10 Steps to Starting Your Business

We were looking for an article on Fox News Small Business and the SBA website that we couldn’t find, so we thought we’d do our own, based on our courses.
1. Validate your idea the right way….market research! Take your friends input, but unless they’re veteran entrepreneurs, it’s not much use.
2. Figure out the cash flow mechanics of the business, once you decide that it’s viable. Do you have enough resources? Can you find them from friends and family? Banks aren’t generally lending much, although our course on alternative financing will show you other ideas.
3. Do a business plan if you’re going to go to friends and family. They deserve it. Don’t automatically go to venture capitalists.
4. