What does it take to really need to successfully start a business? Martha Stewart, one of the most successful women in business today, lists down the essential elements to start an entrepreneurial venture in her book “The Martha Rules: 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Grow, or Manage a Business.”
The idea for the book came from Martha’s time in prison. While incarcerated for lying about a stock sale, Martha met with women serving their sentences in prison yet harboring dreams of becoming a business owner once they are released.
Given her proven success in building a business empire, the other women in prison constantly asked for her advice of what she thought about their business ideas.
1. Build your business success around something that you love.
2. Focus your attention and creativity on basic things, things that people need and want.
3. Create a business plan
that allows you to stay true to your big idea but helps you focus on the details.4. Teach so you can learn.
5. Use smart, cost-effective promotional techniques that will arrest the eye, tug at the heart, and convey what is unique and special about your business or service.
6. Quality should be placed at the top of your list of priorities, and it should remain there.
7. Build an A team.
8. When faced with a business challenge, evaluate or assess the situation, gather the good things in sight, abandon the bad, clear your mind, and move on.
9. In business, there’s a difference between a risk and a chance. A well calculated risk may very well end up as an investment in your business.
10. Make it beautiful.
Photo by Martha Stewart Living.