Entrepreneurship is a hot topic in today’s society. The number of people starting businesses this year will likely be the highest ever. Business isn’t something that can be learned over night, nor is the learning the most important part in all honest. Building a business takes time, sweat, and persistence. If you want to be able to call yourself a successful entrepreneur, you’ll have to earn that title. However, it really isn’t that complicated of a thing to do (depending on the industry you are in obviously), and can be extremely rewarding. So here you have some tips that may help you to start a business in 2014.
Refine Your Idea
Before you get started, you’ll obviously need to have some sort of idea to run with. It doesn’t have to be unique (in fact, the best ideas usually aren’t), it doesn’t have to be super creative, but put some effort into this. Once you have a general idea of what you want to do, you should seriously consider niching down. What I mean by that is to focus on doing one specific activity for one specific group of people.For example, if you want to start a freelance web design business, focus on one type of business to design web sites for, like maybe dentists. Or if you are thinking about doing landscaping, focus on a specific type of landscaping. There are endless possibilities, and it is better to be seen as the niche expert than a general business that doesn’t specialize in what a customer needs.
Get a plan
Many people think that they need to write a massive business plan if they want to start a business. However, this simply isn’t true anymore. In the modern day business culture, there is no reason to write a massive plan full of projections that are based on nothing more than conjecture. Your time and energy are better spent on proving you have a viable business model. This is oftentimes called the Lean Startup approach. You can read more about it here.In essence, what you want to do is come up with a minimum viable business model which you can test. For instance, you may think your freelance writing business will do very well if you approach bloggers and pitch them to accept your writing. You would then test this by actually trying it, and if it worked you would scale the business. This is the basic formula that your business should follow regardless of the industry or scale.
Get Legal
You’ll of course need to legally file your business before you do almost anything else. While most businesses are legally Sole Proprietorships, I highly recommend that you file as a Limited Liability Company (LLC), regardless of what your business is. An LLC will protect you from personal legal liability in case your business gets sued, which is incredibly important for any business.Say you get sued because you messed up installing a sink in a home, causing thousands of dollars in damage. The owner then sues you. If your business is a Sole Proprietorship, they can go after both the businesses assets, and your PERSONAL assets. That means they can take your house, car, and anything else you own. However, an LLC makes it so the business is liable for itself, and the owners are not legally required to pay such debts.
Get a website
It is really important that people can access your website at all times and that they can find the information they need in a simple way. A proper good quality website can really help you boost your business’ brand. So make sure that your website is up to date. You can even re-launch it to better suit your brand image. There are plenty of good website tips at the Flyte website. Make sure that you also optimise your website for mobile phones in 2014.Start Marketing
Once you’ve made the necessary investments, you’re ready to start marketing. This will of course vary widely depending on what kind of business you are starting, but the key is to simply make it happen in some form or another, which is what most people tend to do.If you need some help creating a website or creating some marketing for your business, please contact us, we are here to help you.
