How to Start a Business? 12 Steps to Start a Business From Scratch!

Step 1 - Do You Feel Entrepreneurship is Your Thing?

“The secret of getting ahead is to get started.” In business, get started with self-introspection first. To start a business in reality you need to deeply realize whether running a business is your cup of tea or not. Because running a business is an intense job, it requires:

• A lot of patience to sit tight through any situation
• Determination to put in efforts
• Leadership qualities to govern people around
• Ample time to make this hustle work (you can even work 9-5 and still start a business as part-time)
• Acceptance towards any kind of impromptu situation
• And the confidence to spin the wheel in positive faith
• Ability to strive and work hard for better outcomes

If you think you have all these qualities, congrats, it seems you are ready for claiming the world of entrepreneurship and have everything it takes to start your own brand label.

Step 2 - Identify the Business Idea

Now you are ready, you need to identify the kind of business you want to run. You need to look through certain factors to identify what kind of business niche or type would suit you best. And for that:

• Think through your passion - If there is something you like to do or wish to sell? Is there any hobby that you want to turn into a money-making machine? The idea should come from within first. Identify your interests and come up with ideas to start a business. 
• Know what the problem is - You need to identify the problem statements that exist in today’s market and see which product is most looked out for. You can join communities, search over Google trends, Google ads to know what internet users are looking for most these days.
• Put money where the trend lies - If you see a certain product/service has demand in huge proportions, then choose that. You can add some innovation to it and try to fill in the gaps that other brands are unable to.
• Think of something new & groundbreaking- Try to assess the problem areas of the consumers in any niche you decide to step up in. And see if you can create a product that serves as a solution to buyers’ problems at some or all levels. Doing this could give you an edge and stand out.

If you are thinking of selling products, you have two types of products to choose between:

Commoditized Products

• They are generic, everyday products needed to support day-to-day livelihood. Their need cannot be bypassed. Like clothes, processed food, gadgets, toys are few examples of commoditized products

Niche-Based Products

• They are unique, hyped, signature products that only certain businesses would produce to sell only certain sections of the society. Generally, the prices of such products are quite high and have great margins.
• Its example could be - The blueberry frozen yogurt by 16 handles, athletic wear by Nike, gift cards by Archies, handcrafted items by urban brands.

You can choose either of two to start your venture. Best is if you combine selling both two types, this way you can target a wide range of audience.

Step 3 - Create a Business Strategy/Plan

A business strategy is a documented plan stating how and what goals a business should achieve. The goal is your ultimate bottom line, which can be about reaching 1 million users of your products, fulfilling customers' needs & expectations, creating a distinct niche for yourself, being better than your competitors, or more. 

This is an important and frontline thing before you go about starting a business, as not only it gives you a concrete path to walk on, but also helps you trace your actions, success, performance, or areas of improvement against the target you’ve set in your business strategy. It can have a detailed description around the areas such as:

1. Executive Summary
2. Business Description, what it does, what it entails
3. Market Analysis and Competition - who is your target audience, where does your competition lie
4. The Product or Service details, with cost, and selling price bifurcations
5. Marketing and Sales Plan for upcoming time
6. Business structure 
7. Ownership, Management, Personnel, staff details
8. Financial Plan and Projections for the future
9. Investment portfolio
10. Business Location
11. Business costs, overheads

Step 4 - Do Search for the Target Market

Did you know David Darmanin aka CEO & founder of Hotjar (biggest analytics tool) had started two startups units before establishing Hotjar? Across both the units, he employed teams who had created amazing products & services (without clearly understanding what the market wanted), and as a result, both the ideas tanked as they lacked the market’s needs.

As a lesson from the last two tanked ideas, Hotjar came out differently and was backed by thorough sheer market research, which led it to now a worth of $25.0M.

Before launching a product line or delivering any service, it is important to have some ground-level research of the target market. As in what they like, what they want, what particular product or its features can curb their problem statement. With well documented and calculated target market research, businesses can gather information on buyers’ which will help in:

• Designing better products that buying market wants.
• Improving buyers’ experience throughout their journey.
• Crafting a workable marketing strategy that gets qualified leads and positive conversion rates.

