“Strike while the iron is hot” is an idiom for aggressive entrepreneurs as everyone knows opportunity knocks once in a blue moon. With the drive, warm support and available resources it is indeed tempting to be a big shot entrepreneur. What is you’re in situation that you can start big, will you go for it instantly or take small steps first? On the side, business experts’ advice is “think big and start small.”
The common reason in following this mantra is to neutralize the risk and avoid failures. But apparently, there are other advantages too in starting small like building of your confidence in business. In the article ‘The Power in Thinking Small When Starting Your Business’ on entrepreneurs-journey.com, it’s mentioned that enjoying realistic and small success serve as training to take higher challenge.
“When we give ourselves small goals that we can reach regularly, we build confidence as entrepreneurs. Our confidence will have a big effect on the overall momentum we establish in our business,” entrepreneurs-journey.com’s tip. “Establish small bench marks that give you an indication that you are progressing toward your goals.
On the other note, Yaro Starak’s website shared that having “small narrow focus” will help businessmen to concentrate on endeavors that give revenues than wasting time on things that’s waste of time.
“Many people add activities that aren’t necessarily responsible for generating revenue. The truth is, you only need to master the phase of your business that you’re in right now,” the site added.
If you’re looking for a business with similar approach, giant company like Google can be a good example. In the report gathered of Small Business Trends, Google’s former Senior Vice President of Adwords and AdSense and current Youtube’s Senior Vice President Susan Wojcicki shared that taking small steps is part of the Google’s Eight Pillars of Innovation.
“No matter how ambitious the plan, you have to roll up your sleeves and start somewhere. Google Books, which has brought the content of millions of books online, was an idea that our Founder, Larry Page, had for a long time. People thought it was too crazy even to try, but he went ahead and bought a scanner and hooked it up in his office. He began scanning pages, timed how long it took with a metronome, ran the numbers and realized it would be possible to bring the world’s books online. Today, our Book Search index contains over 10 million books,” Wojcicki imparted.
“Similarly, AdSense, which delivers contextual ads to websites, started when one engineer put ads in Gmail. We realized that with more sophisticated technology we could do an even better job by devoting additional resources to this tiny project.”
In taking one step at a time, entrepreneurs also essential details of their business that they may overlook if they opt to go big time at once. For instance, there are firms that miss something in feasibility study that suddenly appears when the business is already running. The entrepreneurs that start small can easily adjust to demands or problems and continue to improve their products or services. That’s not the case for those big time investors that need to implement dramatic changes such as selling products at the lower price, cost-cutting expenses or worst file bankruptcy. Furthermore, it also frustrating for company’s leaders to see their inferiors as underachiever and clients who are very skeptical if their talents.
“Starting small qualifies you for bigger and better things. If you can’t successfully lead one person, who is going to entrust you with an entire division? Don’t despise the seeming smallness of the necessary tasks in front of you. You never know where they’ll lead,” The John Maxwell Company shared.
