With many a fledgling company fizzling out within months of its founding, beginning a business is no mean feat. Great ideas don’t transform overnight into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Some make it with business intuition, some with sheer luck, but nothing beats good old-fashioned business planning.
Step One: The startup strategy
On your first week, you have to define your vision, and define what success means. Flesh it out with your partners, write it down, and make sure everyone agrees on the same thing.
Ask the following questions:
- What’s our business name?
- What’s our personality?
- What services or products are we offering?
- How will we present our services or products to our customers?
Step Two: Positioning your ideas
Explore your media options. How are you going to advertise? Where are your customers? Are you going to go traditional with newspaper ads or radio spots?
Getting a web presence is quite possibly the quickest and most inexpensive way of getting heard if you’re a startup. Some businesses find starting a blog a great way to reach out and communicate to customers and even investors. You may want to sign up for social media profiles – LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to name a few – and invite friends, fans, and followers.
Step Three: Building a network
Sometimes, partnering with other well-established non-competitor companies could add some clout to a young business.
Ask yourself:
- What other related companies are there on the business landscape?
- How can we benefit from networking with them?
- What do I have to offer?
For example, a newly-founded jewelry and accessories distributor could talk business with a fashion event organizer and see how they can work out sales and marketing strategies together.
The startup process doesn’t end here, of course. A startup plan is in fact more of a model than a rigid, static plan. Your approach may change depending on the response of your customers and media trends. Set regular evaluation sessions for your business and be prepared to redraw your plans occasionally.
What are the steps you’re taking to prepare to start your business? What’s your time frame of launching the business? What challenges have you encountered so far?