Part VIII: Conclusion

Chapter 31
CONGRATULATIONS!

IN This Chapter
Understanding entrepreneurship
The value of your business plan
The tools of your trade
The journey ahead

Introduction
As an entrepreneur, you’re one of America’s folk heroes. You create jobs, create novel products, improve existing ideas, and spark economic growth in your community. You turn risks into opportunities, overturn the conventional wisdom, and make the lives of your fellow citizens easier, more pleasant and more exciting.
Having completed this course, you’ve done something that merits considerable respect and praise. You’ve examined your business concept, confronted and overcome challenges, and planned for future growth. By developing your skills and knowledge, you’ve joined thousands of other entrepreneurs whose dynamic leadership will create lasting national economic growth and community vitality.
Understanding Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs are free to invent their work, their product and the way they do business. However, they are bound by the laws of profitability, which state that a business must generate more money than it spends.
In addition to earning a profit, your business earnings must compensate you for the risks you’ve taken with your time, energy and personal savings. But this compensation is not the only reward of being an entrepreneur. Independence, creativity and the excitement of growing a business offset the long hours, risks and uncertainties that entrepreneurs face.
Customer Orientation
The revenues your business generates come from satisfying your customer needs. How much will people pay for a product that meets their needs? That depends on your product’s perceived value, and perceived value depends on your quality, positioning, branding, reliability, ethics, operational excellence and customer service.
To satisfy your customers, you need to understand them completely. At the same time, you must work to keep the promises your brand makes to your customers, so that they recognize and value the things that make your business special.
Every decision you make—from sourcing, to packaging, to shipping—communicates a strong message about your values and your abilities. Anything that affects your customer affects your business, and no detail is too small to overlook.
We believe that a consistent, compelling and creative brand identity, backed up by customer-centered service and strong ethics, is the key to building an unbeatable competitive advantage.
Never Stop Learning!
Entrepreneurship entails a continuous cycle of questioning, analyzing and learning. Did you achieve your objectives last time around? What could you have done better? Whose help do you need? What will you do next time to improve? What are your weaknesses? How will you overcome them?
You don’t have to become an expert in every area of business management, but you do need to understand enough about each element of your business that you can ask the right questions and make sure that business tasks are being done properly.
Don’t ignore areas of your business that intimidate or confuse you. No part of your operations should be off limits to careful scrutiny. Each aspect of your business can be more easily managed if you break it down into smaller steps. Once you’ve done this, you can make smart choices about allocating responsibility and resources, and if necessary, getting expert help.
Entrepreneurs are curious people by nature. This innate curiosity inspires them to learn new things, design new products and open new markets. Curiosity turned into action is the key to growth.
The Value of Your Business Plan
At the risk of repeating ourselves, researching and writing a thorough NxLeveL® Business Plan is the most valuable thing an entrepreneur can do.
Your business plan should be compelling, easy to read and informative for anyone interested in financing, supplying or working with your business. The ideal business plan is both an inspirational narrative and a blueprint for success.
In the process of preparing your business plan, you’ve probably found answers to your most pressing questions. Have you achieved your original objectives? Have your goals changed? Has your target market changed? Have you found ways to make your product more attractive, useful or innovative?
We hope that participating in NxLeveL® has given you a better understanding of the basics of marketing, financing, producing and planning for growth.
Tools of YOUR Trade
Simply by starting your business at this time in history, you have a huge advantage over previous generations of entrepreneurs. Countless prepackaged and hosted applications for communications, word processing, graphics, customer management, accounting and networking can solve your business problems and keep things running smoothly and efficiently.
The convergence of these technologies gives you the ability to track and control multiple business functions at once, even while you’re traveling. If you have not yet availed yourself of these powerful tools, now is the time to start.
That said, remember that many of the old tools are as useful as ever. The basics of financial management, and the ratios and equations that help you to chart the course of your business, are still vitally important. Even if you use accounting software to calculate them, you still need to understand what you’re calculating and why.
Creating Teams
Committing yourself to acquiring new skills doesn’t mean that you have to do everything yourself. Collaboration is an essential ingredient of creativity and efficiency; new and emerging technologies make it easier than ever before.
When you feel overwhelmed by the challenges you face, the insight and support of others will inspire you to strive onward and upward. Surrounding yourself with people who have complementary skills and different points of view will save time, increase the credibility of your business, and improve your decision-making.
