2024 is the age of entrepreneurship, startups, and new businesses. While initiating a new startup has become quite the norm, an interesting question arises as to the secret behind its longevity. There’s only one answer; cash.
Having, maintaining, and growing money is the only way a business can flourish. According to the Entrepreneur Middle Eas, about 90 percent of thriving businesses fail, and while one can cite multiple factors for it, a major reason is lack of proper financial planning. Without a rigorous understanding of fiscal matters, entrepreneurial advancement is nearly unattainable.
Here are a few tips to help traverse the complex terrain of capital success:
- Variable sources
The biggest way to diminish risks with your money is to ensure multiple sources of revenue. Aisha Stef Dequit, a 42-year-old Filipina expatriate, is a great example. She went from waiting tables to owning multiple businesses in the UAE, ranging from Tourism and Travel to cleaning services. While it may initially be difficult to navigate for newcomers, with proper expertise this approach can lead to profit margins that are practically impossible to achieve with a single source of income.
- Invest in Marketing
With the rapid globalisation of the internet, marketing has come leaps and bounds from the days of ‘word of mouth’. A prime example is the now multimillion dollar company ‘Careem’. What started as a seed of an idea between two ex-McKinsey consultants, quickly became one of the biggest ground transportation organizations in the region, stretching well beyond its original boundaries. In 2019 Careem did an experiment with the Google Ads program and saw a nearly 320% increase in job sign-ups when they automated their display campaigns. This highlights, yet again, the significance of experimenting with marketing techniques to see what works best.
- Efficient Budgeting
It’s hard to build a business without budget allocation. Allocating resources effectively requires a meticulous understanding of income streams and expenditure. While it is important to continuously invest and progress, it is crucial to also be monetarily prepared for the worst. Even thriving companies can see a sudden downfall at the most unexpected of times, and need something to fall back on. Retaining an emergency fund while also spending on smart investment opportunities at the right time is critical to the prosperity of any business.
- Be ready to adapt
Nowhere was the importance of this seen more than during the Covid-19 pandemic that brought the world to a screeching halt. Asim Al Qassim the first certified Emarti perfumer, owns the commercially successful brand Anfas, which was only mildly affected during this time. He credits this to his habit of always having a crisis recovery plan in place to abate such situations.
- Financial education
Lastly, it is always humbling to remember that one can never stop learning. The blueprint laid out by the hundreds of successful business tycoons can be used by budding entrepreneurs as a roadmap to expand their horizons and navigate the financial world.
The UAE has always maintained a nurturing environment for the flourishing of businesses.The Global Entrepreneurship Index even recently listed Dubai as first in the best in the world to start a business. But having agreeable national policies alone is not sufficient for entrepreneurial triumph. The road to achieving business excellence is a multifarious path that involves skillful strategies, tactical vision, restructuring abilities, but, perhaps most pivotally, constructive money management. Allocating finances wisely, networking, quick decision making and adaptability is foundational to the monetary success of any company.