Here are the 3 ways through which you can research your target market and understand its intention as a buyer:

1. Surveys

They are one of the straightforward and inexpensive ways to gather qualitative buyers’ information and insights. Which will help you create user-centric products and experiences. You can easily create such custom surveys through Google Forms and send these to prospects via emails and other digital mediums.

      2. Conduct Interviews/discussions

You can conduct face-to-face or digital interviews or discussions with prospects through social media or any digital platform to understand your target market, where they are, how they look, what they feel and want, their problem areas, and everything else you wish you should know to make better products and experiences in their buyers’ journey.

       3. Create Focus Groups

If you have a budget, this process involves bringing the real target buyers from the market. Focus groups help to evaluate your business idea or product before it’s launched in the actual market). They share their opinion, experience, and problems with you and tell whether your business idea or product helps to curb that or not. 

For beginners with a lesser budget, you can create your very own focus group about your business idea or product with peers, friends, family, colleagues, or others.

Step 5 - Think Over Catchy Yet Professional Business Name

Setting a name for your corporation is an important aspect. You can’t go wrong with it. This is the name with which you will be called for the rest of your life (Nah! not the rest of your life, of course, you can change it at any interval while rebranding). 

Still, you should press upon thinking of a business name that can turn out to be an ultimate brand. Make sure whatever name you choose for any venture:

• It should sound good and must be easy to pronounce when spoken aloud. It shouldn’t look difficult to speak like “she sells seashells on the seashore (got it?). 
• It should convey meaning and should convey your business’s whole sole purpose or benefits.

You can search for the popular keywords around your niche and set up a name by connecting dots from there. Google AdWords keywords tool is the best place to search those keywords. Apart from that, you would find a variety of tools for naming a startup, they can really help you give good clues.

Step 6 - Decide What Kind of Business Model You Wish to Start?

Once you have pondered over the name of your business, it’s time to legitimize your business. Meaning, you must consider registering your business to:

• Avoid any legal problems (if arises)
• Sound as a reputed and professional business brand
• Win the trust of business stakeholders, customers, employees, staff, suppliers (if you add any)

You have 5 types of business options to choose from:

Study all these business models carefully and decide which one you would want to register and pursue.

Step 7 - Research about the Regulations & Licenses

Get in touch with legal attorneys and research if there is any regulation or license you need to obtain to establish your business. Knowing them will keep you away from legal impediments in the near future.

And would keep you entirely legal in the eyes of the law and keep your business interests, trademarks, patents, operational & marketing aspects protected from all costs.

Go and check the Licenses and regulations you need to adhere to based on your industry, economy, and business type.

Step 8 - Get the Required Capital or Fundings

Create a detailed financial plan to determine what capital you need to oil your business machinery. Firstly, evaluate your monetary resources.

Then, identify how much money your business type will need to get started.  If it’s going to be solely offline one, identify what all resources you will need to run your business, such as:

• Manpower
• Raw Materials
• Factory or outlet to produce
• Warehouse
• Business administration & setup
• Shipping and transportation
• Official setup

If it’s going to be an online business solely or a mix of both digital and physical one, identify the cost of it around factors like:

• Business Website
• Enterprise Business Application or software
• Online Marketing and Advertising
• Website maintenance and support

Once you have all the cost-related factors known, figure out other aspects through which you can reap some capital to venture. Some of the ways you can have money are:

• Put your money- You can invest your personal income or savings to start a business and once the business earns profit, you can put back the amount to where it belongs.

• Borrow from friends and family - You can borrow capital from people you know, provided you ensure you do it with a proper written agreement and amount repayment plan.

• Business loans - You can take loans from banking institutions based on the interest model that is suitable for you.

• Government grants - You can search for government grants for small businesses that do not require repayment of money.

