Luke Lazarus Supports the Growth and Development of His Startup Clients
Most people are aware of the fact that the majority of startup businesses shut their doors within the first few years. Regardless of the industry, the business world is cutthroat, and most new businesses simply do not last long. In some cases, even one small error made by an inexperienced entrepreneur could be enough to cause irreparable damage to the startup.
Entrepreneurs who have a track record for successfully growing businesses from the ground up often keep the secrets to their success to themselves. However, this is not the case for Luke Lazarus. Lazarus is an entrepreneurial mastermind who has extensive experience nurturing startups to success. He now uses his expertise to help other entrepreneurs find solid footing with their own ventures.
An Early Focus on Business
While some children may change their minds frequently about what they want to be when they grow up, Luke Lazarus’s childhood seemingly groomed him for his entrepreneurial path in life. When he was in elementary school, he started his first successful business. Throughout high school, he was a high achiever in the classroom and in sports.
Because of his excellent accomplishments during his younger years, Lazarus was recruited by multiple Ivy League schools in the U.S. and by other notable schools around the world. Ultimately, however, he decided to complete his studies close to home. In fact, he obtained his Master’s in Business Administration from the Melbourne Business School.
After graduating from college, Luke Lazarus returned to his entrepreneurial roots. Over the next decade, he started four new businesses. After he sold the last one at the age of 35, he had turned a tremendous profit and no longer needed to work on a daily basis to support his lifestyle. While he was financially secure, Lazarus was not happy with the status quo. He did not want to run another startup, and he also was not ready to retire. Rather than living an easy life in a tropical location, he decided to help other entrepreneurs find their own path to success.
There are many business and marketing consultants that offer their services purely for their own monetary gain. For Lazarus, however, there is a true desire to give back to the community that he found so much success in.
Why Startups Need to Hire an Experienced Consultant
Through Luke Lazarus’s many professional experiences, he has noticed that entrepreneurs do not often recognize the need for or the value in hiring a business consultant. In reality, however, the challenges that face startups often result in failed efforts for the majority of startups within their first year of operation. Within five years, as many as 90 percent of startups will be out of business. Luke Lazarus is only one of many consultants who offer professional services to startups, but his expertise and approach set him apart from others.
The Rarity of Serial Entrepreneurs
When entrepreneurs are successful, they often can sell their startups for millions of dollars within a few years. The rarity of success for one venture is notable. Some entrepreneurs, however, are skilled and fortunate enough to be successful with multiple ventures. The successes of these serial entrepreneurs are most heavily based on skill and knowledge rather than on raw luck. When struggling startup business owners are able to tap into the knowledge and skills of serial entrepreneurs, they can overcome significant challenges that may have ultimately led to their business’s downfall.
Applying Learned Skills and Strategies
Luke Lazarus has a unique outlook on entrepreneurial consulting, and this is because he learned all of his skills and strategies the hard way. He knows what it takes to grow a successful business because he has personally done it numerous times. As a consultant, he specifically focuses on the importance of building emotional links between stakeholders and customers. He also analyzes available data to solve problems.
Entrepreneurs are creative and hardworking. In fact, many new entrepreneurs will easily put in 10 or 15-hour workdays. However, creativity and hard work alone are not enough to guide even the best business concept to success. Lazarus has a well-earned reputation for identifying the problems in his clients’ businesses that are holding them back. He remains honest at all times, and this includes even when the truth is difficult for his clients to hear. After Lazarus learns more about a client’s business and identifies its major challenges, he creates a detailed, thoughtful business plan. His services then extend to preparing financial records for an investor presentation and taking other tailored steps.
The Need for an Effective Business Plan
The importance of an excellent business plan cannot be minimized. While a business plan serves the critical and internal purpose of guiding managerial and growth efforts, it also plays a role in finances. In fact, many of Lazarus’s clients have gone on to obtain incredible amounts of seed capital and have attracted major investors because of the effort that he has put into the development of an excellent business plan.
