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Being your own boss, setting your own goals, selling a product or service that you're truly passionate about - it sounds great, right?

For a lot of people, becoming an entrepreneur and running their own business is the ultimate career goal. And for good reason! Starting your own company can be very rewarding. 

But how do you know where to begin? How do entrepreneurs start out? 

If you're considering life as an entrepreneur and successful business owner, we’re here to tell you how to get started. 

1. Identify a profitable startup idea 

Every successful business starts with a great idea, so the first step is identifying a profitable niche. 

It could be that that you already have an idea or you might wish to conduct some research looking for a solution to a current problem or gap in the market. 

You could also take inspiration from other startups and keep a look out for new trends/popular products or services. 

When building on your startup idea, keep these tips in mind: 

• Try to avoid challenging or overcrowded industries 
• Aim to fill an underserved demand or gap in the market 
• You don't have to create something completely new, you could just make something better or cheaper than what’s already out there

2. Validate your startup idea 

The next step is getting a better understanding of whether this is a service or product that people actually want. And we don't just mean whether your friends and family would buy it to support you!

In order to validate a business idea and make sure it’s viable, you need to do some market research and create a buyer persona. This will help you to identify your ideal customer and target audience. 

You can interview people or share surveys online aimed at your target audience to see whether your product is something they would like, whether they’d use it and most of all, whether they’d buy it. 

3. Create a business plan 

Once you’re confident that your idea is a good one, the next step to starting life as an entrepreneur is to get a detailed business plan written out. This plan should include important aspects such as:

• How you intend to fund this in the early stages (by working, using savings, etc.) 
• Your budget 
• The costs of your inventory, devices, etc.
• Your financial strategy
• Your marketing strategy 
• Milestones and goals you’d like to reach

This is also the stage at which any budding entrepreneur should outline the company's missions, visions and values.

4. Start with a minimum viable product (MVP)

Finally, once you have a business plan in place, it’s time to start trading with a minimum viable product (MVP). This is essentially the simplest, most basic version of your product or service. 

It still needs to be functional and satisfy customers but this gives you a great opportunity to get an idea of whether there’s enough interest for your business and what you can improve moving forward. 

Starting with an MVP can also be the ideal way to serve customers while keeping the costs down and allowing room for discovery and growth. 

Once you’ve created and begun selling your MVP, you are officially an entrepreneur running your own business. 

For more information on how to entrepreneurs get started and how you can come up with profitable business ideas, check out the guides below: 

https://www.learnhowtobecome.org/entrepreneur/ 
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/293762
https://articles.bplans.com/business-ideas/7-steps-to-starting-your-own-business/