Practical First Steps to Starting Your Company
Are you thinking about starting a company? This can be daunting but it doesn’t have to be. The core of any business is to provide a product or a service through relationships.
Yes, really, it’s that simple.
But even though it’s that simple, getting worked up and caught in the details happens to the best of us. That’s why I’m giving you the most important and practical things to remember when setting up your company.
Start With an Idea
The very first thing you need to do is start with an idea. The best (but not only) way to do this is begin by observing the world and noticing what you wish could be better. Oftentimes this idea comes about as a result of you saying things like, “I really wish I could…” or, “wouldn’t it be easier if…”. Remember, big ideas don’t have to be complex. They just have to be things that other people would want.
Do The Research
I see the following all the time. Somebody has an idea, thinks it’s great, and begins telling everybody how great of an idea it is. What the person usually forgot to do was take the time to research and see if anybody else is doing the idea.
Keep it simple, Google your idea and all the variations of the idea to see what others are working on. And if you find that somebody already has the idea, that’s fine, you can still do it better. But, you should at least know what the marketplace looks like for your idea to take hold.
Start Testing the Idea
The quicker and cheaper that you can test your idea, the better. Unless you absolutely have to (maybe pharmaceuticals?), you should try to test the reception of your idea in the marketplace.
Can you throw up a landing page, spend $100 on marketing, and see if anybody goes to your website to sign up? If so, do that first without incurring any additional costs. Remember, the idea is to test your idea as quickly as possible to see if anybody would even buy the idea. If people are interested, maybe that’s your sign to get serious, file the legal paperwork, and actually build the product. If not, you’ve only spent $100 on marketing and some of your time, time to move onto the next idea.
Branding
Do not spend too much time or money on this step. I repeat, brand yourself well but do not get hung up on this.
A decent logo and a functional website with a great product is ten times better than a beautiful website with a terrible service.
Think about how you want your company to look and feel, as well as how you want others to perceive it, then make a decision and run with it. You can always change your logo, your color scheme, and how the website looks. You can’t change when your competitors come into the marketplace though, so you better pick your brand and launch it while it’s still hot.
Do the Legal Stuff
File your paperwork, keep it organized, and partner with a reliable, honest, and transparent attorney. What you don’t want is a mess of legal filings that will get you in trouble later, fined later, or prevent you from moving as quickly as you want.
If you don’t know the paperwork that you have to file, ask your local Startup Grind chapter for attorney recommendations. You’ll need things like business insurance, articles of incorporation, manager/member structure agreements, statutory agent acceptance, employee ID numbers, and more.
This can seem like a lot, but start chugging through it and you’ll eventually get the hang of it. This will also make starting new ventures in the future easier and quicker, too.
Always Use Templates
Templates will save your life as you are trying to scale your company. Try to make everything into a template so you are not repeating the work you’ve already done.
Create templates for status reports, meeting notes, agendas, PowerPoints, pitch decks, everything.
Yes, you’ll spend the time up front but you will benefit in the long-run because you’ll be able to quickly and efficiently create new collateral for clients based on wonderful collateral you’ve already created.
Don’t forget, have good, clean, and practical contracts. Make this a template so you can quickly send over the proposed work to the client instead of letting days go by as you create something new from scratch.
Do Not Forget Social Media
Instagram has more than 1 billion monthly active users, Facebook has billions, so do the other social media platforms. Do NOT ignore social media.
By forgetting social media, you put your entire business idea in peril. Think of it this way, how would you feel if your competitor starting dumping money into social media campaigns? You’d probably hate it, right? Exactly.
Social media is your new best friend. It’s no-cost, massive amounts of people use it, and your potential for marketing and influence is unmistakable. If you don’t have an Instagram account right now, go create one. If you don’t know how, ping me and I’ll help you. You need to be on social media.
Get Your Email Going
After securing your domain and setting up your website, you need an email address. Keep this simple, to the point, and easy for people to remember and say.
Don’t make it long, “jack.keogh_07@theinternetmarketingchampion”. No, that’s dumb. Your email should be something good like, “jack@marketer.com”. Always remember that email is a way to communicate with others, so it should be easy for people to email you.
With that being said, you need to set up a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. This allows you to leverage a platform to track prospects, keep sales in view, and manage notes. Are you tight on a budget? That’s fine, go use HubSpot, it’s free.
You need to have systems in place so that your business is set up to succeed. By having your email and CRM set up, you can immediately begin reaching out to prospects and getting your sales funnel set up.
Start Your Company Now!
If you have been sitting on a business idea for a while, now is the time to set it up. If you fail, that’s fine. What’s the worst thing that could happen? You spend a few hundred bucks and have to shut it down. That’s OK.
Instead of asking, “what if…?” you need to ask yourself, “what if this succeeds?”. That will motivate you. Take the time to put your idea of a product or service into practice now and get it into the marketplace. Either you’ll fail and try again, in which you learn a ton of lessons, or you’ll try for your next idea and eventually make it work.
You have what it takes to be great. Remember to deliver a product or service to the world that people want. When you choose to impact the lives of others for good, you are bound to succeed.
