How to Start Your Own Business

Starting a business takes research, smarts, and self-confidence. You should ask yourself hundreds of questions, including how much money you will need, the right equipment, and the first steps. 

Ensure you’re thoroughly prepared before starting a business, but remember that things can still go awry even with the most preparation. Therefore, you must be able to adapt to changing situations. Tasks like naming the business and creating the logo are seemingly small compared to other steps, including marketing strategy.

Take advantage when you have the opportunity to turn your idea into a successful business. The following are the beginning steps to starting your own business. 

Conduct Market Research

Before the fun of starting your own business comes the homework aspect. Market research must be complete to understand your competition and determine your target demographic. Market research is gathering consumer feedback on your product or service and collecting pertinent information on the marketplace. 

The information should include customer data, including what customers would think about your product and services, by conducting online surveys or putting up online ads and offering small compensation. 

Additionally, you could buy market research data. Many firms specialize in market research and have the ability to perform detailed studies on segments of the market. 

Write Your Business Plan

Every business starts with a vision. But your business plan is the foundation of your business. Forbes lists a few vital things to include in your business plan. 

First, you must draft a catchy executive summary ad that grabs investors’ attention and keeps their interest. The summary should communicate your business’s name, your products or services, and what marketplace you’re entering. 

Next, you should create a company description. The description should be more specific and include your business address, key employees involved in the business, and the structure of the business. You could also specify how much ownership stake everyone has in the company.

Lastly, you should brainstorm all your business goals- from numbers-based to intangible. Financial and profit objectives are a given, but when writing a business plan, you should include a goal to hit a certain number of followers across social channels or raise your engagement. 

But goals that aren’t tangible are essential as well. These goals may include seeing your business’s advertisement reach the general public or receiving an excellent client review. 

Assess Your Finances

Your business plan should help you figure out how much money you’ll need to start your business, and if you come up short, you’ll need to either raise or borrow the capital. Notably, many startups fail because they run out of money before turning a profit. 

One way to determine how much money you will need is to perform a break-even analysis. This analysis helps business owners determine when their company, product, or service will be profitable and informs you about the minimum performance your business must achieve to avoid losing money. 

The formula is simple: Fixed Costs ÷ (Average Price – Variable Costs) = Break-Even Point. 

You also must watch your expenses and not overspend when starting a business. 

“A lot of startups tend to spend money on unnecessary things,” Jean Paldan, founder and CEO of Rare Form New Media, told Business News Daily. 

“We worked with a startup with two employees but spent a huge amount on office space that would fit 20 people. They also leased a professional high-end printer that was more suited for a team of 100; it had key cards to track who was printing what and when. Spend as little as possible when you start, and only on the things essential for the business to grow and succeed. Luxuries can come when you’re established,” Paldan continued.

If you realize you need funding, you must consider a few factors, including creditworthiness, the amount of money required, and available options. 

But startup capital can come from various means, including business loans, business grants (small business or government), investors, and crowdfunding. 

Pick Your Business Location

When choosing a business location or buying a house, everyone knows the saying: “Location, location, location.” Location is one of the most important decisions you can make because it factors into every other aspect of your small business. 

Your business location determines the taxes, zoning laws, and regulations to which your business will be subject. 

Where you locate your business also depends partly on the location of your target market, business partners, square footage, foot traffic, parking, access to transportation, and overall personal preferences. If a company is far from its target audience, it will cost more in travel costs and attract fewer customers. 

Business locations generally fall into several categories. The most common business locations are shopping centers, business parks, coworking spaces, home businesses, industrial areas, arts districts, malls, warehouses, standalone, and agricultural. 

Taking all these factors into account can be overwhelming. But a small business location strategy can determine whether a company succeeds or is driven out of the community, so it’s vital to research this aspect of business planning. 

Choose Your Business Name

You should choose a business name that reflects your brand identity and doesn’t clash with the types of goods and services you offer. This business process step is vital because it can greatly impact your success. 

First, you want to avoid hard-to-spell names. You don’t want potential customers confused about how to find your business. On the other hand, avoid choosing a name that is too narrow. You don’t want to limit your business to a particular product, service, or city. 

Run the potential business name by family and friends and get feedback. Just because you think a name is good and catchy doesn’t mean it will be for the target market. Additionally, make sure the name sounds professional when said aloud. Sometimes words look fine on paper but not when said out loud. 

After devising a great business name, you must ensure that someone else isn’t already using the name. Although you could continue moving forward with the name even if someone else is using it, you might want to pause and re-think. 

Finally, once you settle on a name you like, you must protect it. There are four ways to register your business name: 

• Entity name protects you at a state level
• Trademark protects you at a federal level
• Doing business as (DBA) doesn’t give legal protection, but it might be legally required
• Domain name protects your business website address 

Create a Website

Social media is booming these days, so a great website is essential for your small business’s success. You can explain your value proposition, boost brand recognition, and drive sales. 

First, you must obtain a good domain name or website address. Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital because it makes your website more visible and generates more traffic and potential customers. 

A few tips for creating a good, catchy website name are to make it easy to spell and keep it as short as possible. You shouldn’t use slang or made-up words; the shorter the website name is, the easier it is for people to remember and type correctly. 

You should also make the address broad to facilitate future growth. For example, Amazon.com is a much broader website address than BooksOnline.com and allows Amazon to sell a variety of consumer goods instead of books. 

Once you develop the desired website address, you must ensure the price is right since most good domain names are taken and need to be bought from the current owner. 

Next, every website needs a host or a server to store all its data for the public to access. Depending on your budget, you can choose a couple of routes. You could use a shared web host, which is the less-expensive option. A shared web host is exactly as it sounds- a shared server with other sites. 

Or you could dedicate hosting. Although this option costs significantly more, you also get your own private server and won’t have to compete with other sites that could drag down your speed. 

Lastly, you must build your pages. A great website includes multiple pages dedicated to different aspects of your business, including a detailed catalog of your products or services, a blog section for company updates, and a support page. 

A contact page is also one of the most critical sections of a website, so include as much information as possible (your business’s phone number, email address, and location). It’s also good to feature an “about” page so customers can put real names and faces to your brand.

Register Your Business

The process of registering a business varies depending on the type of operation or service you’re starting, how big it is, and what state you live in. But the basics of registering stay the same regardless.

For most small businesses, registering your business is as simple as registering your business name with state and local governments.

But you must register your business with the IRS to receive your Employer Identification number (EIN). Your EIN is like a Social Security number for your business and is necessary for filing taxes. 

In some cases, you don’t need to register at all. If you conduct business as yourself using your legal name, you won’t need to register anywhere. But if you don’t register your business, you could miss out on personal liability protection, legal and tax benefits.