For many upcoming entrepreneurs, starting and running a successful business may seem like an intimidating task. By any stretch, starting a new business is not an easy undertaking; but it’s doable. You often need to spend money and time and go through some sleepless nights to make it happen. You shouldn’t give up, even when things tend to go the wrong way. Here are the five main steps of launching a successful startup.
Step One: Craft A Business Plan
Developing a viable business plan is the foundation for launchinga new business idea. A majority of smart business owners obtain startup capitalfrom established angel investors or venture capitalists.
Mark Stevens is one of the most reputable venture capitalists in technology. Working with an experienced venture capitalist like Stevens requires you to craft a convincing, error-free business plan. Since you need money to start your business, you need to persuade investors, suppliers, and other like-minded business partners to support your venture.
Your business plan is simply a written description of yourstartup idea. In other words, you outline what you want to do and how youintend to execute it. The plan should basically describe the business idea for thefirst three to five years.
Step Two: Secure Funding
You’ll need to secure adequate funding to help you get started when starting a business. 82 percent of businesses fail due to financial challenges. The amount of money you’ll need depends on your business model, and its specific needs and objectives.
For instance, if you’re thinking about launching a tech-basedpart-time startup that doesn’t require colossal overhead spending, you canquickly get your business off the ground with around $5,000 to $10,000.
In the United States, close to an average of 600,000 startup companies arelaunched every month. Since the cost of doing business is another factor toconsider, you should ensure your business plan has a solid financial plan, aswell. Your financial plan should clearly cover areas such as:
- Cash-flowstatement
- Balance sheet
- Salesestimates
- Profit andloss statement
For instance, even launching a mobile app, acquiring customers,and running it successfully requires a lot of money. Therefore, before your appgoes live, you must ensure you have adequate funding to cushion you fromfailure.
You need to find out the exact amount of funding you require tolaunch the business before you even start sourcing for the financing. Weigh outall your available options to avoid compromising your business’s growthpotential in terms of paying exorbitant interest rates.
Step Three: Partner with The Right People
At some point, you’ll need help and outside support in running abusiness. If you’re starting a venture in the technology industry, you’ll onlyneed small teams to execute the core tasks of your business’ operations. Thenumber of employees you’ll need when launching a business in other industries,such as healthcare and catering, may be a bit higher.
In addition, you’ll need a federal tax ID number fromthe IRS once you register your business. The good news is, you can get yourbusiness’s employer identification number (EIN) online by submitting yourbusiness information. The process only takes a few minutes.
You may also want to partner with an established financialadvisor, business lawyer, and experienced accountant. While these experts won’tbe part of your staff, they may play a critical role in helping your businessgrow.
Step Four: Find A Good Location
The location of your business could affect the viability of yournew enterprise. You’ll need to lease or buy some property to operate thebusiness. Interestingly, buying a property or operating from your garage may bemore affordable than leasing property. Since tying up all your business capitalin real estate may not be realistic to most entrepreneurs, you need tostrategize carefully and come with a solid plan when crafting your businessplan.
Additionally, in today’s fast-paced digital environment, youalso need to have an online presence by building a business website for yourcompany. Even if your business is not ready for launching, it’s wise to startpromoting it online and making solid online connections. Doing this willeventually help you get to market fast.
Step Five: Learn How to Market
At this stage, you need to become a marketing professional.Regardless of how innovative and transformative your startup idea is, you’llnot succeed if people don’t know about it. Therefore, you need to aggressivelypromote and market your product or service both online and offline. Some of themost effective marketing strategies that you should familiarize yourself withinclude:
- Radioadvertising
- Emailmarketing
- Printadvertising
- Social mediamarketing
- Contentmarketing
- Television
- Search engineoptimization
- Billboards
- Affiliatemarketing
- Pay-per-clickadvertising
Once you learn these basics of marketing, you can now launchyour business and start making money.
You have to be dedicated, focused, and motivated in order tosucceed in your business. While there are numerous steps and tips to follow inlaunching a new business, these should at least cover the basics and show youwhere to begin.
