So you’re thinking about embarking on the exciting journey of being a business owner. Congrats! It’s indeed a huge accomplishment. 😌 More often than not, this adventure is portrayed as a shortcut to independence and financial freedom. But is the premise of “being your own boss” really a piece of cake? Today, we’ll uncover the expectations vs. reality of starting your own business and how to succeed as an entrepreneur. Ready to get started? Keep scrolling! 🌟
Maybe you’re dipping your toes into being an entrepreneur or have been in the game for a while. In any case, managing the expectations vs. reality of owning a business can make all the difference when building your brand strategy.
In this article, we’ll debunk some common misconceptions about what this job entails and how to get started on the right foot. Plus, we’ll also share key pointers on tackling entrepreneurship’s ups and downs, Placeit’s edition. Without further ado, let’s dive into Business 101! ✨
Business Bliss: Find Your Path! 🔎
- Starting Your Own Business: Expectations vs. Reality 🤔
- 1. ⏰️ Work Schedule: Expectations vs. Reality
- 2. 😀 Clients: Expectations vs. Reality
- 3. ⭐️ Branding: Expectations vs. Reality
- 4. 🎨 Design: Expectations vs. Reality
- 5. ✏️ Marketing: Expectations vs. Reality
- 6. 📲 Social Media: Expectations vs. Reality
- 7. 💸 Profits: Expectations vs. Reality
- Expectations vs. Reality: Onto You, Business Owner! 😉
Starting Your Own Business: Expectations vs. Reality 🤔
Perhaps you have awesome creative ideas lying around or want to turn a side gig into your professional career. But where to begin? Knowing how to succeed in business takes courage, organization skills, and the ability to adapt to the ever-changing market tides.
No worries! The good thing is you don’t have to do guesswork on how to become a business owner. That’s why we’re here. In this section, we’ll steer you through the intricate (yet thrilling!) process of turning your passion into a profitable opportunity. Consider this a quick “starting a business” checklist, expectations vs. reality style. 😀
🌳🍃 Do you have a passion for nature and outdoor spaces? Then, starting a landscaping business might just be the path for you!
1. ⏰️ Work Schedule: Expectations vs. Reality
🤩 Expectation: Goodbye to the 9 to 5!
Sure, nothing beats the idea of being your boss and organizing your workload and schedule accordingly. At first sight, it may seem that office hours are long gone while you get to enjoy awesome perks. By using a work schedule maker, you can efficiently manage your tasks and time. Keep in mind that you’ll essentially be responsible for ensuring everything runs smoothly. And running a business is no joke!
Moreover, if you’re just starting out, chances are you’ll be an all-rounder. AKA, you’ll have to wear multiple hats and serve as the:
🌟
Founder
🎨
Designer
💻
Marketer
✏️
Content Creator
📱
Social Media Manager
💵
Seller
💬
CSR
🔢
Accountant
📌 CSR = Customer Service Representative
… all at the same time! 🥴
🤯 Reality: You’ll Have to Manage a Heavy Workload
Incoming burnout? Let’s prevent this from happening! More often than not, it may feel that there aren’t enough hours in a day. So, it’s important to prioritize your business needs accordingly, set specific work hours, and stick to them.
Think of it this way: an excessive workload can eventually cause you to run out of steam, which will be counterproductive for your business. In other words, establishing an adequate work-life balance is key to success and managing the expectations vs. reality of running your enterprise.
🌟 Time Management Advice for Small Business Owners
✅ Make a “to-do” list of responsibilities, projects, and assignments you intend to accomplish during the day and assign blocks of time for each duty.
📆 Define short-term goals to break down your long-term objective into manageable tasks and maintain motivation.
🤍 Set time apart for yourself and take active breaks to refresh your mind and body. For instance, you can meditate, stretch, or take short walks.
⏳️ Bonus Reading: 8 Time Management Tips Small Business Owners Need To Know
2. 😀 Clients: Expectations vs. Reality
🤩 Expectation: Everyone Will Love My Brand!
Onto our next set of expectations vs. reality! When you are first starting, it may feel like promoting your business to everyone is a good idea. Soon enough, you’re hitting that “post” button on every social media group or platform and hoping for the best.
