Starting out a Business may definitely seem like a daunting task however, it is quite easier than people perceive it to be. There are primarily six steps to set up your business. But in order to set them up effectively, you need to have a good idea about what you want your business to be.
Once you are sorted out with having a concrete idea, you move on to the planning phase. Under this planning phase, you set the platform for the execution of the other equally important steps. While setting up your business plan, one of the most important elements of planning is doing solid research.
You need to study every element and every aspect of the industry you are planning to open your business in. One statistic you need to note is that only 2 out of 10 Businesses survive the first year since they started opening.
Most of the businesses have to close involuntarily just because they did not have their basics sorted out, i.e the Planning Phase. Much like the popular and successful businesses out there, you need a solid plan in order to ensure that your business ends up being successful as well.
You need to be looking for the right strategies to make sure that your new startup thrives. There are a plethora of simple options for a startup such as Business Consultation, Tax Entry, Event Management, and so on.
With this, we would be moving on to the six important stages of planning your business.
- Conducting Relevant Research to Back up your Ideas
Having an idea and all is great, but the most important aspect of having an idea is to check whether it is feasible or not. A lot of ideas may seem great on paper but they are simply not worth pursuing when you put it all together.
In order to make sure your business idea is practical enough to ensure that your business would be sustainable in the future, you need to ensure that you conduct a relevant amount of market research with regards to the industry in which your business is being conducted.
Market research would help you analyze and measure the interest of your potential customer base. You need to research primarily to understand the customers’ needs, formulate and implement a sustainable financial plan and so on.
The research will also give you an idea about how the market really operates which would help you in setting realistic and achievable goals for your business endeavor.
- Writing Down Your Business Plan
In order to ensure that your Business would go in the proper direction, you need to write down all your Business Plans in a neat and organized manner. The Business Plan would constitute your short-term and long-term goals.
In order to have a proper Business Plan you firstly need to include a Title Page and the contents or an index of your plan. This would keep it easily organized and also would facilitate easy navigation.
Secondly, you need to add a Statement of Purpose. This basically would be the summarization of your products, services, the amount of funding required, and so on. Then we come to the part where the entrepreneur has to add his/her product description.
This can also include a summarization of any and all services being offered. Once you’re done with the summary of product and services you outline and jot down the various sorts of Market Analysis such as the trends set by potential customers, target demographics, and so on. Finally, we come to the stage of analyzing your competitor(s).
This would include conducting a strength and weakness analysis of your respective competition in order for you to capitalize on it and get the edge. In order to get a better edge over the competition, your business should accept payments online and other modern methods should be adopted to make your business customer-friendly.
- Registering your Business
In order to make sure that your business is legal and recognized you need to register your business with the relevant authorities. This is done to ensure that all your Businesses have the relevant permits to operate.
In a lot of countries, rules for registration of a business vary from a particular state to another state, so keep that in mind while you intend on registering your new startup.
If you’re planning to have a sustainable earning as a result of which you pay taxes then you should definitely register since you would get a Tax ID number.
- Be Aware Of Your Finances
A lot of the time you have a great business idea but you wouldn’t put it into action since you have got minimal or no funding to execute the idea. There are a lot of ways in which you can try to get some sort of funding.
You can obviously ask your friends and family for a bit of money by gaining their trust and showing them your plans. You can also attempt to get a loan from the bank for your startup.
There are a lot of angel investors and grants available that may be interested in funding your idea if they find it interesting enough.
- Protection For Your Business
An Entrepreneur puts a lot of his efforts and money at stake in order to get his business up and running in a proper manner. In this context, he/she needs to minimize the aspect of risk on a lot of fronts, and to do that you should definitely opt for some sort of insurance.
There are different types of insurance that you can opt for depending on the type of your business. Some of these insurances are General Liability or Business Income Insurance and so on.
- Expanding Your Business
There are a lot of ideas that you can implement in order to make sure that your business expands on a consistent basis. You can make some aspects of your business go online.
In order to ensure that your business is up to date with the latest norms, one should try and set up a simple but efficient eCommerce platform.
