10 Things We Learned After Starting a Business in 2018 (Detailed Breakdown)
Hello! You must be very excited to get started with your great idea. Maybe it’s ride sharing giraffes, or smoothies that are delivered via drones. Whatever the case, make sure you read this FIRST. We are EXPERTS at making mistakes with starting our business, and have a TON of things that we find important/wish that we had known.
1. Know EXACTLY What You are Trying to Do
When you are starting a business, it is crucial that you are starting it with all the right goals and tools. If you don’t know exactly what you are trying to do, your efforts won’t be optimized, and when you are starting out as a fledgling small business, you need to make sure you have all your ducks in a row. Here is some advice from our co-founder, Zach Alamrew:
You will waste a lot of time and resources if you don’t know what your leverage is and how to use it.
Another reason for finding your specific niche is to identify what your competitive advantage is.
A competitive advantage is a unique trait, skill, or resource that you can leverage over your competition. If you cannot think of yours, you need to seriously rethink starting a business.
Without identifying a proper competitive advantage, you have no sustainable chance of winning over clients and displaying your competency to other businesses. For some people, it is a value chain or a distribution or production method. For us at Blue Western, it is our unique combination of skill and perspective that we bring into our storytelling. It’s a little goofy, but we think it adds something special to our content, that you cannot get anywhere else. That is your competitive advantage. If you don’t know what it is, you should look to get as much practical experience as you can, just keep putting yourself in position to learn.
If you set your target and identify your niche from the get-go and in your business plan, you can make sure that every decision you make is moving you towards doing better in that market. Trust us, it helps.
2. Make sure you are starting it with the RIGHT people
One benefit that I have had starting Blue Western is to have a great running mate to do it with. Zach is fantastic and I absolutely would not be able to do it without him.
Because we are so close, I feel comfortable telling him how I feel honestly. He feels the same, which comes in handy when one of us, has to give constructive criticism to other.
If you aren’t as lucky to have a partner like Zach you may be like this:
I have received advice from some people that say that you should never start a business with your friend. I think that is false. In fact, it has helped me immensely to have my best friend as a business partner.
BUT this doesn’t mean every friend pair could!
The biggest benefit from starting with a good friend is that they know you well enough to help you out in all the small ways, and that sometimes you can do that best friend thing where you finish each other’s sentences and have conversations without saying anything. Oh wait, is that just us?
The biggest minus is that it can be hard to realize that you and your friend may not be also compatible as business partners. Give it a trial run, and remember that communication is the number one way to save everyone’s feelings.
However, sometimes starting up by yourself can be a blessing, so that you can control the vision. Having two people can be an issue if you are very particular about your brand and your ideas.
Make sure if you do choose to start up with someone , that you avoid what I see as the biggest pitfall that happens to teams: be VERY clear with the roles and responsibilities, and make sure you know what they are signing up for, and that they do as well.
3. Make Sure You are Starting it for the Right Reasons
If you are a budding entrepreneur and you are starting it to get money at speed and be the next Netflix, you might need to reevaluate.
If you don’t love the grind and the hustle, you might be signing up for more than you bargained for. It is hard to start a small business.
You might not see the immediate results early on in your process, and it may be tough to keep pushing, pushing, pushing in month 3,4,5 not to mention year 3,4,5. But you never know when you are going to hit it. Some people never hit it big, we haven’t yet, but we are working to just be consistently delivering value and trusting the process.
All you can do is put yourself in the position to do so by producing value for your customers and making sure you are ready to deliver when someone calls.
However, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to keep your options open in that manner, and if you are looking to instantly make a living, consider just making your business a side hustle for now.
4. Write a business Plan
Really, do it.
This is to make sure that you have thought everything out. A business plan is going to help you go through all the usual steps to make sure that you know what your competitive advantage is, how you will eventually, MAKE MONEY, and other important details.
Here’s an article by Jon Westenberg 🌈 that is trying to convince you:
We used this advice a lot:
“That’s the purpose of a business plan, it’s to give everyone involved with a company a clear document that lets them know whether they’ve won or lost, grown or stagnated, met or missed their goals. A business plan doesn’t need to be complicated, and it could start out only being a few pages of clear language that expresses the following things:
What your product is, and what it does, and why
Your strategy for bringing that product to market
Details about your revenue model
Goals and milestones
The method you’ll use to know if you’ve failed
Your customer personas and target market
Your financial needs”
It doesn’t have to be long, for instance, here is ours!
Its short and simple, and there is SO MUCH we should have included but we didn’t. We just didn’t know that much when we started, and our ideas have evolved since. But this is why having a short one was nice, because it helped us think, but we were not locked into a huge 4- year plan.
5. Make sure you are using social media correctly
Digital Marketing in 2018 is about more than simple following/unfollowing accounts.
Its about building credibility within your field, and authentically documenting and providing content to your viewership. It’s all about creating a community, and playing the long game by investing in them and your relationships.
Make sure you are using social media in a way that will make your clients want to engage with you. YOU HAVE TO BRING THEM VALUE. Without a value proposition, there is no reason for them to want to check your content out!
