There are many reasons people chose to leave the security of their current employment and start up their own enterprise. For some, it’s about being able to have complete control over the values and direction of a business, for others it’s a means of living a more flexible life following a change in lifestyle or family dynamic. Regardless of the motivation, all individuals looking to set up their own company should ask themselves the same questions, to ensure they are fully prepared, both mentally and practically, for the challenge ahead.
If you’re considering launching a business, have you asked yourself the following?
Have you made a plan?
Before you take any steps forward, you need to dedicate time and effort into formulating a business plan. You’ll find numerous various tutorials and resources online to help and support you while you construct your plan, but generally speaking, you should consider how you’ll fund your new venture, what primary resources you’ll require and what your forecasted earnings will be.
It’s a good idea to identify whether you’ll need any external funding right at the start. After all, it’s not uncommon for new businesses to borrow money from banks or investors, so don’t worry if you feel you must. Crucially, come to a financial figure that will allow you to achieve what you want and ascertain how long you think it will take to pay that sum back.
What need will you be answering?
For any business to be successful, it must answer a customer need. Apple provides top of the range technology solutions for businesses and individuals. Sage offers professional software to streamline processes. Nescafe fuels business with good tasting instant coffee! So, you’ll need to brainstorm the customer need you’ll respond to with your product.
Once you know this, you’ll be able to create a brand and advertising strategy to communicate this with your audience.
Who will be your target audience?
Also paramount to your success will be an acute understanding of the person you’re targeting with your product. The audience could be an individual, a specific job role or a business as a whole. It’s important that you don’t limit yourself, but equally, remember that you cannot be everything to everyone.
You may find it useful to create typologies or pen portraits of your audience to increase your comprehension. What are their likes and dislikes? What makes them ‘tick’? What are their goals and ambitions? What other products and brands do they buy from and why? The more detailed and colorful you make these persona overviews, the more readily you’ll be able to construct a marketing campaign that speaks to them on an emotional level.
How will you appeal to your target audience?
Without a strong marketing reach, even the most capable business will fail to resonate with its audience.
You’ll need to invest in creative and effective design, including b2c and b2b branding. Partnering with the right agency will be important, and you should take time to meet with several designers, and discuss at length with them the sort of brand you’d like to build for your company before deciding which one to appoint the work to.
Design techniques such as semiotics and color theory will help you portray the personality you want, and help you communicate a specific message to your target audience.
What experiences can you bring from your previous roles?
Every job and professional engagement teaches us lessons we can take into our next line of work. As such, even though you’ve now decided to establish your own business rather than be someone’s employee, you’ll have developed skills and learned approaches that will serve you in your new (and improved!) professional life.
Brew yourself a coffee and sit down with a pen and paper, write down the biggest ‘aha’ moments you’ve had in your career to date: what you learned, how you learned it and what you’d do with that knowledge in the future. Then, approach your new business with these insights in mind. You may find you avoid repeating business mistakes or honing your approach based on your previous experiences.
Will you need to partner with others?
It’s highly possible as your business grows that you’ll need to partner with other companies to achieve further growth or move into new aspects of the industry.
If you do choose to collaborate with another individual or enterprise, you should assess the appropriateness of the link up. Do you have similar values and ways of working? What will you gain from working together, and what will you be able to provide them in return? The best working relationships are symbiotic where both parties can learn, expand and progress.
The same can be said for future recruitment. If you’re starting off as a one-man operation, you may quickly find the need to hire some teammates and employees. If you’re new to the process of recruitment, you will do well to read some management materials, either online or in print, to educate yourself on proper interview procedures and effective employee selection.
How will you measure success?
Businesses will develop different KPIs (key performances indicators) based on the type of industry they are in and what the product they sell is. For some, measuring the success of the company will be easier than others. If you sell physical products, you can gauge profit by total sales minus overheads, yet if you deal with other aspects of business, you may need to establish your own yardsticks. Why not set yourself achievable but optimistic ambitions for your first six, nine and twelve months of business, and then see how well you do in meeting these goals?
What’s for certain is you’ll find yourself feeling much more motivated if you allow yourself to celebrate the little wins too. Setting up a business is no easy feat, so you should congratulate yourself for every positive step forward, and not berate yourself too hard when things don’t go to plan. As Henry Ford once famously said, “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
