Starting a business in America is every entrepreneur’s dream because that’s where the real money, business experiences, and challenges are. However, if you are a business owner in another country, entering the American market is challenging at best, but it is possible.
If you are the owner and founder of a startup, there are things you should know before you decide to start a business in America. These ‘things’ can mean the difference between your business failing and ‘making it in America, and they are the subject of this article.
Be weird, be different.
Starting up a company in America can be challenging. Still, the American consumer is always looking for a unique product or service that offers them good value.
Being an industry leader can be beneficial because your company gets to set the standards in your industry, and you can tap into the market before anyone else gets to them.
Therefore, you should seek good business ideas that other companies are not selling or doing. You should formulate a good strategy and plan to ensure that your company will be one of the 20% of companies that succeed in America.
Sometimes you will face great success, and sometimes you will be heartbroken by massive failures.
You can liken starting and running a startup business in America to riding on a roller coaster ride because there will be ‘ups’ in the form of groundbreaking successes, and there will be ‘downs’ in the form of heartbreaking and immense failures. You must ‘experience failure if you want to succeed’ because you will never know what you are doing wrong.
The same is valid with starting a business in America (or anywhere, for that matter). Because no ‘business guide’ describes how to launch and run a startup in America that will be successful from the beginning and experience nothing but success, you will learn through ‘trial and error’ – this means that you will make mistakes. But you have a good business understanding. In that case, you will draft a good plan and strategy before starting your business to ensure that it does not go under after five years because failed companies are expensive and tend to ruin people’s reputations in the business world.
Networks spell success
There is an old saying, ‘ it’s not so much what you know, but who you know (in the business world) that matters.’ There is a lot of truth to this because the right connections can take your business places.
Good people to have in your network are business mentors and great clients (ones who will actually pay and stick around) because they can make a massive difference in making your American startup a success.
It would help if you worked as a team.
They say that people are a business’s greatest assets. You must work with your employees and be open to sharing experiences, successes, and challenges with them. This is the only way your American business will survive in the long run.
It would help if you had a mentor.
Even if you have oodles of broad business experience, you will be a newbie in running a business in America. Therefore you need advice, ideas, plans, and strategies from people who have ‘been there and done that because they will guide you to success.
The path to success is not set in stone.
Just as no person is alike, no business is synonymous. This means that all companies have different paths to success, constantly changing as their industry changes. It would help if you remembered to ‘go with the flow with your American business.
You will be married to your work.
If you want to slack off and rest at the beach while your back office works like crazy to make your business successful, you are in the wrong profession. When you launch and run a business in America, you become an entrepreneur, and entrepreneurs work around the clock to ensure that their companies will succeed.
Don’t believe everyone and everything you hear.
An old saying is that ‘opinions are like assholes because everyone has one.’ This is especially true in business, where everyone and their brother will give you their fifty cents on the best way to run your business successfully. You should take it in stride, stick to your idea, plan, and strategy, and only listen to the successful experts.
Don’t expect to make it big in the beginning.
If you make it big initially, that’s great, but don’t count on it. The best way to ensure that your American business succeeds is to stay focused on your plans, ideas, strategies, and long-term goals and expect to make losses in the initial years because most startups do!
It would help if you had mentors, advisors, and counselors.
Since these people have sound and valuable advice that will make your business succeed in the initial and later years, you need to talk to people who know what they are doing and talking about.
You need to plan business success.
Nothing is predictable in the business world, but success is not. However, you could have the best idea, plan, and strategy and still fail because lady luck was not on your side. It would help to remember that your startup’s path to success will be unpredictable and may not even exist. You always need a great exit strategy if that is the case!
Partner up
Let’s face it, you are a newcomer to the American market, and people tend to do business with the established players they know, trust, and like. This is why you need a business partner to help you finance your business, share the work, and advise you when needed.
Learn from the experience of others (entrepreneurs)
You can learn a lot from people who have tried what you are attempting to do before. Moreover, you will learn to avoid their mistakes and have better and more insight into the factors that made their business a success so that you can implement them into your business plan and strategy.
Only some great ideas succeed in business.
You could have had the world’s most incredible horse and carriage business in 1920. Still, even though you had a great idea and product, it would have been bound to be a failure in light of the growing popularity and fantastic success of the Model T in America.
Similarly, more than having a great idea is needed to make it in business. It must be viable and backed by a great strategy and plan to succeed. That is why you should do a feasibility study before drafting a business plan to ensure that your business idea makes sense and will even work.