But, next thing you know, you’re trying to sell fuzzy pet sweaters to bird owners. Or advertising cozy snow gear to clients who live in the Sahara Desert. 🥵 Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? That’s what happens when you don’t narrow down your audience. 😳
🤯 Reality: Your Business Isn’t for Everyone, and That’s Ok!
Unique business ideas call for special clients! That is to say, finding your target audience and niche is necessary before strategizing all your marketing, advertising, and branding efforts. At first glance, you may wonder if choosing a niche sounds limiting. However, it’s quite the opposite!
For starters, it allows you to target a specific group of potential clients who share interests, needs, and even shopping habits. But it doesn’t stop there! By specializing in a unique market segment, you’ll also reduce your competition, thus increasing the chances of positioning your brand.
As you can see, choosing a niche is strategic. Of course, as a business owner, you’ll also be able to tailor your products, marketing resources, services, and content to your target audience.
🌟 Useful Pointers to Select a Niche
Are you all set to get started? Great! Here are a few questions you can ask yourself as a starting point:
🚨 1. What specific problem or need does my product/service address?
🌟 2. What’s my business’s unique value proposition that differentiates it from competitors?
👤 3. Who are my ideal customers, and what interests them?
📈 4. Is this segment oversaturated, or are there any market gaps?
🤔 5. Are my skills and expertise a good fit for this niche? If not, how can I leverage them?
💜 6. Do I have a personal connection to this niche that I can fit into my brand?
📚 Recommended Reading: How to Find a Profitable Niche for Your Business
3. ⭐️ Branding: Expectations vs. Reality
🤩 Expectation: Creating a Brand? Piece of Cake!
On the surface, creating a brand name for your business might seem like it’s all it takes to launch it. Add in a few designs, and boom! It’s ready to take the world by storm, one client at a time. But is it really that simple? We don’t think so!
Cut to a few weeks later, and you might still be debating which name sounds catchier and which shade of blue goes better with your logo. Or worse, maybe you’ve launched your business without really defining an overall visual identity. As a result, all your social media accounts look like they are made for 7 different brands. 😟
Let’s fix these expectations vs. reality scenarios!
🤯 Reality: Branding Isn’t Just a Piece of Cake; It’s the Whole Bakery!
Building a strong brand image involves more than just coming up with a creative design. Overall, it’s about how all your visual assets work cohesively to communicate your business’s core essence. So, what graphic elements should work into your strategy? Well, be sure to pay attention to your:
®️ Logo
✏️ Typography
🎨 Color palette
📸 Photos & Illustrations
⭐️ Graphic elements
Combined, all these visual assets shape how customers perceive your brand, thus creating a connection to it. In other words, think of the message, values, identity, and personality you want your brand to represent.
🌟 Explore Further: How to Create a Brand Identity From Scratch With Placeit
🌟 Top Branding Tips for Small Businesses
👩🏻 Create a buyer persona. After you’ve done industry research, create a detailed description of your ideal customer. Include key aspects like age, gender, location, professional status, interests, hobbies, pain points, and lifestyle. This will allow you to produce targeted content.
📲 Aim for a consistent visual identity. You may feel tempted to use different color combos or font pairings on each social media post. Nevertheless, it’s best to adhere to your chosen style. Consistency gives your business a professional and polished look. Plus, it makes it easier for customers to identify and remember your brand.
✨ Use high-quality visuals. Sometimes, a picture is worth more than a thousand words. So, choosing the right illustrations, photos, and designs can state a clear message that aligns with your brand. Moreover, it makes your business memorable, which is key to standing out among the competition.
📌 Don’t Miss: How to Get Your Business Branding Right
4. 🎨 Design: Expectations vs. Reality
🤩 Expectation: Creating a Logo? How Hard Can It Be?
After all, it’s just choosing an illustration, a catchy phrase that goes with it, and some pretty colors, right? Wrong! Flash forward, your logo now looks like a messy artwork, color palettes are causing you an existential crisis, and clients are trying to guess what your design means. Certainly, not the expectations vs. reality you were thinking of! 🙃
As part of your visual branding, your logo reflects your business’s identity, concept, personality, and values. Therefore, a few lines and images won’t do the trick for communicating the right message.
