How to Start Your Business, Part 1
Thanks to modern technology and the internet, building a small business is easier than ever before. If you have a product or service that you are passionate about, you can start right away.
Running your own company is not only an exciting endeavor, it’s also a rewarding experience. It gives you the opportunity to share your expertise with others, it allows you to design a life style that fits your personality, and it helps you create products and services that you love and that make a difference in people’s lives.
What does it takes to start a business? How do you find the right one for you, and how do you deal with the fears involved in running it? Below, I’ll show you the basic steps to get your business off the ground. In two separate posts you’ll learn how to find your expertise and get your first project going.
1. Develop a Plan of Action:
Find a service or product that you are passionate about and come up with a basic plan of action. In my experience it’s best to start with a small project first and to grow gradually bigger from there.
2. Look For a Mentor:
Finding a mentor who is familiar with your industry is a great next step. This can be a coach, a business owner, or a solo-preneur who has gained experience in the market you are interested in. Good ways to find a mentor is by offering your time and expertise to someone you want to learn from. Maybe you can collaborate on books or products, setting up classes, etc. You can bring our expertise to the project and learn from your mentor in the process.
3. Set Up Your Business:
Once you took care of your preliminary steps, you are ready to set up shop. This consists of finding a name for your business, registering it, opening a business account, and building your internet presence by creating a website and blog.
4. Start Marketing:
Make your business known to the world, online and off. For online marketing, start building a community of like-minded people and prospects on twitter, facebook, and other relevant social media websites and blogs. Off the internet, start to network by joining networking groups and associations related to your industry. An important part of marketing consists in educating your customers about your product and how it can serve them.
5. Sell and Deliver:
Being able to sell your service is a crucial skill you need to master. Reading books and listening to audio-tapes will help you in learning basic sales skills. Attending online seminars and listening to free tele-classes that offer sales trainings is another way to polish your skills. By getting out there and talking to people about what you do, you’ll gain experience in offering your product. If you did a good job at marketing, this step will come easy. People have gotten to know you and will want to buy from you.
6. Serve Your Clients:
Service is the key to any good business and good service comes from treating your customers with kindness and respect. But most and foremost good service comes from you loving what you do and having a great time doing it.
While these steps are simplified, they are basically how you start any project. If you have a job, keep it. Start your project on the side, experiment, make your mistakes, and find out what works. It’ll help you to find out if being an entrepreneur is something you enjoy. The internet, your personal network, and your online community will provide you with the support you need. Once your business generates a profit, you can decide whether you want to leave your job or not.
To your success. As always, thank you for reading,
Karin
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Related Books:
Flight Plan by Brian Tracey
Crush it! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk
Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur by Pam Slim
The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Merman Scott
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Photo Source: Death to the Stock Photo
