Here are the five things that I would recommend you do if you are thinking of starting a business in 2024. My name is Natalie Dawson and I am a business scaling expert. I have helped tens of thousands of companies grow their businesses, and I get a unique insight into what's happening in the small to mid-sized business world today. Because I am talking to business owners every single day, and this is what I would do if I was you starting from scratch today in 2024. So the first
place to start. Find a problem that actually needs to be solved if you're going to start a business. Do not just make up some random passion project that you think you like that you might think everybody else would like, but you haven't actually done any research or really identified that somebody is in need of this solution. If you're not focused on solving your customer's problem, you might just be caught up in the fact that you want to
start a business. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to start a business. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be an entrepreneur. There's nothing wrong with figuring out what you're going to do while you're figuring out how you're going to launch a business and how to become a business owner. But to be a business owner and to be a successful business owner, your business has to solve a lot of people's problems. A lot of people, not just one problem.
Or maybe sometimes people ask their friends like, hey, would you, would you like this solution? If I were to create this? That's not the way to start a business. Find an actual problem that people are struggling with, and then be
the best solution provider for them. When we started our business card ventures five years ago, we looked at the marketplace and had done a significant amount of research on industry trends for what was taking place in the small and mid-sized sector as it related to marketing support, finance support, operations support, leadership support, and infusing capital into small businesses. There was a massive need that we knew we were uniquely qualified to solve that need and to create solutions
for people who are having those problems. That is why we launched our business. And fast forward to five years later. We have invested in over a dozen businesses, and we have helped tens of thousands grow in scale through leveraging our expertise in marketing, sales, operation, people development, leadership. And so we knew going into it that we already had the solution for the problem that people had. It wasn't a made up problem. The second tip I would give
you is to collaborate. There is no reason for you to think that you need to just start a business all on your own. There are countless people out there who have businesses that they are looking to sell, businesses that they are needing to exit or transition out of due to a variety of reasons. So that is your opportunity. You can join forces with them to add to their existing business, or to entirely take over what they've already created.
There are no shortages of opportunities of existing businesses that need help from people who know how to operate a business. When we decided to start our business five years ago when it came to collaboration, my husband and I could have just said, oh, we're going to start this from scratch, just the two of us, and have to build every single piece. Instead of doing that, we went to an
event called the Tenants Growth Conference. We met Grant and Alana Cardone, and they had this amazing audience of people who were already going to them for sales, for marketing and for real estate investing. Well, we do business consulting, we do leadership training, we do all of this other stuff that their business wasn't currently offering to their existing clients, so it was the perfect add on to their business.
Before just starting a business from scratch. I would challenge you in 2024 to look around you and to see who could you collaborate with, where you could be additive with your skill set and create a joint venture, or potentially by somebody business who is looking to exit it, before just thinking that you have to start your business
from scratch. There is a better way to potentially do this with existing customers and an existing product that you can come in and influence, instead of spending all of your energy and attention starting from the beginning, an additional hack is find a mentor, find somebody who has done what you are trying to do and that you can learn from so that you don't have to waste time learning lessons from experience that you could have learned just
by paying somebody. You're literally trading your money for the time that somebody else spent wasted on incorrect product development. Focusing on the wrong thing with marketing, not doing the right things with setting up their scripts and their CRM. There is just so much that you can learn from finding a mentor who has done what you want to do, and pulling that time forward so you don't have to make those mistakes. Mentorship is something that has been a
game changer for me. I can name a handful of people that, as I've gone through my career, they have influenced me and been a sounding board when I'm running into problems. And even today, now that our business is quite large, I'm now looking to and connecting with people who have run $1 billion business because me talking to somebody who's run a. Million dollar business there. They're not at the same break point as I am now. I need to now figure out what is this next level
and what do I need to be thinking with? Where do I need to be spending my time? How do I need to develop myself in accordance with where I'm going? If you're starting a business in 2024, it's likely that most of your friends aren't also business owners and successful business owners, so you might not have a significant amount of access to people who just have these successful businesses. So in that case, what do you have to do?
You likely need to spend money to join masterminds and coaching groups, and different ways to connect with other business owners who are doing bigger things, and who are a few steps ahead of you on your journey. I would love to help you. And if you're interested in connecting with our Cardone Ventures team on ways that we can support you in starting your business, feel free to send an email to info at com and we will direct
you to the right resource. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to find mentors who have been there and done that, who want to help you and are willing to share their secrets with you. The successful action that I watch entrepreneurs do all the time is promote the product, promote the service, promote the business before it's ready.
