Everybody wants to start his/her own business but not everybody knows how and where to start. Here, some successful entrepreneurs share their stories.
Suraj Shrestha
Shrestha is the man behind Anthropose and believes in taking the plunge. He has a ‘when you are in deep waters, you will learn to swim’ kind of attitude.
The key to starting a business is to take a leap despite the anxiety you may have about it. You will not know whether something may take off or fail if you don’t begin it. That is what helped me get my business on the road. I had my plans, I had an inkling of how things would turn out, but I also had my doubts.
One of the best decisions I made for my business early on is deciding on the core members of the team. For a business that has just been established, nothing is more important than the team you work with. People should remember that starting a venture and the skills required to scale the operations are two completely different ball games. As an entrepreneur one should always be working towards honing data analytics skills, interpersonal relationships, and keep up with the current trends.
Essential tests
I think it is a wise idea to start investing on these skills early on. The things that matter the most in business is perseverance and agility. A lot of aspiring entrepreneurs I have met have the tenacity to make it. Whether they do make it or not however is a completely different question. Have a clear goal but keep failure as an option. And have the will power and strength to start over again.
Aashish Adhikari
Adhikari is the owner of Red Mud Café who truly believes that failures are the stepping stones to success.
To assume that you are going to succeed in your first attempt at business is utter stupidity. The fact is, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to be ready to fail.
In some ways, I think many businessmen have that innate tendency to take risks. It’s like being fond of adventure sports, for example. While there are people who prefer being in their comfort zone, there are those who are more inclined to take the leap.
When you are starting a business everybody has that anxiety as well as a list of concerns but when you have that sort of mentality, you tend not to focus on the risks alone. For them, it’s more of a glass half full scenario. We see that it is a lot easier for these folks to get started.
However, you can learn how to take risks as well. The catch here of course is that you have to start first. You learn how to take risks by taking risks, chances and by not being afraid to start off on an idea. There were many projects that I was involved in before Red Mud as well but nobody has heard about them. It’s just the way it goes. These bad experiences helped me with the early stages of Red Mud as well. By that time, I wasn’t scared of the worst case scenario. So what if I failed again? The prospect didn’t bother me anymore because I had already been there so many times before. So get started.
If you are recently out of college and don’t want to take risks right away, seek mentorship, learn, and do your homework. Just because you are well educated or are a good presenter, doesn’t mean you will get investments easily. Also I meet many aspiring entrepreneurs and, I think for them, it’s very important to distinguish between what will work and what are mere fads. You can’t afford to be deluded about these things.
Smriti Tuladhar
Tuladhar is the proprietor of the chocolate company, Bittersweet. She believes all you need to start and succeed in business is the determination to work hard and educate yourself along the way.
When my friend and I submitted a chocolate business idea to Idea Studio, a business incubator at Kathmandu University School of Management (KUSOM), we just had a hunch that this business idea would sell. I didn’t even know how to make chocolates in the first place. I started doing my research after my idea got approved. I went to Thailand and Malaysia where I worked at a lot of hotels and bakeries in every possible department and learnt everything I could about making chocolates.
For me the initial challenge, besides learning how to make chocolates of course, was keeping my starting capital to a minimum. I didn’t want to make a huge investment because I didn’t know how the business would go. The biggest mistake people make while starting a business is putting all their savings into it. I believe you should never do that unless you are a hundred percent sure and you can never be that sure in business.
Also, starting a business has become a fad of sorts in the recent times. What people don’t realize is that the challenge doesn’t lie in starting a business but in sustaining it.
You can start anything you want but are you up for giving it everything you’ve got to make sure you can sustain it in the long run? You have to be ready to commit time and energy, and be willing to work really, really hard if you want to be an entrepreneur. Most people only see the fun side of being an entrepreneur without realizing all the hard work that goes behind it.