On the one hand, a cookie-cutter design isn’t memorable enough to stand out. Plus, you wouldn’t want to fall into overused styles or business cliches. On the other hand, cluttering your design with graphic elements might overwhelm potential customers and transmit a wrong idea. 😵💫
🤯 Reality: Designing Takes Time, Expertise, and Skills
What to do now? One option is to hire an external designer. However, this may exceed your budget as an aspiring business owner. Is it time to break the bank? No worries! Here’s the good news: Placeit by Envato has over 20,000+ professional logos carefully designed and curated by experts.
That way, you just need to choose from our different on-theme categories, customize it to suit your business needs, download your design, and voila! If you’re a Placeit subscriber, you’ll receive your logo in a PNG format, plus a background-free option. ✨
🌟 Savvy Design Tips for Small Business Owners
If you’re looking for additional insights or want to take your inspo up a notch, feel free to check out this content:
⭐️ The Ultimate Guide to Logo Design
😌 How to Use Your Logo Like a Pro
5. ✏️ Marketing: Expectations vs. Reality
🤩 Expectation: My Idea Will Be an Overnight Success
After countless days of coming up with the perfect idea to share with the world, things start falling into place. It’s only natural that people will love your brand-new business and spread a good word to everyone. Therefore, you don’t need to worry about building a marketing strategy right away. And, if you’re lucky, it may even go viral on social media. Easy peasy!
Yes, it’s easy to assume that advertising your brand requires a few pictures, posts, and videos. However, you’ll compete with other well-established businesses within the same niche. So, while word-of-mouth marketing is important, it’ll take more strategy than that before you start seeing results and increasing your numbers.
🤯 Reality: You Need a Marketing Strategy to Boost Your Business
So, what is marketing strategy exactly? We’re happy to answer this question! In short, it serves as a framework for your business’s:
⭐️ Value proposition
✅ Objective
✨ Branding
🔍 Main competitors
🎯 Target audience
Additionally, a marketing plan answers how your business will achieve those goals. Think of it as a game plan with all the specific tactics and actions you’ll implement to make your strategy happen. As you can see, everything aligns together!
Moreover, having a clear vision of where you stand and what you want to accomplish will help you understand where to redirect your efforts. Overall, embracing a marketing-centric and strategic mindset can significantly enhance your ability to maximize your time, budget, and workload.
🌟 Expert Marketing Tips for a Small Business
🔎 Conduct keyword research. It’s time to put on your detective glasses! SEO tools and workflows like Ahrefs, Semsrush, and Ubersuggest can help you pinpoint popular search queries within your niche, maximize your brand’s visibility, and create relevant content.
👑 Keep an eye out for trends. It’s a good idea to stay active on social media to spot the buzz in your chosen market. In addition, you can follow industry experts and join forums or professional platforms to stay informed on the latest updates and upcoming trends.
📱 Use the power of social media. Setting up an account for your business allows you to engage with potential customers, build an online presence, and showcase your brand through high-quality visuals. Plus, it gives you the chance to network and identify possible partnerships.
6. 📲 Social Media: Expectations vs. Reality
🤩 Expectation: I Just Need to Post, That’s Easy!
From creating a video with the latest trend to a thousand likes, shares, and followers in a week, right? As easy as that! Fast forward to a few days later, you’re now fighting the social media algorithm while trying to manage 5 different accounts simultaneously. 😵💫
While online platforms can be a great way to boost your brand’s visibility and reach new customers, it’s no walk in the park! Some common misconceptions follow the idea that social media is easy to do and everything depends on likes and shares. Let’s tackle these expectations vs. reality, one like at a time!
🤯 Reality: Social Media Success Is More Than Just Likes & Shares
Of course, social media thrives on engaging visuals, and getting likes can be an important performance indicator. However, that’s just one part of it! Staying active on multiple platforms isn’t a one-way avenue where you’ll just need to post, and everyone will enjoy your content. Here’s what to do instead:
🌟 Winning Social Media Tips for Business Owners
💜 Create valuable content that resonates with your audience’s interests, pain points, and experiences.
