Our team has been considering working on this piece for a long time and we think it would be great to create an article on the 101 of starting up a business right now so that we can share some of our thoughts and also our ideas on growing your business, how to start, where to start, when to start and how to eventually get there. There are a lot of questions that might come about so do contact us if you are keen to learn more or even go through some consultancy with us.
So to start off our little article about starting businesses. There are a few things that we want to point out about starting up a business.
We very often watch videos of successful businessmen talking about success and how they are spending their wealth and how they have the freedom that they deserve. Such videos are great but we all need to know that, they have already got there. We all think winning is easy, without realizing how much hard work is required to get to where you want to be.
Starting up is hard work
Starting any business is hard work. We define start-ups here not just as technological start-ups which are dime and dozen. Anyone who has an idea or the guts to try something is starting up.
Someone who starts a new Food and Beverages shop needs hard work to find the location, purchase the equipment, hiring and training the stuff (this is the tough part in Singapore).
That rich girl who has funds from daddy? She also placed the hard work in to come up with the formula of the goodies that you eat. Each of us start off on a different level, that’s what our parents could create for us. But where you go is determined by you.
If we focus too much on the end, we forget to realize getting there is tough. Many people start something expecting it to be easy, but I’m sorry that’s not the truth
You need a dream to focus on
Most of the time, dreams are not meant to be just monetary focused. Being just monetarily focused wears you out fast. Unless you’re a really greedy person for money, you might be different.
The most successful of Entrepreneurs focus on solving a problem that they personally have and this drives them towards a goal that they can see and visualize on.
Find out what motivates you, what’s your dream and you will be able to work on it until you conquer it.
You need to be able to feed yourself
Many people imagine getting rich in the first 3 months of starting. Not everyone strikes gold on the first venture. Neither do people strike gold the first year. It takes time to grow traction and it takes time for people to find out about you and your product. You have to be finance your own living before you even considering starting.
You should also be able to provide for your family before you go ahead. Some savings from your work might be good! Or have a freelance side line job, you can’t work on your project 24/7, there might not even be that much work to begin with.
Whatever we have discussed has not frightened you? Ok let’s begin the 101 guide to starting a business and how we think certain sites or products might be able to assist you with preparing for the brave new world of entrepreneurship.
You need an idea and a business plan
Whether is it starting a lemonade shop or an E-Commerce shop selling lingerie, you need to know if there is demand in the market and you need to come up with the idea of helping to solve that demand or problem. People will not pay for it if it does not help them in anyway. Once in a while you do have weird cases of funny products getting sold for a million but they are 1 in a million (no pun intended).
Coming up with a nice plan (you don’t need a great one), you need to also be able to plan out what you will need and when you will need to get them done.
Business plans are important in being a guide but remember it’s not a bible so you have to work on it when you have the time and also to pre plan things that you can foresee. When the problems do come about you will have to react as per the incident and see how you can solve it.
Work out a proper branding direction
Is your business something new? Or it is something that has been around but you have better service? You need to convey that to your customers so that they will know that you are the better choice as compared to other options that are available in the market.
You need to therefore plan for your branding. Are you workings for the masses? Are you working for the rich? Are you workings for woman or man or kids? You need to decide who you want to target because that will affect the logo that you are planning to come up with and also the brand message that you are trying to give to people who are going to be your future customers.
Think through which sector has the best prospects, which sector or type of customers better suit what you can handle and work with. Then make that arrangement.
Some companies use t-shirt printing to show case the strength of their team by having a strong base of strength on the same front.
You could also consider corporate gifts.
Think through your proper marketing avenue
Marketing is everything in a business. You can have the best work ethics, the best quality goods, the best branding direction but if you don’t market your services. You will get nowhere. You need to plan how you intend to market and think of what are the traditional ways or new ways to do it.
Internet marketing is the cool new thing that everyone is talking about and the effects are boundless, you can get sales for a small sum and use that money to roll your business upwards. If you’re into E-Commerce Businesses like The Silk Secrets, always make sure you learn enough of marketing such as Facebook , Instagram and Google.
Also you could use the more traditional methods of marketing which is paper marketing and print something to distribute or use the newspaper or tv to push out your brand. Just remember where you customers are and how best to reach them with the least possible cost.
Customers such as Kafve Coffee works closely with SEO Geek to assist on SEO marketing
Ensure you have a stable supply chain
When we mean stable, we mean sign contract and won’t get into trouble kinds of stable. Make sure all this are in place so that you do not have to get into trouble and worry about whether your supplies are coming, when are they coming and whether you can fulfil your orders.
You could also diversify and have a number of suppliers to make sure you do not get stuck with just one and having nowhere to get new supplies. You could also use the quotes of various suppliers to argue for a better price from each of this suppliers till you get the best prices. Those with higher cost, use them as backups!
Hiring is the hardest part
You are small, you are new and you are unstable to many. This is the part where you have to work the hardest because it is almost impossible to find employees who are able to work for the low pay that you can afford and work the many hours that you have to go through.
You will also face issues of not having enough benefits and also an unsure path way of career growth for your employees.
You will find someone who will be willing to work it out with you but make sure you take good care of him/her when you start to do well!
Setting up systems
Any business should work beyond the presence of the founders and owners and this is why you need to have policies and systems in place to make sure such problems do not arise and also to make sure that policies are held to and someone enforces them.
Systems that live beyond the founders will allow the business to auto pilot and therefore grow!
Systems are also great for productivity when it comes to setting up accounting, payroll or cashiering systems. All this will be beneficial to the business.
Keep grinding
Once you have all this in place. Start grinding and go meet people. Start grinding and research on how you can reach your customers. Go meet your customers to find out more on how you can meet more of them and how you can grow the business.
Do not sleep on the business expected it to magically grow into something huge tomorrow, it doesn’t work that way. Work on building something that can last forever and not just make you a few hundred thousand and be satisfied with it.
We will add more to this article as it goes, Cheers!