this stage, I think the trick is for the business to be bold enough to spend money. When the enterprise is big to a certain extent, you should have a concept that a part of your profit such as 10% should be wasted, encourage internal innovation, for possible "layout" or possible "buy insurance" and participate in external companies, participate in charity, Supporting external innovation ...... Either way, you need to do these "uneconomical" things, and you should do them strategically, which is the core thing for a mature company to do.

For mature companies, increasing the growth rate or improving the efficiency of inputs and outputs is no longer the first thing to do, and avoiding being subverted by the trend and giving back to the community is the most important thing.

It can be seen that the development of any enterprise, and the development of people, need to go through the start-up period, the growth period, the expansion period, the maturity period. And each stage requires about 3 years, 4 periods add up to 12 years, any successful business, need more than 10 years of time.

It is important to do well in each stage and follow the rules of each stage.

Every entrepreneur, if we are clear about this, then we will not be in a hurry, and we will follow the long run to distribute our strength, our passion and our resources. When we do not win quickly in the long journey, we will also know that this is the normal situation. And when we know what 4 stages of business development we need to go through, what major problems we need to solve in each stage, and what the core points of each stage are, we can get through these 4 stages better, and get through each stage in a shorter period of time, so that we can accomplish a great business in a shorter period of time.

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