You cannot be successful as an entrepreneur working as a one man army. You will need good business relationships with team members, consumers, finances investors and many others. However, it does not mean that you have to be social buff for achieving success and or an introvert cannot run a startup.
All it implies is that you have to be good in listening, observing and participate in the business world enveloped around you. You have to be involved in the all the networks, social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the business organizations like the chamber of commerce and take part in events and conferences.
All this must be quite obvious to you. However, there are still entrepreneurs who remain bus with inventions but have trouble finding a partner or investor or lawyer etc. If you are one of such kind then what you need more than experts or blogs or books is relationships. Building and nurturing relationships is what is more essential for a start up. Here are 7 tips for you to work on it.
1. Network building
you have to build your network by establishing relationship with people who have experience in all levels, who know things that you are in need of knowing. It does not mean that you need a huge number of friends to learn things from but even a few real ones would help you get your work done.
2. Give and take
like the general relationships, even in business give and take is the key. Relationships need to be two-way and not just everything about you. If you take the initiative to help others, then they will return the favor when you are in need. The more you help others the more you shall receive when in need.
3. On the elevator pitch
it is a brief and well practiced decision of your start up, which is delivered with the promise to start a relationship in the right time it takes to ride an elevator up.
4. Do not omit business social settings
even though it is the age of social networking, texting and emailing for developing and improving your business, face time is still important for a start up. You should be able to communicate with your body language which is important for the relationship.
5. Consider someone as your mentor
you need a good mentor to guide you through, to help you with your start up. Build two-way relationship with somebody in the business, ask them to mentor you. Most of the entrepreneurs would be enthusiastic to help each other and they will be honored if you ask them to mentor you.
6. Form allies
your allies are those who already know a lot about you but may not be able to help you in a direct way but you should keep in mind that they have their own network which could be of use to you for your extension. So maintain your good allies and you will benefit from them.
7. Nurture your relationships
Everybody has a so called close friend but who do not take the initiative to write or call. But you need to make the first move. If you do not do so you will only end up with an acquaintance rather than a friend.
It does not mean that introverts can lead a start up. They can take better decisions like they will think before they act, build good strong relationships and analyze the problems thoroughly. Take the inspiration of Mark Zukerberg, the founder of Facebook, who is the famous introvert entrepreneur. So down let anybody look down on you for being an introvert.
