Once you connect with an entrepreneur who has enough experience to coach and support your business trip, schedule an appointment and print a copy of these entrepreneur interview questions to take with you. Despite the glorification of going all-in, in many cases it may make sense to keep your business as a side project until it`s validated and has some traction. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best! Find out what your interlocutor really likes about the entrepreneurial journey. Why are they happy they decided to start their own business? What makes it fun or exciting? You will hold on to these pleasures when times are tough. Have you ever been asked, “How do you do that?” (Part II) The question you should ask yourself: “What do I need to make it a reality?” Why it matters: When planning for success, you should be able to anticipate what you need in terms of assets. For example, a restaurant needs a kitchen to cook, ingredients, and maybe a waiter. What are the “ingredients” your industry demands of you and how do they conduct your core business? The very real possibility that your business won`t survive is something you need to accept before pursuing entrepreneurship, and you should have a plan for this scenario. Michael Bronfein has one. He wants to streamline how drugs get into nursing homes, a $14 billion business that is only growing: By 2025, seniors will make up 20 percent of the U.S. population, up from 14 percent today.
Bronfein`s company, Remedi Senior Care, makes money by buying pills from pharmaceutical companies, labeling them, and sending them to nursing homes. For 30 years, many people packed pills into batches of “bingo cards,” each containing the equivalent of a month`s worth of medicine. Distributing all these pills is extremely tedious: some older people take up to 12 different types a day, many of which look the same. Bronfein spent 15 years and $30 million developing a 50-foot-long, 20-foot-wide and dizzyingly complex conveyor-type robot that serves individually wrapped and labeled plastic pill bags for each resident of the nursing home. This saves nurses hours a day dispensing medication and reduces the likelihood of administering the wrong pills. Let`s go back to the disclaimer in question no. 2: While your product may sell, what you think makes it special has little to do with what customers are actually looking for. A misdiagnosis of this gap can lead to all sorts of bad strategic decisions. Clayton Christensen, another Harvard guy, demonstrates this point beautifully. In this video clip below, Christensen explains how he helped a fast food chain sell more milkshakes by understanding why people bought them in the first place.
It turned out that the answer had nothing to do with the thickness and flavor of the shakes; It had to do with the “job” for which the shakes were “hired.” Interviewers can ask this question to gain insight into a business owner`s involvement in their business operations. Since some business owners take a hands-off approach and others prefer to be heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of a business, knowing what responsibilities you take on can tell an interviewer what you might look like as a boss and as a business owner in general. By answering this question, you can list the tasks you typically perform as a business owner and include both higher-level responsibilities and day-to-day tasks. But the good thing is that you have two options that, if done right, can both be very successful. I`ve seen dozens of ways to organize other app users` Trello boards, but this is what has worked best for us so far. Below is a modest attempt to gather the most important issues in business. After 14 years at Forbes, studying companies young and old with different business models and in a variety of industries, I can safely say that if you dig deep enough, almost all of the strategies, tactics, and decisions in the trenches come from the answers to these questions. Each case study has its nuances— the company ultimately revolves around people, and no two are the same, not to mention entire management teams, customer lists, and company cultures. But it turns out, as in fiction, that there are only a limited number of stories.
Some customers offer more revenue than others, but that doesn`t always mean they`re more profitable. Customers with high sales can be expensive to retain if there are high costs associated with maintenance. Maybe they`re just sourcing sale items or discounted products, or maybe they`re consuming resources in need of constant attention or help. You should be able —, explain in three sentences that your senile grandmother might understand — why customers need what you`re selling. If you can`t, you have big problems: the reality is (and don`t take it personally), no one really cares what you do. They have to deal with it. It`s just as important as offering something worth taking care of, which is why it didn`t fit the previous question. Sales growth, gross margins, inventory turnover and cash flow reflect a company`s status. But to understand how to improve a business, you need to look under finance — and no cheat sheet works for every industry.
While PR isn`t a strategy we`re pursuing right now, it`s something we`ve done before, and it`s something that can be very helpful for good companies. Ask your customers lots of open-ended questions. Learn more about their needs and challenges, fears and hopes. Do a lot of customer development. This question can be asked by an interviewer to determine the reasons for your business and why you started it. Knowing why you started a business can also give interviewers insight into your own beliefs and ways of thinking, as it can emphasize your thought processes and indicate important observations in society. If you want to run a growing company or department within a company, the answer should be yes. This means you have reliable people and processes. Billionaire Clay Mathile spent $130 million to found the Aileron Institute in Dayton, Ohio, to teach entrepreneurs exactly this lesson. I spoke at length with Clay last year about what it takes to grow a small business. In short, systems win, heroes don`t. (For more information, see “The Billionaire Business Owner`s Playbook.”) What questions should a small business owner be able to answer? Whether you`re a new business owner or an experienced owner, here are 10 key questions to analyze and improve your business.