• Crowdfunding - You can raise money from large no. of people in exchange for some profit or reward on their invested sum.
• Angel investor - Here an individual provides capital to startup businesses in exchange for ownership equity or convertible debt.
• Sponsorships - If you have an impressive business idea, you can strap in some investors with crazy goodwill and capital to sponsor your business model.

Step 9 - Build Your Workforce & Team (if you are not planning to sail alone)

“Nothing you do is more important than hiring the right resource. In the end, we make bets on people, not strategies.” - Lawrence Bossidy, COO, General Electric.

If you are not planning to build an empire all by yourself, plan some division of staff, or human resources around to manage your business. 

Initially, you should keep your investment low while finding the manpower, and hire only the ones who are much needed. Once your business grows at a mushroom rate, you use the profit to expand the divisions and staff to fulfill more requirements.

Step 10 - Start Shaping Your Product or Service to Reality

So now you know your product, service, finance outlets and have registered your business, it’s time to start carving your product or service into reality. If interested in a product-based business, you have 3 options to about it:

• By setting up your own premise and creating your own products - As the product discussed above as commoditized and niche-based products, you can choose a combination of them and decide to manufacture them at your own unit or can have it procured from external vendors and wholesalers and protect them within a safe warehouse. 
• Customize or modify existing products - You can as well modify or customize the existing product with your own taste and touch in terms of design, features, usability, you can experiment. Supposedly, you can add your own innovations to clothing, toys, or any product in demand.
• Start a dropshipping business - Instead of adding unnecessary cost allocation to warehouse and factory setup, start a dropshipping model online. Just like Amazon, you can create your own dropshipping website and start sourcing the popular product with reasonable vendors on it, who will directly deal with your customers’ product requirements and ship the products at their own cost, while giving you an upbeat margin for using your website. 

If you wish to deliver any services, arrange how you would do it, collect the right people, build a unique, compelling website design to broadcast your business.

Step 11 - Create Your Branding Essentials

Branding can help add credibility to your business. You must have branding essentials ready to make your business more stronger and memorable. While creating your brand presence, you should find answers to:

• What does your business stand for?
• What value does it provide to the target audience?
• What is the USP that will differentiate you from your rest?
• How will you earn the trust of your prospects?

Think over certain brand credentials that will help recall your business out in the crowd, like:

• A catchphrase, slogan, tagline that will go together with your business name, to define it much better.
• An attractive logo or word phrase that will help you look professionals and reliable.
• Creative, informational packaging designs for the products to make them look cohesive, and branded.
• The color palette throughout your packaging, marketing collateral, or online presence that will belong to only you and will be your signature.
• Different style Typography that you can use throughout your products and marketing collateral to stand out.

Think of other things that can make your business unique, creative, and reliable for your customers. Experiment with your style and build an overall business presence that looks put together professional, and something that users can’t get away from.

Step 12 - Create Your Digital Portfolio or Online Store

With 68% of searches starting with search engines, it’s difficult to stay just offline. You need to maintain a strong digital presence to connect with digital buyers or audiences as well.  

Here are a few ways to digitize your business:

• Get a creative and custom business website - You can run your pursuits offline and side by side have a beautiful website to stay connected with buyers who are also active at the digital marketplace. A responsive, fast, and stunning-looking website with a professional website design company can make you visible online, help rank in search engines, and get authentic traffic from them.
• Create social media profiles - Being active on social media can open avenues for you to connect with target buyers, hear their pain paints and wants up close and personal, help understand and serve them the way they want. You can also leverage social media profiles with professional digital marketing agencies to sell your products through social commerce features.
• Create a navigable eCommerce store or dropshipping website - An eCommerce store is the best way to sell your products online, you just have to put up attractive store management systems like Shopify, Magento, OpenCart and integrate desired features, functionality, shipping fulfillment features, payment gateways, user experience with the professional eCommerce development company and it’s easy to start selling your own products or products procured from other vendors.

Check out this cool guide on how to create a basic business website with WordPress (even when you don’t have enough budget)