Career and Investment Planning
Entrepreneur Journey
We will be explaining about the business commencement checklist in this article in continuation to our entrepreneur journey articles under Career and Investment Planning Series. A lot of Entrepreneurs may find this surprised that what kind of checklist, we will be talking about in this article. So, to make you understand, it is a series of tasks which you might have already done or thought in back of your mind while commencing your business or during your entrepreneur journey.
Now, we will be explaining and documenting all those tasks which we may do in the back of our mind and never realise their importance to commence a successful business. They are important and emphasized as we speak but never have that feeling in our conscious mind because they are part of our daily routine. If we miss any of it, our business success may falter or delay.
Introduction
People may see any business into these categories: self-employed business and enterprise business. Self-employed business is the business where there is no employment or limited employment. It can be said that self-employed business is more of one-person show, one person handling majority of end-to-end business operations.
On the Contrary, Enterprise Business is the business where lots of people, a team is involved in fulfilling even single business operation. It emphasizes more on employment generation for masses. Both type of business has similar entrepreneur journey or entrepreneurship requirements but Level of work is different between two of them.
Lets discuss and see what kind of planning or business commencement checklist required to build successful business or help to position your venture for success.
Do Your Research
You need to be sure that you understand the industry or business segment, you will be doing business in. It is very simple in business, if you can’t offer something better and/or cheaper than your competitors, then, you need to rethink commencing the business in respective field.
Determining Your Target Audience
This step require most analysis as this depends on multiple factors. The factors impacting this are: a) target demographic; b) Business to Consumer (B2C) or Business to Business (B2B); c) Age; d) gender; e) Income and f) Profession. You should understand that It is crucial to know that you are delivering what your customer wants, not what you want. You also need to understand that you won’t be able to earn profit or sell without customers. You not only need to understand them but also, make them your priority.
Strong Mission
Standing for yourself out there is no an easy feat and there is no one fit for all scenario. Sometimes, you need to experiment before getting that one magic formula which can guarantee desired outcome. So, you need to have a goal or mission and your need to make informed choices decisions to expand your products and services and market down the line by recognizing your business strengths.
Choose Business Name
Regardless of which options you opt for, you always require a business name to register your entity and Doing Business As (DBA) name if required, to register trademark for extra business protection.
Choose a structure
It is about choosing business legal structure which will help to derive taxes, documentation, owner’s liability and entities compliance. You can checkout business entity options here .
Map Your Finances
Business Commencement requires money which is why you need to seek out ways to acquire capital. Most Businesses starts with bootstrapping which is nothing but investing owner’s savings and funds or seeking capital from friends and family. Next to this list is angel investors and venture capitalists. If these options are not enough for your needs then, apply for business loan from banks or financial institutions.
Analyse Your Tax Burden
You have to figure out how much you need to manage your payroll and taxes as delaying them can result in severe consequences.
Understanding the risk
Business commencement involves a certain degree of risk. You only require to analyse and plan for that risk to make it successful.
Time it right
Timing is very important aspect of business. If you have a decision to make and you are more than 60% of the way, just make the decision. if you wait to have it 90%, you have to wait too long.
Look for a mentor, an advisor or a team
Commencing a business is not an independent journey. It take a lot of mentorship, guidance and people to make it right. You need to network a lot to get it right.
Bring in the professionals
Entrepreneurs can’t know everything about running their venture. Actually, It is a fact that nobody can’t know everything or can’t do everything. You always need a professional, subject matter expert or a team to make it right.
Choose your vendors
Running a business can be overwhelming but you need to understand that you or your team can’t do everything on your own. You need vendors to fulfil requirements which your team won’t be able to fulfil.
Brand Yourself And Advertise
You need to build your brand and get people following. To make it happen, you can start with:
- Logo: Create a logo defining your brand and purpose behind, it will help people identify your brand easily.
- Company Website: Take your reputation online by building a company website. Customers generally turn to the internet to learn about your business and a website will help them understand.
- Social Media: Use social media to spread the word about your new business, to offer coupons and discounts to followers once you launch.
So, Prepare your business commencement checklist before commencing business, Happy Entrepreneurship!!!
