How to Start a Business in 5 Easy Steps

We've all heard, "Start a business" but no one tells us how to start a business. This article discusses 5 steps to make starting a business a reality.

Starting a business is not easy! However, I too have been guilty of telling people to create a business when the opportunities they are looking for are not available in the 9 – 5 job market. While I stand by that sentiment, I recognize it is not as easy as just starting a business.

Often times, we confuse self-employment with business ownership. Let’s first start off with a few definitions so we understand what a business truly is.

Self–employed: the state of working for oneself rather than an employer as a freelancer/independent contractor or running their own business.

Entrepreneur: An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as an innovator, a source of new ideas, goods, services, and business/or procedures.

Business Owner: An individual who owns and operates a business whether it be small or large. This individual also profits from the net gain of the company. A start-up business is created with the intent of getting bigger.

Now that we understand the different classes or intents of business, we can discuss the steps to starting a business.

Step 1 – Determine your intent for starting a business

We saw above that you can be in business several different ways, either as a freelancer where you are working independently and your active involvement is needed for financial success or as business owner with employees which requires more risk, but has the opportunity to offer greater rewards. Before you can start a business, you have to decide what it is you want to do and then ask yourself the following questions:

What is your “WHY” for starting a business?
How big do you want to get?
Are you searching for financial freedom?
Is your intent to have more freedom of your time?

The answer may change over time, but it is good to use this as a starting point.

Step 2 – Select your legal and tax business entity structure

“Just start an LLC”. That’s the advice I often hear given to someone who when asking about starting a business. However, there are multiple legal and tax structures that can be opted into when starting your business. We won’t get too into the details here, but here’s an outline of the different structure types.

Step 3 – Develop a business plan or model to market your product or service

How are people going to know who you are or what you are selling? What is your plan to get yourself, your product or your service known? If your initial thought is, “Oh, I’ll just run some ads”, you might want to think of a better plan. Countless people lose money not marketing to the right customer.

Identify your perfect customer
Find keywords that relate to your brand
Create a message that speaks directly to your customer
Understand how to use each form of social media and speak directly to your customer
Network

Step 4 – Create Repeatable Processes

In order to have a successful business, it is important that you create a process to the various steps of your business to make the process repeatable. This is important for Step 5, execution and evaluation.

How do you create/obtain your product?
What are the steps to providing your services?
What steps do you take if something goes wrong? Right?
What do you do to capture sales and expenses?
How do you hire employees?

Step 5 – Execute & Evaluate

You’ve done the initial work, decided on a service or product to sell, created your business entity, and developed your marketing plan and business processes, now it’s time to execute. Test out your marketing plan and begin to put yourself out there. How is business going? If business is not moving the way you want it to, go back to Step 4 and flush out what is not working before returning to Step 5.

While starting a business is not easy, following these steps will help you get started to making that plunge.

To get more help on how to run a successful business, check out the Business Starter Pack or Business Growth Pack courses for videos and other supporting documents to get you going.

Categories: : Business Owner, Financial Literacy