There are numerous aspects of a business plan that must be well-developed. One of these is the creation of a story surrounding the company or the brand. The company’s story must be aligned with the product’s story in order for the business plan to be successful. This story serves as the development for the brand’s image. Lazarus knows how to formulate that image and how to present that image to investors in a clear and effective way.
Extensive market research must be completed in order to create an effective business plan. This research extends to identifying who the customers are and what their influence points are. To be as thorough as possible, Lazarus analyzes the market using primary and secondary models. In addition to understanding who the company’s customers are, this research helps Lazarus to identify the competition and to create effective customer personas. These personas drive the marketing message.
The Importance of Identifying and Addressing Challenges
Many new entrepreneurs often try to handle all aspects of running their startup on their own. However, nobody is an expert in everything. At the same time, individuals cannot give all aspects of a growing operation the full attention that they need because of time and energy limitations. Whether an entrepreneur is having trouble relinquishing control over certain aspects of the business, is trying to conserve funds or has other concerns in mind, this is one of the more common issues that Luke Lazarus has noticed by working with his clients. Lazarus identifies and presents a reasonable and effective solution to his clients for these and many other problems that he identifies.
The Need to Manage Financial Books Properly
Many startups do not manage their books with investors in mind. Because of this, a critical step that Lazarus takes to prepare his clients for pitches to investors involves financial management. Whether his clients are meeting with venture capitalists, angel investors or others, he ensures that all of the bases are covered so that the business is optimized for success with its pitches.
Preparing a Well-Rounded, Effective Pitch
When an entrepreneur makes a pitch to a venture capitalist or another type of potential investor, the entrepreneur generally has approximately 30 seconds to engage the interest of the investor. The ideal pitch will reel the investor in and establish the brand’s message within this short period of time. The rest of the pitch must be thorough yet concise. With this approach and through Lazarus’s profound experience, he has successfully supported many startups around the world with the development of an effective pitch. Through the financing they obtained, many of his clients have grown their businesses into multinational companies.
Luke Lazarus’s Passion for Helping Other Entrepreneurs
For struggling startup owners who spend their days dreaming of success, it is often difficult to imagine a time when profiting from their hard work would get old. However, after making enough money from the sale of multiple successful startups, Luke Lazarus’s interests and goals shifted. He understood that he has extensive knowledge and valuable skills that other entrepreneurs need. Lazarus decided to shift gears professionally and to use his expertise to serve others. While he enjoys the challenge of growing a startup, he also has a passion for helping other people. The next natural step in the progression of his career was consulting.
Luke Lazarus recognizes that there are many talented, hardworking entrepreneurs who have a strong desire to succeed. However, they may lack critical insights or maybe too close to their project to see challenges or roadblocks. Some entrepreneurs spend too much time and energy trying to wear all hats in their startup. In the process, they are not able to give an adequate amount of time and energy to each area of the business that needs attention. Other entrepreneurs lack knowledge of high finance and are not prepared to make a thoughtful, effective pitch to investors. Each of these and many other issues can individually lead to the demise of a startup. Luke Lazarus takes an eagle-eyed approach to identify challenges in hits clients’ startups. He then employs his vast experience and proven skills to serve his clients.
A Focus on High Finance
In order to be successful in consulting, a consultant must have the tenacity and courage to be brutally honest with clients. Lazarus knows that beating around the proverbial bush will lead to delays and misunderstandings. He has a solid reputation for being honest with his clients, and this is one of the reasons for his many successes over the years. For example, if Lazarus determines that a client lacks knowledge and expertise in finance, he states this clearly. This empowers the client to take decisive and effective steps that will effectively lead to an improved chance for success.
Lazarus has particularly noted that many of his entrepreneurial clients lack a deep understanding of the process to attract investors. They do not know what to expect with venture capitalism and angel investments. At the same time, they do not know how to create a successful pitch. Without capital, most of these small businesses will never grow to become medium or large businesses. Clearly, this is a vital hurdle that must be jumped on the path to success.
