If you're reading this article, it's probably because you're thinking about starting your own business, or maybe you're not thinking about it, maybe you know you wanna start your own business and you're just not sure exactly what you need to do.
So, in today's article, I'm gonna walk you through the eight steps that you need to follow in order to start your own business this year.
First of all, the experience you get from starting your own business is going to be invaluable. Whether the business succeeds or even if the business fails, you're going to learn so much.
Second, because if you don't start it, you're always going to be asking yourself what if. What if you have started that business? What sort of opportunities would it have opened up for you? What will the experience have been like? So, don't have any regrets, start your own business this year by following these eight easy steps.
- DECIDE WHAT IT IS
In order to start your own business, the very first thing you need to do is just decide what business you're going to start. Now, maybe you've already done this, in which case you can skip ahead to the next step. But if you haven't done it, then you might be in one of two different situations. Maybe you're just having trouble deciding between a few ideas that you have. You're not sure which one would really be the best. If that's the case, then check out this video right here for some advice on how to decide what business to start.
On the other hand, if your problem is that you don't have a good idea, then check out this article right here for some inspiration.
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As you're trying to decide what business to start, the main thing that you need to keep in mind is that it's better to get started even if you don't choose the perfect idea. A few months from now, you will be a few months into the process of building your business. And you'll be able to much better determine whether or not it is the right idea. At that point, you can always decide to stop building that business and pursue a different idea instead, or you might have found the perfect business idea and be well on your way to turning it into a success. But either way, by getting started sooner, you'll start making a lot of more progress than if you wait until you maybe some day find the perfect idea.
- CREATE A BUSINESS PLAN
Once you've decided what type of business you wanna start, then the next thing you need to do is create a business plan. Many people start businesses without any sort of plan whatsoever, but your business is much more likely to succeed if you start with a plan. Writing your plan doesn't have to take a whole lot of time, but will have a big impact. If you're not quite sure what your business plan should say or should include, then here are a couple tips.
First of all, there are loads of free templates online that can get you started. However you decide to go through the process of writing your business plan, just remember that it doesn't need to be war and peace. Your business plan can be short and sweet. Any plan is better than no plan at all, and you're actually going to be much more likely to finish your business plan and follow it if it's not too long.
- MARKET RESEARCH
So I know this might sound a little bit complex, but it's really simple. You just need to find some perspective customers and talk to them about the product that you're considering creating or the service that you're considering offering. Now I also know that this might seem a little bit overwhelming, difficult, uncomfortable, and so you might think you'll just skip this step. But please don't do that, because you need to find people to buy your product, whether you find them now or you find them after you create the product and start the business. But if you find them now, then you'll be able to start your business with a lot more confidence, and it'll be much more likely that your business will succeed. If you can't find people that will buy your product, then your business isn't going to make any money. So you need to find this people at some point. And if you do it now, then you'll be able to talk to them ahead of time and learn what they like about your product, what they don't like about it so that you can make it as good as possible, and your business can be as successful as possible later on.
- DEVELOP YOUR PRODUCT
Once you've done your market research and you've gotten some clear feedback from your perspective customers, then you can proceed to actually develop your product. Now depending on what type of product you're creating, this process will look very different. Because on the one hand, you might be creating some sort of physical product. And in that case, you need to design the product, and then you'll need to have a prototype created, and then probably a series of subsequent prototypes before you finally have the finished product and you have it produced in mass.
On the other hand, if you're creating a digital product, like an online course, then you would need to plan out the course and then film the lessons for the course, write materials, create worksheets, and so on.
Finally, if you are starting a service-based business where you're going to be providing a service to your customers, then you need to plan how your service is going to work. You need to develop service packages, and figure out how you're actually going to provide this service to your customers.
- CREATE A WEBSITE
I'm not going to say a whole lot about this, because I'm sure you've seen plenty of Squarespace commercials at this point. And while I'm not sponsored by Squarespace, it really is as easy as they claim. Squarespace is a great option, and there are options you can consider as well, such as Wix or Weebly. Most of them make the entire process of setting up your website really easy. You also could consider building your website with WordPress, which can create great results, but just be prepared to invest a lot more time into the process, and especially into the process of learning how WordPress works if you wanna go that route.
