6 Entrepreneurship Tips for Programmers


By the time I’m writing this article, I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m a guy just like most of you, working a 9 to 5 job to earn a living. But I do have a goal. I wish to be an entrepreneur, to create my own business, to be my own boss, and to be not forced to do work.

I’m on that journey to become an entrepreneur. Today, I want to show you what I’ve already learned about entrepreneurship and building a business. If you want to become an entrepreneur, I hope this article will help you.

Entrepreneurship Tips for Programmers

1. Think and Act like an Entrepreneur

You might have noticed the first sentence of this article where I said I’m not an entrepreneur. Actually, it’s not true. Even though I’m not doing my business full-time, I’m an entrepreneur inside my mind. So, here’s my first tip for you.

If you want to become an entrepreneur, think and act like you already are one. If you think and act like an entrepreneur, your subconscious mind will get used to it, and you’ll naturally become a business person.

I don’t like the concept of working for a company, where I spend all my time and energy on building someone else’s dream. If we spend our whole life building someone else’s dream, then who will work for our own dream?

It is really important to have the right mindset to be an entrepreneur. If you have an entrepreneurial mindset, it will be pretty easy to make your dream a reality.

2. Building a Business Starts with Building an Audience

The best approach to building a business is to build an audience first. First of all, you need to define your niche and your potential customers. Select a particular niche only if there is enough audience. Once you define your potential audience, you must attract and make them your customers.

How do you attract customers? The best way to attract them is to provide value for free. Give them something that will surprise them so that they’ll return.

The famous entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has a book called JabJabJabRight HookIn this book, he talks about giving a lot of value to your customers that the competition is not doing. Once they become your raving fans, you can sell them whatever you want.

Building a business requires a lot of knowledge, especially from people who are already crushing it. You’ll get a ton of knowledge from several great books. At the end of this article, I’ll tell you my favorite entrepreneurial books that you must read.

Once you build an audience, you can always do the monetization. Once you build an audience, you can always do the monetization. Most people focus on the monetization part first, ignoring the audience. Building an audience is the key part. If your company has a fanbase, you can make money by launching your products or services.

3. You Can’t Skip The Hustle

If you’re thinking about business as a way to avoid work, then you are on your way to failure. Hustling is really important in building any business. That is why most people fail in their business as they are lazy in doing the grind.

Think about this. If you build a business without any hard work, then anybody can do it, right? Even if you have temporary success, someone else who is willing to work harder will come and punch you in the face.

At first, you will feel like nothing is happening. But, you need to make a process and trust the process. Give a long-enough timeline for yourself before you start. You need to keep on working and doing the hustle without double-checking. Eventually, your business will hit a point where it will grow exponentially.

So, if you want to build a business, be ready to work hard, especially in the first few years. Later, when you grow your business to a level, you can outsource most tasks, and then you can do whatever you want. Watch the below video to get a kick on your butt.

4. Your Technical Skills Alone Won’t Do The Job

Technical work is not the most important thing in building a business. If you’re a programmer, that doesn’t mean you can build a successful software business. If you’re a good chef, that doesn’t mean that you can run a successful restaurant. You see, building a business requires a special kind of skill set.

The very first skill you need to have to build a business is marketing. Marketing skills are really important since it is the thing that attracts customers. It doesn’t matter even if your product is the best in the world if no one knows about it.

If you are good at marketing, you can do well even if your product is just average. Obviously, the better your product, the better your business will be. But marketing is really critical.

If you are creating an online business, I would highly recommend you to read The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib. This is a great book that will give a lot of information on doing a successful business.

5. Develop Your Communication Skills

Communication skills are absolutely necessary for building a successful business. You need to be good at communication skills to convey your thoughts and ideas to your customers. This is one skill I need to focus on a lot more.

I’m not a native English speaker, and hence, it is really important for me to become better at expressing my thoughts in English. Even if you’re from an English-speaking country, you need to know what to speak and how to speak according to a particular situation.

Communication skills become better only by practice. Your brain needs the training to organize your thoughts and put them in the correct order. A great way to start is by writing. Writing will help you to organize your thoughts, and it will eventually improve the way to express your thoughts.

If you’re confident enough, start a YouTube channel and try to talk to a camera. It will be difficult in the beginning. Eventually, you’ll improve. If you want proof, go and look at the very first videos from your favorite YouTube channels. Almost everyone starts with crappy videos. But eventually, everyone improves as they train their brains many times.

One more way to improve your communication skills is to hang out with people who are great at communication, or who want to develop their communication skills.

You can join a Toastmasters group in your area if you can. That will really help a lot in taking your skills to the next level. I’m also trying to up my communication skills as I do have a lot of scope for improvement.

6. Become a Side Hustler Before You Go Full-time

Don’t just quit your job right away to start a business. You need to start it while you’re doing the job. There are a few exceptions. But for most cases, if you’re not rich, you need to become a side-hustler first before you go full-time with your business. That is the reason why I’m currently doing a 9 to 5 job.

For me, the goal is to replace the income I earn from my job with income from the business. When I reach a point where I can cover all the expenses with the money from the business, I can quit my job.

For some of you, if you’re willing to take the risk, you can jump directly into the business. But, I would recommend you to do the side-hustle first, since we need to put food on the table while we’re doing the business.

Also, doing the side hustle along with your job will help you learn the habit of working hard. Building a business is not easy. If you work hard on the side with your full-time job until a point, you will understand what it takes to build a business. You can also fund your business requirements with the money that you make from your job.

Once your business takes off, you can plan to quit your job and go full-time with your business. Before you jump, think about the worst-case scenario that could happen. If you believe you can handle it and have an emergency fund ready to cover up if things go wrong, you can confidently take the risk.

My Favorite Books On Entrepreneurship and Building Businesses

I would like to recommend a few books that I think everybody starting a business need to read. Reading books and developing your knowledge is really important in business. You need to be constantly learning and implementing what you’ve learned.

Here are some books that contain an immense amount of value from successful entrepreneurs who already achieved a lot of things in their life.

  • The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco – You must read this book to develop your mindset and financial intelligence.
  • The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib – This book is a great resource if you’re building an online business. It will help you build an audience and launch your product.
  • E-myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber – This is a must-read book for all small businesses (especially physical businesses). Michael is regarded as the best small-business guru, and the book has a lot of his insights.
  • Deep Work by Cal Newport – This book will help you to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. You really need deep work to launch your business. This book will help you to do the work in the best way.
  • The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris – This is yet another book that will change your mindset. Tim talks about how he works only 4-hours per week but still earns a lot more money than the majority of the population.

Conclusion

Entrepreneurship is a really exciting game, and we want to play it hard. We may fail sometimes, but failure is just a learning experience. Hence, you either win, or you’ll learn. As Grant Cardone says, if you’re going to make mistakes in life, make them fast.

I want to give you one more quote before you leave.

” The sweat of success is failure, and I am soaking wet “.

– MJ deMarco

I hope this article has given you some value. If so, let me know your thoughts in the comments. Also, feel free to ask your doubts or queries.

I would appreciate it if you would be willing to share this article. It will encourage me to create more useful articles like this.

Do not procrastinate. Take action!

Ashwin Joy

I'm the face behind Pythonista Planet. I learned my first programming language back in 2015. Ever since then, I've been learning programming and immersing myself in technology. On this site, I share everything that I've learned about computer programming.

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