Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist Niki Mahon started a multi-million-pound business from her own home, launching a successful pop-up at John Lewis. This article will provide tips and pointers for budding entrepreneurs, helping them to establish and grow their own business. It will cover a variety of different aspects, from the entrepreneurial mindset to the importance of crafting a solid business plan.
Although the media is littered with overnight success stories, in terms of launching and growing a successful business the reality is rather different, requiring years of hard work and dedication, along with inevitable missteps and setbacks along the way. The key to becoming a successful entrepreneur is mindset and creating habits and routines that keep the entrepreneur going through the inevitable challenges and dips in energy levels.
In entrepreneurship, consistency is key. The best way to achieve business goals is identifying the overriding objective and breaking the journey down into actionable steps. Although it is vital for entrepreneurs to focus on a product or industry they feel passionate about in order to maintain momentum in the long term, in reality, this is not enough in isolation. Rather, founders need to establish that there is a market for the product or service they intend to offer. Consumer demand can only be gauged by undertaking careful research.
Some markets are more competitive than others. The entrepreneur may have a love for baking, for example, but quickly discover that the market is already saturated. It is sensible for entrepreneurs to focus on niches they have experience of, identifying their own strengths and weaknesses, their interests and passions and their expertise, as well as their preferred working environment and how much time they have to invest in their business.
Niki Mahon was just 23 years old when she launched her own business. To date, she has generated over £3 million in income from what started as a passion project. Mahon started out selling her old clothes and jewellery on eBay and Depop before establishing her sustainable homeware and jewellery brand, NIKITA. She began sourcing jewellery in 2015, when statement necklaces were en vogue, sourcing similar versions to those sold by Zara that she knew would sell well. Niki Mahon’s business went from strength to strength, with the young entrepreneur receiving £800 in orders in just half an hour and her business gathering momentum as she gained a bigger following. She quickly came to realise that she could launch her own collections and open her own online store.
As Niki Mahon explains, she did everything organically. She did not have access to funding. She did everything in her spare time, during the evenings and at weekends, sourcing packaging and doing all of her own marketing for two years. She soon found herself constantly feeling exhausted and drained, eventually leaving her job as an account manager to focus on her brand.
As businesses grow, a key aspect for entrepreneurs to consider is scaling. No founder can do it all on their own. The crucial first step to scaling a business is creating and executing a solid business plan, establishing a vision for the organization, its goals and how the founder and their employees will pull together to achieve them.
Today, NIKITA turns over circa £500,000 a year, an achievement that Mahon is incredibly proud of, as her business grew without outside investment or funding, instead relying on its ability to adapt to different marketing platforms. Turning over £15,000 a month on Amazon alone today, the business has turned over £3 million to date. Niki Mahon advises budding entrepreneurs to constantly work on their confidence, suggesting that resilience is key, with her business having become what it is today because she kept going and did not give up.
