If you have the dream of entrepreneurship, here we share the 9 steps you must follow to start making this dream a reality.
Maybe you’ve had several ideas in your head for a long time and think they might be a great business or maybe you’re tired of working for someone else and want to be your own boss. If you find yourself in one of these situations, you can consider that the seed of the entrepreneur has begun germinate in you and in order for it to bear good fruit, you must decide to act and begin to put that idea into practice.
We present you some of the steps that will help you land this idea and turn it into a business.
1. Measure your possibilities
Before starting, you should answer a series of questions that will help you see if it is your ideal time to start. The first of them is why you want to undertake a business; if the answer is for money, we regret to say that it is best to continue in your formal work, because an undertaking can be very profitable and you can live comfortably from it, but the truth is that you will not see significant profits in the short or medium term.
Another question you should ask yourself is what are your economic, intellectual and social possibilities. Regardless of the type of business you decide to undertake, at the beginning it will take you time and money, so you must consider that you may have to leave your job and economic stability to devote as much time as possible to your project. You must decide if you are willing to do this.
2. Develop an idea
If you are not lucky enough to have an idea about the venture you want to start, you can follow the following tips that will help you generate ideas to start a business.
First. Think about what you are passionate about, make a list of the things you love to do or talk about and consider yourself an expert. This list will help you narrow down your potential business niches.
Second. Check that your project meets a need. Think about your areas of interest, what are their shortcomings or needs, or what you would like to change about them. A creative solution to everyday problems can always turn into an excellent business.
Third. Develop your business plan. Writing the general idea of the business you have in mind and your work plan is an excellent exercise to realize what you still need to detail, where you have doubts, where you can move forward with more confidence, and where you will need help.
3. Evaluate the viability of your business
No matter what type of business you have planned, it is always a good idea to evaluate the product or service you plan to trade before you spend too much time and money on it. To a great extent this can determine the success or failure of a business, a bad feasibility analysis can translate into a lot of time and money spent without the possibility of recovering it.
Evaluating a product or service seems like something extremely complicated and only possible with the help of a professional, however there are some simple strategies you can use. Google the product or service and see what comments there are about it. Also, it is an excellent idea to do a search for your product or related words in Google Planner or another keyword search engine, so that you can measure the volume of searches on the Internet.
Know and evaluate your target audience, define which sector of the population your business is focused on, think about what the needs of this group are, their interests, consumption habits and above all their consumption possibilities.
Understand that it is not the same to try to sell among young people from 20 to 40 years to sell a product for children; the characteristics of both populations are very different, because while some already have financial freedom, others depend entirely on a person. Doing this evaluation will also help you to make future marketing campaigns with a clearer focus.
Determine if the market niche is a trend, fad or growing market, because the time in which we can market the product depends on it. To do this you can use Google Trends, a tool that helps you measure the volume of searches over several years.
If you have already started to sell, start with the most obvious action – check exhaustively the comments of your product, so you can see which product sells less, in which ones are detected issues and do your best to solve them. You should invest your money and time in the products that sell more and have better comments.
4. Seek financing
No matter what type of venture you have in mind, you will need to invest, maybe in the beginning you can do everything by yourself to save as much as possible, but you will still need money for your business. Many entrepreneurs can start their business without leaving their formal job, investing their savings and salaries.
However, maybe this strategy is not enough for you and you need extra money to get started. The traditional option is to ask for a credit in banks or financial institutions, but the process to authorize it can take a long time.
Luckily, today there are several funders willing to promote startups like yours and who will not ask you for many requirements to fund your business.
5. Build your team
According to your business plan you will know which are the necessary processes to bring it out, determine in which activities you can participate directly and which you have to delegate.
The best thing is to hire professionals, because you will save time and money in the long run; you can hire freelancers, which can be cheaper.
6. Create a website
It doesn’t matter if your business is an eCommerce or a traditional commerce, it still needs to be on the web since it brings you a number of advantages, such as 24×7 presence, market expansion and feedback from your customers.
To create a website you can use different platforms like Duda, Wix, WordPress, just to mention a few. You can use their free version, but the best thing is to invest in the premium which allows you to have your own web domain.
In the blog you will find several posts that will give you excellent advice to choose the perfect domain name and create a successful website.
If you are planning to sell online, your website needs to be more that. You will need an online store where the customer not only sees the description of your products, but can purchase them with just one click.
7. Plan the logistics
It doesn’t matter if your business is traditional or online, you need to plan for issues as important as the need for a storage facility and the size of it. You also need to think about the way your product will reach the final consumer, so you need to take some time to design the delivery strategy.
8. Do marketing
To grow your business, you need more and more people to know about it, which means you will need a marketing campaign.
This can be a complicated and expensive task for the entrepreneur who is just starting out. Fortunately, nowadays you have several tools that allow you to make an advertising campaign at low cost; for example, you can create a Fan Page that helps you connect with new and potential customers.
The design and content of your website and domain also play an important role for advertising, since choosing them in an optimal way positions you in the first places of Google, and other search engines.
9. Start your business
No matter how complicated it seems, you have to start your business and materialize that dream that does not leave you alone. You can always improve your business plan and your strategies along the way.
Maybe you are afraid to fail, but the real failure is to not even try. Open your business in spite of the deficiencies you detect in it, because with perseverance and hard work you can fix them.
Do you know other tips for those who want to start a business? Share them on our social networks. We love to know your opinion!