#VLearned Give Your Business 6 Months before You Decide Something

Just some background so that you get the context. 

2018, I opened a pre-order business for Korea/Oz/Us products. It doesn't have an offline store, only an online one. The employee was the only one who did the marketing, finance, ops, and customer services, and my partner was a buyer. 

In 2022, I opened a distributor company, having six employees with offline and online stores. But the business is more heavy on ops.

From that two businesses (I have another that failed because I opened it right before the pandemic), I learned that you could see the future of your business after six months. These are some patterns that I learned after six months of opening some businesses:

1. Sales. The rise in sales will happen from 5 to 6 months after the 

launching. Be patient. On the 4th or 5th, you can see your sales pattern and do some marketing gimmicks to increase the sales to each customer segment. Read the data and the conversation between your customer service and the customer. After the 6th month, you can see which strategy matters for every customer segment. In the six months also we finally get profit. 

2. Don't scale before six months. Do outsource as best as you can. Your business is still in the development phase. Your customer gets the awareness and tries to adapt to you. Trying to make another purchase and become a loyal customer. Before your one-time customer becomes loyal to you, don't scale fast. In my experience, in the 4th month, our sales increased significantly. Because I have money, I thought I could add more capital to buy transportation. Thank God I didn't do that. I rented instead of buying another vehicle. That’s the best decision that I made. This also applies to the employee. Don't hire just because your sales increase or your sales are higher on 2-3 days than the other. Always remind to hire slowly.

Oh, I also learned that some entrepreneurs do funding because they think the money can solve the problem, e.g. burning money on marketing because they think it will make the awareness faster, but this doesn't make your customer loyal. They are only loyal to your gimmick/bonus, not your service or products. e.g. hiring more people or a car or warehouse for efficiency. While it doesn't help you, you need your patience to convert from awareness to sales to loyal customers. Six months that you need.

3. Customer. As the owner, you need to know what customers need. If you don't have time to be in customer service, add WhatsApp web on your laptop. So you can see the convo between your team and your customer. By knowing your customer, you now know what they need and want, their habits, and how they spend money. This helps you know if you want to expand your market, whether the location or by adding more products per your customer need. What kind of service that they need? The product they needed, so that you can focus on that.

4. Marketing strategy. On the 4th, you can see the pattern of who your customer is. From that months, learn how to add service or value to them. At the same time, trying to know why the other segment doesn't work.

5. Be patient. Your customer needs time to trust you.

6. As you can see, six months is a matter. Because of this, I can advise you before you start your business, please prepare capital with these formulas. Capital = 1-year ops cost (salary + cost) + Spending Capital. Don't put less, but don't put more. Less capital makes you always rush and don't have patience with the growth of your customer. At the same time, more capital makes you reckless because you can think you have money to spend if a problem occurs.

7. Always pray. I believe if we work for the best of others. God will help us.