Many of Lazarus’s clients and other startup owners believe that obtaining financing would be relatively easy. After all, major publications like Fortune, Forbes and others have run stories about pools of capital going unused and about other entrepreneurs being awarded huge amounts of investment capital without a struggle. As a result, many entrepreneurs fail to create a truly thoughtful presentation that is geared toward investors. They may assemble documents and data in a PowerPoint presentation and make a speech, but they fail to do what it takes to generate the true interest of investors. After these entrepreneurs fail with their first few pitches, they believe that it is not possible for them to obtain the funding that their business needs.
The reality is that most successful startups are not fully funded by the entrepreneur’s own capital. External funding is essential. If an entrepreneur cannot obtain funding successfully, this single factor could be enough to cause the walls to cave in.
The Ultimate Goals of Successful Consulting
Through successful business consulting, the business and the entrepreneur can achieve several essential goals. For the business, this is the identification of notable operational challenges and the knowledge or skills to overcome them. The abilities to raise capital and to draft an effective business plan are also critical. For the entrepreneur, the most obvious outcome of successful consulting is the increased likelihood of professional success with the endeavor. Consulting can also reduce headaches and stress. Through the improved ability to obtain the necessary capital, an entrepreneur may not need to invest as much personal capital into the venture. At the same time, the business owner or entrepreneur may achieve a better work-life balance without jeopardizing the potential success of the business.
Lazarus’s Guiding Principle for Startup Marketing
Luke Lazarus believes that each successful entrepreneur should have a clear, stated mission. Likewise, the startup should have its own mission, and those two missions must align perfectly. Together, the missions will be used to tell the story of the brand. This story should appeal to the target audience and should be flexible enough to adjust to the business’s long-term growth.
Simply developing these missions is not enough. Lazarus believes that startups and entrepreneurs can struggle when they lose sight of their missions over time. A successful entrepreneur must always maintain sight of that mission. The mission should be expressed in some way through all marketing messages. In addition, investors and stakeholders must be aware of the mission and must be committed to moving forward with that mission serving as a guidepost.
Stepping into the future, Luke Lazarus sees the need for missions to be aligned with the experience economy. Because of this massive shift that is impacting many businesses across numerous industries, Lazarus often helps his clients to identify ways to integrate experiences into their mission.
The Execution of a Marketing Campaign.
Simply incorporating the mission into the overall story of the brand is not enough. These elements must be combined into an effective marketing campaign. This campaign must be aligned with the business’s budget. It also must detail the timeline for different stages of the campaign. The development of the campaign before its launch receives ample attention, but this is only the beginning. A successful marketing campaign involves careful, detailed analysis. Marketing efforts must regularly be analyzed and updated for optimized results.
The Critical Need for Work-Life Balance
Entrepreneurs can easily burn out and may quickly lose sight of the big picture when they are buried deep in their business for long hours each day. Through his many years of experience, Luke Lazarus has identified the critical need for a healthy work-life balance. This has served him well over the years, and he encourages his clients to establish a healthy, successful routine as well.
For Lazarus, he begins most mornings the same way. Before he heads out the door, he takes time to catch up on his emails and to prepare a to-do list for the day. This is followed by meditation and reading the newspaper. He also relaxes by taking a long walk with his dog, and he gets a workout in at the gym. Throughout his regular weekly schedule, he incorporates time for the relationships that matter most to him. Charitable activities are also important to Lazarus, and these efforts are infused into his weekly routine as well.
The Big Picture
Luke Lazarus pulls all of these various services and strategies together while providing each client with a personalized experience. In addition to focusing on all of these areas, Lazarus notes that all successful businesses have three shared traits. These are consistency, transparency, and continual improvement. In addition to these important traits, they have an emotional link to their customers or clients. As Luke Lazarus serves each client, he never loses sight of these essential factors.
Originally published at http://aussieintel.com.
