So its a month into the new year, are you ready to escape the 9 to 5 and start your own small business yet? Maybe your boss is an ass, maybe your wife is a nag, well why not show them all! Start your own small business and make something of yourself, become rich, powerful, successful and self respecting… all it takes is a few simple steps, a good dose of motivation and a serious passion for fashion… or you know, anything else.
Steps to starting a rockin’ socks small business
- Find your passion. What do you love to do, or what would you love to learn? It could be fly fishing, business start ups, eco-commerce, green architecture, saving the seals or cooking. There is literally a sustainable business that could be built around ANY passion. Look at TheStickyPig.com who would have guessed this lady could fuel a full blown business empire off of her love for candied bacon (double gag) and make enough of a living to quit her real job!?
- Develop a plan. You need a plan stan, I suggest writing out EVERYTHING before you even think of getting started. I didn’t do this with two enterprises and kicked myself later down the road when I had wasted thousands. Focus on you product, how much you’ll charge, who is your target demographic, what your monetize plan looks like and who will run your new small business. Tip: best case scenario you as the CEO won’t take a salary for as long as possible (I lasted a long 7 months) this helps you build equity in your business and it impresses investors down the line.
- Think finance. How will you finance your business? Are you going to keep working at your dreaded rat race job or will you rely on savings while you start up? Either is fine, but if you can get investors early on that is also good… though then you have to give over some control. This article on Entrepreneur.com is a good one to give you the specifics of how to get investors for your start up.
- Get Viral. In today’s online world of social media marketing and such it is VITAL that you get VIRAL and fast. Think of the guys from Iwearyourshirt.com they didn’t get as big as they’ve gotten from simply taking out a classified ad or running a radio spot. Instead their unique product and their clever viral marketing techniques (Getting bloggers interested, twitter, facebook and videos) paid off in a big way and drove WAY more traffic than even a billboard on the Jersey Turnpike would have.
- Never say never, unless it’s “never this way”. This may be confusing but what I am trying to say is never quit, unless you have a crappy idea and are in a go nowhere market. If that is the case shame on you for not doing your homework, now quit and start something else. But if you are in a good market, with a specific need and eager buyers who you just can’t seem to reach it isn’t time to quit but instead time to quit your current plan and start fresh. I can’t tell you how many times I have done this. Like when I started my ‘social media marketing business’ (joke) with www.Tweeterpreneur.com it was a good start but the marketing was too expensive (adwords) and it wasn’t converting to the number of net sales a month I wanted ($10,000). So what did I do? Did I cry? No (well yes but you don’t need to know that), instead I re-focused found a niche that was more profitable with less work (doing social media campaigns for small businesses) and created www.OracleLaunch.com a much more robust social media marketing and website development firm that has been paying my bills since and is growing at a exciting rate.
- Be persistent, creative & stubborn as heck. That is my motto and it works more times than it fails. With any small business start up you are going to experience a whole lot of FAILURE before you go through even your first small success. But if you expect failure and ride through it like its nothing, adjusting the plan and moving forward, you will succeed amazingly. It is like Seth Godin’s book The Dip which I highly recommend. This book talks about how to get to success each person must first mire through a lot of failure, this hard desolate place he names the dip. This place is where the men are separated from the boys. This is the place where the 80% of small businesses that fail lie down and die. The dip also allows the 20% who make it through rocket to extreme success. Are you in the dip right now? If so don’t fret, you are that much closer to the steep upward shot that is ever nearing.
If you have any more questions on what steps to starting a small business you should take please feel free and ask me in the comments, I stayed more general in this segment but if you check out Start Up School (a tab that will be opening tomorrow on the top of my blog) you can get a TON of step by step advice and coaching on how to start your own small business from A to Z. I spent over a month developing this coaching program and it is 10+ segments of amazing info and help for newbie entrepreneurs and those struggling with grasping the online end of your businesses’ brand. Best of all it is 100% FREE just pass on the word if you like.
Cheers!
Maren Kate