Many people still are using their content just to sell their merchandise or their brand. It is so important for small businesses to be using their media to define their brand, make it relatable, and then let the relationships they are fostering generate leads.
If you go for “the sell” too soon, you will be turning people off to your brand. When you focus on genuine and meaningful connections to your brand, you will see more conversions from social.
There are also a lot of key misconceptions about social that have sprouted up over the years, a few of which are summarized in an article by Dakota Shane, the co-founder of Arctiphi:
In the article, he says:
“Study the hell out of the platform you want to grow on, find out how to make yourself different from others, create great content (which can be learned), be consistent, and eventually you will reap the benefits of social media.”
Notice, he didn’t say, sell, sell, sell. We have found this to be a key part of our strategy, and very helpful to us. People appreciate that we are focusing on bringing them value first. Who wouldn’t?
The key to achieving this strategy is to establish your brand personality and position, and then make sure that your content is focused on education and engagement. If you focus on providing content that is educational or entertaining, you will always be bringing value to your niche. It is just harder to be entertaining, but if you are starting a company, you likely have an aspect of experience you can offer.
Or you can go our route: making the experience of starting a company our content!
If you are looking for help, this is something we are now doing for living, let us know at bluewesternok@gmail.com
6. Make sure to follow the law (this mainly applies to US residents, if you don’t live in the US, please enjoy a video of this cat)
One thing that we were unaware of when starting a business was the amount of laws and legal matters we were getting ourselves into.
It starts from registering your business. To start off with, you should register with your state (if you live in the US) A short breakdown of your options are as follows:
Sole Proprietorship: A D.I.Y. business! Easier to start/stop, and taxes are funneled into your personal account. A pro is how flexible and how much control you retain, a con is the amount of liability you take on.
Partnership: Bring a friend! A pro is the myriad of options here, a con is the amount of structure that you have to put on to have legal and contractual obligations for you and your partner.
LLC: You make the business separate from yourself. A pro is that you are no longer liable through it, a con is that you hand over a lot of control.
Here it is again in Vines if you didn’t follow above:
Sole Proprietorship:
Partnership:
LLC:
Here is a video that goes into more depth, it is more complex than my brief overview:
In Oklahoma, we had to also apply for a DBA (doing-business-as) to start, you know, doing business as. What we didn't expect was a fee attached to that, which varies by state. We also registered so that we would have our name protected.
Another whole thing is TAXES. I don't know enough to be the definitive resource yet, so here is a resource from Fundera:
Additionally, pay attention to weird laws you may not have encountered as a private citizen, like that in OK you need a license to fly a drone, and certain buildings may have limits on recording
The best way to keep your business legal is to consult with a professional in your state/country! Reach out to someone so you know what is coming/expected before you do something wrong!
7. Don’t focus on short-term success
This is not a 6 month plan
Make sure you are playing the long game. Sometimes, it is worth it to trade work for portfolio pieces or referrals and goodwill with key influencers. You never know when those sorts of connections can pay off.
Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk encourages people constantly to keep their eyes set on the long game, and we have implemented a lot of his strategies into our own efforts to build a long term enterprise.
You are going to learn so much with everything you do,
It is going to be tempting to try and get money now, but if you hustle, put out a good product, and talk to the right people, the money will come!
When we get our first big client, we will be ready to provide them a high quality experience and it will not be our first job ever.
Above is a video talking about some of the goals Steven Kappen, one of the co-founders of Blue Western, has for Blue Western in the long term.
8. Stay Resilient
Stay tough out there
This is simple. You will be faced with a lot of trial and hardship. Most people don’t get lucky on their first, second, third, or even fourth attempt at something. You have to love the process, and if you get knocked down, learn and come back to it.
9. Ask for help
When starting out a small business, look for help in your area and online. You might end up being surprised how many people will help you out if you are also providing them with value. Many people have been willing to trade us food or coffee for a video, just to network and exchange value, while taking that long term approach and building your credibility.
Reach out to influencers through Instagram or LinkedIn. Instagram has been HUGE for us starting out, nearly all of our work has been Instagram or personal contacts so far.
People have been so generous to us in our efforts so far, and I am sure that there are people near you as well! And additionally, if you can’t find excited locals, also feel free to reach out online! We especially would be willing to help you out! There is likely a community out there around your niche, and if there isn’t, you can’t be the only one who wants one! Start it!
10. Make sure you are doing what you love
All these tips should be taken with a couple grains of salt. These are just things we ran into or needed help with over time, and you may run into entirely new problems.
That's why its important to be DOING SOMETHING YOU LIKE DOING. If you like doing the thing you are doing anyway, then it is easier to do all the other things. It is easier to do social, to keep motivated, to keep making content, etc.
THANKS!!!
Thanks for reading, please share if you found it helpful! Please clap especially!
Make sure to follow us on social, @blue_western on Insta, and @BlueWesternOk on Twitter! Content is always incoming, and we are building our community as we go! Follow us as we try to build a business in real time!