✅ Understand the do’s and don’ts of what works on each app: audiences, visuals, captions, posting frequency, and engagement styles.
🤝🏻 Connect with your viewers, listen to their feedback, questions, and challenges, and respond accordingly.
📈 Gather data and make strategic decisions based on metrics such as conversions, impressions, engagement, and growth rate.
Rather than focusing on going viral, it’s important you build a relationship with your audience. That way, your brand will be perceived as more authentic, which will ultimately help build consumer trust and increase your business’s appeal. 😌
💫 Post Like a Pro With Placeit
As discussed in our first set of expectations vs. reality, managing different tasks as your business’s all-rounder can be an exhausting process. Luckily, creating awesome visuals for social media isn’t something you need to worry about!
Placeit has tons of social media templates created by design experts to perfectly match your brand’s vision. Moreover, there’s no need to start from scratch to meet specific size guidelines. Our templates are fully customized to fit each platform’s size dimensions perfectly. Just hit the download button, and you’re good to go!
TikTok ✨
Pinterest ✨
Instagram ✨
📱 Explore Further: 6 Social Media Platforms Your Brand Should Use This Year
7. 💸 Profits: Expectations vs. Reality
🤩 Expectation: Money Will Roll Right In!
Last but not least, our last pair of expectations vs. reality! You’ve probably heard success stories from people who turned their ideas into multi-million dollar companies. You know the tale: it all started with an idea, and they’re swimming in cash before they know it. 🤑
Granted, reaching financial freedom is one of the primary reasons entrepreneurs choose to create and run their own enterprises. But, while the first premise might be true in some cases, the reality is more than they led on. So, no, that millionaire status may not be just around the corner (yet!).
🤯 Reality: Rising Into a Profitable Business Is a Gradual Process
Behind a great idea, there must be a strategy for achieving it. And when it comes to running a business, having strong financial skills or a knowledgeable bookkeeper is a must. For example, if you’re planning to run a t-shirt business, you need to get all your numbers in line. This includes aspects like:
👕 Product base cost. How much does it take to create or produce the item? (labor, direct materials, supplies)
💸 Desired profit. How much revenue do you want to generate out of the product?
📦 Overhead expenses. What does it cost to run the business? (rent, utilities, shipping, salaries, etc.)
🪄 Our Secret Tool: Placeit’s Profit Calculator
Luckily, alongside the best tips for starting a small business, we also have top-tier tools for entrepreneur success. With our free Profit Margin Calculator, you just need to enter your data, and voila! In a few seconds, you’ll get the perfect selling price to hit your revenue goals.
Additionally, you can also enter how many products you’d like to sell and if any additional costs need to be considered. With all this info at hand, you’ll have a clear grasp on how to venture into the business path. Ready to crush those numbers? You got it!
Placeit’s Guide to Business 101 😌
By this point, you may be thinking, “I want to start a business but have no ideas“. Don’t worry! If that’s the case, we’ve got you covered. Placeit’s blog is your go-to source for expert insights on industry trends, marketing strategies, and branding tips.
Time to jump into action! Here are some low-cost business ideas you might want to tap into:
💻 How to Get Started With Affiliate Marketing
Expectations vs. Reality: Onto You, Business Owner! 😉
Are you ready to conquer the business world? Great! We’re very excited about the possibilities this entrepreneurial path holds for you. Of course, we hope you are too! 😉
Know that while small business challenges may arise, venturing into this opportunity is an absolutely rewarding experience. After all, no one will understand better than you what it takes to see your ideas turn into a thriving enterprise.
Plus, you’ll know what to do now that you’ve gotten a deeper dive into the expectations vs. reality of being a business owner. With the right strategy and expert insights by your side, steering your way towards success is possible. 🌟
Now, the spotlight is yours! Are there any other expectations vs. reality moments you’ve encountered as an entrepreneur? Feel free to share them in the comment section below! It’s your thoughts and opinions that make our community thrive. Till next time. 😀