- MARKET YOUR PRODUCT
Once your website is up and running, it's time to start marketing your product, because you are ready to start making sales. Now marketing is an absolutely essential part of the process, because unlike it's commonly said, if you build a better mousetrap, the world will not beat a path to your door. You have to get out there, you have to tell people about your business and about your product, or else they won't know it exists. And if they don't know it exists, they can't buy it. So, how do you market your business? Well, if you have plenty of time, but not very much money, then you might consider using networking or some type of content marketing. Content marketing is just where you make videos or write articles. They're helpful to your customer to attract the people who will be interested in your product. On the other hand, if you have a budget, but you're short on time, then instead you'll want to look into paid advertising or maybe consider outsourcing the marketing of your business.
- SERVE YOUR CUSTOMERS
Once your marketing starts really working, then you'll start making sales and you'll have customers that you need to serve. This is where things really start running. You have to move into the role of your business that is the CEO of the business, where you're running the company. You're not just building a company from the ground up anymore. You have to show up for those customers week after week, and deliver to them that product or service that they've purchased.
Depending on what your business sells, this is gonna look pretty different. For example, if you are selling a physical product, then you're going to need to continue to manufacture that product, you're going to need to ship the product out to your customers, and you might have to do some tech work to fix problems with the product. On the other hand, if you're selling a digital product like a course like I mentioned before, then your work of serving your customers might all build down to just answering their questions about the product that you're selling to them. And finally, if you start a service business, then you're going to have to show up for your customers week after week and provide that service to them. So, this is a very important thing to consider when right now you are the very beginning stages of starting your business, because I'm assuming you haven't been following along with these steps as you've been reading the article, and you're probably still at that very beginning phase of deciding what business to start and just getting it off the ground.
So, right now you can think about what kind of work you want to do later on. Do you want to be working with customers day after day after day, or do you wanna be able to sit behind your computer and answer their questions and help them out in that way, or do you want to be shipping products every single week? That's something you need to think about now, because in the future, that's what running your business is really going to look like. At this point in the process, your business will be up and running.
- GROW YOUR TEAM
The final piece of the puzzle is really growing your team so that you can scale your company. In order to serve more customers, you're going to need more help. So, you're going to need to hire some people to serve those customers and to run your business for you. Maybe you'll hire customer service specialists, maybe you'll hire more people to actually create the product for you, or maybe you'll hire people to run other administrative parts of your business, or to market your business for you, to get more customers. Of course you might choose to not hire anyone at all. You might wanna keep things simple, keep your company small, and remain a solopreneur forever, and that's totally fine. It's a decision you'll have to make at some point though.
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All right, that's pretty much all there is to it. Follow those eight simple steps and you'll be well on your way to building a successful profitable business. Of course it goes without saying that even though these steps are pretty simple, they all do require a fair amount of work. You can expect to invest at least several weeks if not several months into the process of getting your business up and running and making money. So, my biggest piece of advice for you as you're getting this new venture off the ground is to commit to being in it for the long haul from the very beginning. If you are impatient and you don't properly anticipate how long this whole process is going to take, then you're probably going to give up before you make your first dollar. You need to understand that this process takes time, it takes work, and you need to prepare yourself mentally, and emotionally, and even physically from the very beginning. If you aren't ready, then all of the different things that you need to do and the different things that hits you along the way are really gonna throw you off track and your business might fail before it even gets off the ground, but I know you can do it. If you really wanna start your own business, then just know it's not all that complicated. Anyone can do it if they put their mind to it, and they're willing to do the work.
All right, well, that's all for this article. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm honestly so excited for you to be starting your own business. I can't wait to see how starting your business changes your life as well.
If you wanna see more articles like this in the future and learn more about how to start your own business, then make sure you subscribe to my email list. Thanks so much for reading.
How to Decide WHAT KIND OF BUSINESS to Start
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