Starting a business is never simple and the journey to success doesn't happen overnight. We've thought long and hard about our advice on starting a business, coming up with the top 5 lessons we have learnt so far.

1. Have confidence. Make sure you have 100% confidence in your USP. The most challenging aspects of launching a business are rooted in your own fears and the pressures of taking risks. Competition is fierce, so you need to make sure you are bringing the marketplace something new, with a memorable product or service. The best way to test this is practising your elevator pitch; you never know who you may meet, and with attention spans short and often unforgiving you need to have the confidence to sell your idea in under a minute!

2. Be strategic. It’s important to dream big; however, you need to have both a strong grasp of your vision’s scale, appreciating all of the intricacies and complications of your business, and realistic goals for yourself, in order to make your dreams materialise successfully. You need to be confident in your financial backing and have assurance that the time frame you have given yourself to execute your goals is realistic. To strategize effectively: analyse, analyse, and analyse some more. Data should be your best friend. With clear analysis and research, it is far easier to adapt, track progress, and take your business in a more rewarding direction.

3. Be flexible. Your idea will inevitably evolve, so be prepared for curveballs that are thrown at you and be open to new areas that you can explore and research which will move your project forward. Don’t be afraid to talk to people. If you can be flexible and always open to discussing new ideas, you may just find a conversation can lead you into a ground-breakingly profitable direction. It’s amazing to see just how helpful and open-minded other people can be who are willing to help towards your project, even when there is nothing directly in it for them.

4. Be disciplined. With new challenges presenting themselves to you every single day, it is very hard to stay organized and maintain a structure before launching a business. Every new dilemma that arises seems just as important and urgent as the issue you are resolving in that moment. To become more disciplined and save yourself time, it’s really helpful to learn from others’ examples, researching your competitors to see how they’ve resolved similar problems and balanced their schedules. Your working style may change dramatically, as only you can keep on top of your schedule and make sure your focus is on track. However, the freedom of making your own schedule can be really rewarding too. If you work best at 2am in the morning, you can make that work for you. With enough discipline, your working hours can shift to when you are more productive, and with the freedom of running your own business, any frustration about having to do something you don’t agree with disappears.

5. Don’t look back! Only you can drive your business forward. Whether you are turning your back on an amazing previous career, a well-paid job, or a period of unemployment and uncertainty, taking the leap to launch a business may feel risky, daunting, and take you out of your comfort zone. Have belief in the fact that by launching your own business, you will learn so much and be exposed to so many new opportunities. Not only will you make discoveries about the many processes involved with setting up a business, you may also experience personal revelations that you may never have imagined about yourself. Take reassurance, that even if your journey was to stop, by launching a business you could confidently say that you will have developed as a more well-rounded person with a real first-hand experience of business and life-skills. If your circumstances were to change and you were to suddenly need a new job, you would be a far better employee. So it’s a win win!

We also want to hear from you! Have you started a business? Let us know your top pieces of advice for someone starting out and let's help support each other.

Words by Lottie Franklin