Unsuccessful people think that the thing has to be perfect, dialed in every detail, flawlessly planned out and executed with a bow on top before they're going to promote to their network, to people that they're just meeting, that this thing is coming out. And the problem with waiting is
sometimes you never actually get it perfect. And in that process, from having an idea to launching it and getting the full thing ready, if you don't have money, if you don't have interest, meaning people opting in to learning more
or pre-ordering whatever your thing is, you lose steam. And there is a potential that during this time frame, you might not actually ever get to market because there wasn't the the excitement, there wasn't the accountability, there wasn't the next step of, oh, I'm actually going to launch this thing. Whereas people who know, hey, I'm promoting this thing now, and in six months from now it will be ready.
Those little daily reminders of somebody pre-ordering something or getting added to your list and being in communication with them. Not only can it sometimes serve as a like literal cash infusion into your business to allow you to keep building the thing, but it also reminds you that you're
doing something that people are interested in. And if you're starting to promote this in pre-sell and you recognize that nobody is buying and nobody is interested, you will likely make a better product because you can pivot and switch and make changes before the thing that you think is already in perfect is actually out to the market. Just to find out then that you don't have product market fit. So the hack 2024 start promoting your product now. Start
promoting the service now. Start promoting the book now. Whatever it is that you are creating the business, start promoting it now before you're ready, because that's actually going to create the momentum that you are going to need to make the thing successful. If I was to start our business all over again today in 2024, I would make crystal clear the exact revenue targets that we are going to hit. This is exactly what we did five years ago. We got clear on what we were going to do.
Year one, year two, year three, year 4 or 5 all the way. Three years ten. We got specific on what are we trying to create? Because when you're clear on what you're trying to create, you're going to have a better idea of what you need to do in order to get there. And when you're off, what you need to do to course correct. But I often find
that business owners just stumble into entrepreneurship. They decide one day that they want to start a business because they're passionate about something, without really getting clear on what their
targets are. And when you aren't clear on your targets, it's not just hard on yourself for decision making to be in alignment with those targets and to get inspiration and motivation, because you don't have targets, but it really becomes difficult and problematic when you're trying to recruit people to join you, to come work with you, to leave what they're doing. Great talent needs to know, man. What
is the exciting opportunity? And so if you don't have targets clearly defined and you're not crystal clear on, okay, this is where I'm going with this thing, I want to be able to take home $10,000 a month. I want to take home $100,000 a month. I want to take home $1 million a month or $10 million a month. If you're not thinking with how big do I want
this business to be? You're going to have a difficult time actually taking the steps to get team members to help you to make the right decisions about your product and service. And so devoid of the target, you just going to create a mess. Don't do that. Don't be like the majority of business owners who are out of business and fail because they don't actually know what the
plan is and where they're going. If you can be clear ish, I'm not saying you have a crystal ball and you actually know everything that's going to take place from now until 2034, like ten years from now seems like a long time away. I'm not asking you to predict the future, but what I am saying is you should have a really clear target. Something that says, hey, we decided that we are going to impact the lives of 50,000 customers in our average customer is going to
pay us $1,000 for an engagement. So this is how much revenue we're going to do. And when you're clear on that target, and that becomes just this resounding thing that you constantly talk about, you constantly go back to, people will take you more seriously. You will have more clarity, and you'll actually have more conviction into why you started this business to begin with. Because it's not just about I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to be
an entrepreneur. It's about something much bigger. It's about an impact. It's about creating something that you are actually looking forward to creating versus, oh, I'm just willy nilly trying to figure out this entrepreneurship thing. You're starting a business, you got to take your business seriously and you got to take your goal seriously. So there is no room left for, oh, I'm just thinking about starting a business. No, forget that you're starting a business and it is going to do
X in year one. It's going to do Y and year two. And you are looking for great people to join you on your mission. If you're struggling with your mindset around starting a business and feel a little bit uncertain with your confidence, are you going to be successful and how can you know that you're going to be successful? So you avoid the embarrassing parts of starting a business and failing in your business? I would highly recommend you read this book. I happen to know the author quite well.
He is my husband and he wrote this book called nine Figure Mindset How to go from zero to over $100 million in Net Worth. This book is chock full of different pieces of advice, guidance, and really tactical things that you could implement today to change your belief system, to be able to do different things that will create the result that you're looking to create and having success with your business in 2024.