Nibletz Staff
Good ideas are a great starting point for every new business, but the reality is that you need to put those ideas into action – quickly. The faster your startup can make some money, the better chance you have of surviving – and thriving. In today’s brief guide, we’re going to run through some simple tips that can help you launch your business in super quick time, start making money, and improve your chances of success.
A one-day business plan
First of all, you have to have a business plan. It doesn’t matter whether it is handwritten on a napkin or is a full, 100-page document with full costings and high level of details – a plan is critical to get things off to a quick start. There are plenty of generic, adaptable business plan templates on the web, so take a look around and find one that is suitable to your needs.
Market research
On day two, with your business plan in place, start researching your market. It’s a vital process that will help you hit the ground running, and give you all the ideas you need to who your target market is, where they live, what they do for a living, and a lot more besides. Of course, the more thorough research you perform, the more accurate your view of the market will be. However, if you want to get started quickly, it’s possible to get started with a snapshot of that market. Use the government’s SBA SizeUp tool to get valuable demographic data and ty to avoid thinking too much. The idea here is to use your snapshot to inform your marketing message, which you can tweak at a later stage.
Brand building
Next, it’s time to think about starting to build out your brand. You will need a name, logo, a website address and a web host as a bare minimum. There are dozens of online website builders out there that can be used even if you don’t have coding knowledge. Try looking at services such as Fiverr or Logoworks to get a logo created as soon as possible – and don’t forget that you can even build a business presence a business on social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or even Instagram.
The legal stuff
Don’t forget about the legal aspects of starting a business. You will need to decide on your legal entity for the company, as well as formalize any partnerships, getting a trademark and patent protections, and ensuring yours are ticking all the right legal boxes. You could hire an attorney, of course, but there is a multitude of online tools that can help you do all these things – and more – super quickly and much cheaper than hiring a lawyer.
Go lean
Once you are ready to start taking your message out to the general public, think about how you can do it in the most cost-efficient way. You could hire interns, for example, to help you with creating content on your website or even doing some cold calling to make some early sales. Working from a home office will keep your costs down, too – perhaps communicating with your interns remotely via Google Hangouts or Skype.
Start selling
OK, so by this point you should be ready to start making some sales. Your website and business model will not be perfect, but it should be enough to start picking up some valuable customers. As you earn more money, you can start to reinvest it back into the business and making improvements as you see for. Good luck!
