9 Essential Steps to Start a Small Business
Business is generally understood to mean the practice of selling at a profit. When it comes to starting a new successful business, too many imagine a complicated system that would not ever work. Some are quick to reference failed businesses and how lack of funds crippled the business. Some even begin to remember how their bosses owed them a salary for months until the business went down and/or they left the company.
It can only go this way if we start a business without having a well thought out idea in addition to a robust understanding of the business world.So, are your thinking of starting a Small Business that is oriented to growth and expansion, then here is where to start.
1. Identify Your Business Opportunity:
This is the umbrella to covers your decisions on the niche, the delivery mode (product or service), and the viability of the business core concept. Choosing the business to start can be ahalting task especially when confronted with a multitude of opportunities. It is important to determine where your passions and interests lie and to understand your strength.
Evaluate the skills you will bring to the table and test your product/service before going far into the process.
2. Develop a Business Plan:
A business plan allows you to gain a better understanding of your strategy for starting a business.It is bad news that many business owners make the mistake of thinking that Business Plan belongs to ‘big’ businesses. The purpose of a business plan is to help articulate and provide insight on steps to be taken, resources required for achieving your business goals and a timeline of anticipated results.
Having a solid business plan from the onset can help you to prepare answers to many questions that will come up while running your business especially within the first year. It provides greater clarity on all aspects of the business with its contents like product/service, target market, revenue model, competition, profit forecast, company structure, operations, etc.
3. Find Start-up Money:
You invest in a business to start a business. While you do not necessarily require many funds to start a business, certain innovations pertaining to your ideas may mean that you fund the start-up. This means that the journey of finding start-up funds will be dissimilar for each individual/business. Some start-ups such as consulting require a few thousand maybe to get a website or business cards or even deal with the registration of the business whereas some could need several more thousands.
I will always advise that external borrowings to fund a new business should be discouraged entirely. Try to use your saving and where a substantial amount is involved, ensure there is an adequate assessment of business ideas to support repayment of a soft loan.
4. Brand Your Business:
In business, branding is one of the most important aspects. An effective brand strategy gives your business a major edge in increasingly competitive markets.Won’t you want to be distinguished froma sea of bland competitors?How does branding affect your small business?
The right business name will provide your customers with a reason to hire you above your competition thereby supporting and growing your brand.It tells them what they can expect from your products and/or services, and differentiates your offering from those of your competitors.I will write another post onsimple ways to brand your business.
5. Register your Business:
When you are thinking about starting a business in any country, the first and foremost step that you have to go through is business name registration.It is important to validate your business by registering it with the relevant authority.That grants it a legal right which depends on your chosen business structure.
There is the need to also register with other authorities to obtain licenses and permits for a certain operation. Tax is a relevant body for all business relationships.
6. Create an Accounting System:
Bookkeeping and accounting aspects of running your business can’t be avoided. They are an important part of a business as it helps a business keep track of what it owns, to whom it owes money, and any outstanding from its customers. It also ensures thatyour business is only spending within its income and for its own expenses.
Having an accounting system is not a complicated task as seen by most people as it can be set up with relative ease.When an accounting system is in place, it becomes pretty easier to manage a new business and any risk of a financial loss.
7. Plan your Marketing to Launch:
No matter how good your product is, you will still need to sell it. You need to make customers aware of what great a product/service you have there; convince them of the need to buy it. The most fatal mistake you will make as a new business owner is to focus so much on innovation, technology, or products/services at the expense of marketing.
There is no product that has ever sold itself. Have you not wondered why some market leaders sell products that are not the very available best?
Ready to launch your business:
Test your samples and models with a select group of people. This will require that develop a first, basic version of your product/service as your MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Have people try out your first recipeif it is afood product. If it is a service like consulting or coaching, you can practice free sessions.
Basically, think of the simplest version of your product/service that possesses its core features and starts getting real feedback from potential customers.
Now go on and start that business using the above guide steps. Remember, it takes resilience to build a successful business.