By creating a talent pool your business can draw on (through direct hiring, formal partnerships, team building, or informal mentoring arrangements), you increase the likelihood that your business will succeed.
When faced with business tasks that are beyond your core competencies, the use of outsourcing and independent contractors lets you focus on what you do best, while leaving non-core tasks to the experts. Knowing when and how to delegate tasks to qualified team members is crucial to your success.
Leadership Skills
A boss instructs and disciplines employees, sets rigid goals, and limits the ways in which people can achieve their tasks.
By contrast, a leader generates an emotional connection with people, attracting and inspiring them toward a common goal. A successful leader has learned the art of managing through influence, communication and inspiration. When employees are given the opportunity to identify their own goals, and the freedom to select the best way to achieve them, their performance improves dramatically.
An Open Mind
Shrewd entrepreneurs are careful to avoid tunnel vision and wishful thinking. They try not to let political, social or philosophical prejudices get in the way of understanding emerging trends and markets, nor do they limit their intake of information to things they want to hear.
Instead, they consistently challenge their assumptions, invite feedback and constructive criticism from others, and adapt to changing conditions. They listen to many different points of view, and assess them as objectively as possible, while working to create the kind of world in which they can succeed and thrive.
A Culture of Innovation
The role that innovation plays in attracting and keeping customers can’t be overemphasized, and it will only increase in coming years. Maintaining a culture of innovation at your business is a vital strategy for success. If your employees feel that you don’t value new ideas, they won’t bother to think innovatively. But if you are structurally, emotionally and intellectually ready to innovate, your employees will follow your lead.
Profitable Growth
From a business perspective, the only meaningful growth is profitable growth. Other types of growth—like market share, number of employees, and sales volume—increase costs, not net worth.
In order to achieve and maintain profitable growth, you must manage and operate your business in a way that will ensure a cost-effective accumulation of profit. Always bear these points in mind:
Customer orientation is essential in a growth company.
Growth strategies require your personal commitment and vocal leadership.
Employees are your most important resource. Team-building and good communication are essential.
To be successful, make others successful!
Ethical Issues
Business ethics involve principles of right and wrong that go beyond questions of mere legality. Great entrepreneurs are respectful of their obligations to customers, employees, suppliers, investors, their community and future generations.
This sense of integrity and honesty must inform the day-to-day operation of your business. The reasons are simple: Ethical business decisions earn the loyalty and respect of your customers, employees and suppliers; they protect you from potentially disastrous legal problems; and they give you an enormous competitive advantage.
Community Involvement
No business operates in a vacuum. You are part of the community in which you work. Your current and future customers, suppliers, employers and investors are also part of your community. When you give something back to your community, you gain the economic and personal benefits such actions produce, and your community reaps the benefits that only entrepreneurs can bring to the table.
The Journey Ahead
You are embarking on a journey into the world of entrepreneurship, where opportunities and rewards are as numerous as the risks and challenges you’ll encounter.
On this journey, initiative, creativity and ingenuity triumph. Being a successful entrepreneur begins with finding your unique strengths and interests. Once you’ve done this, you must use them to your best advantage by building your business around them. When you love what you do, you work harder, with more creativity and drive. This gives you a powerful competitive advantage.
The entrepreneurial vision is a powerful force. It can transform the quality of your life, the goals you achieve, and the legacy you leave your family and community. When you combine this vision with your expanding knowledge of business, your entrepreneurial journey becomes fun, fulfilling and profitable!
Welcome to the NxLeveL® Training Network
The NxLeveL® Program for Entrepreneurs is a broad, national network of kindred spirits and fellow innovators. To date, hundreds of thousands of people have emerged from NxLeveL® training programs. Like you, these entrepreneurs worked hard to complete their business plans and take the next step in growing their businesses.
One of the most valuable assets NxLeveL® gives its participants is access to other people who have participated in and taught programs; their combined business and life experiences are a golden resource.
By sharing ideas, entrepreneurs learn from each others’ mistakes and explore new ways to achieve their goals. They also have the comfort of knowing that others have experienced similar challenges, risks and rewards.
You can participate in this network by visiting our website, and by building on the relationships you formed with fellow participants.
Furthermore, local trade associations, community colleges, chambers of commerce, and Small Business Development Centers sponsor many events for small businesses. Attend them, contribute to them, and benefit from them!
We are happy to welcome you into the NxLeveL® network, and we look forward to your contribution to our legacy of entrepreneurial success stories.

Ducit, te nobit fuga. Necatio nemolor senet repta endaest empore con nos que quatur?