Making The Leap: From Employee To Entrepreneur
A job is a job. Entrepreneurship is the American dream. What do you want to be when you grow up? You ask yourself as a child and get that childlike, excited feeling - but then your answer changes as life gets in the way.
Unless you have that kid inside of you who has never given up hope, thinking about going from employee to entrepreneur can feel like the scariest thing imaginable.
As the founder of The Rideshare Guy and a ridesharing driver, I am living my dream. I have been an entrepreneur for three years and there are many things I wish had been explained or made more clear to me prior to becoming an entrepreneur.
I was on my way to earning an MBA before I found Uber and Lyft, so naturally, my first company was also focused on ridesharing. I had no experience, but an understanding of the industry. I was going to run my own business.
If you are an entrepreneur now, and you are in that starting mode, you should really think about the following questions:
1. What is your business doing?
2. Who is your customer?
3. Who is your competition?
4. How does your business make money?
5. How do you make money?
6. What are your long-term goals?
7. How do you make money?
8. What is your business model?
9. Who is your competition?
10. How do you market to customers?
11. What are your short-term goals?
12. Who are you competing against right now? Who could be next year's biggest competitor? [NOTE: Keep an eye out for new competitors. There are tons of smaller companies that could emerge as the competition in your niche - regardless of how much you think you've "beaten them".]
These are questions that everyone reading this should be asking themselves. It's really good to know at a certain level what your business is doing and who your customer is before you even know what to do or who to compete with.
The best advice I can give anyone is to start small, try things out and re-evaluate them over time. Don't assume you know everything about the ridesharing industry before you even start a company or even go out there as a driver.
I failed at being a rideshare entrepreneur and only became successful after I completely changed my business model. It took several years, but now my companies are doing well and I am able to attend conferences, events and summits.
Being an entrepreneur is difficult, but it is also incredibly rewarding. It's easy to get discouraged when you are running a business. It's a roller coaster of thoughts and emotions, but when it works out, it works out big time.
Given the chance to start over again, I would have been a little less aggressive with the first company I started. I treated ridesharing like traditional companies are treated - and that's not what Uber or Lyft is.
I failed because I made assumptions. And that is one of the biggest things that entrepreneurs do. They make assumptions.
For example, I assumed I knew the ridesharing industry and that I knew how to run a company with limited resources. This is impossible to know through experience.
As an entrepreneur, you need to be able to quickly learn about anything new because you will have no prior knowledge of what is going on in the world around you. Entrepreneurs must continue learning and adapting their business model day-by-day in order to stay competitive.
If you want to start a business, make it a point to not assume anything. You'll save yourself some time and potential money in the long-run. A lot of entrepreneurs assume that Uber and Lyft are similar to companies like Groupon or LivingSocial.
They are completely different businesses. For example, Groupon deals with coupons and discounts which have premium value for the customer; Uber and Lyft do not just deal with discounted rides but transportation services at an affordable price for the customer.
Conclusion:
As a newbie, there are many things that you have to consider before starting a company. If you have no experience, what should you do? Should you start with a car service or with ridesharing? Do you need to be licensed to be an entrepreneur? Is there value in being an entrepreneur? These are complicated questions and cannot be answered from a book. You will have to figure things out for yourself. Start small and learn from your mistakes.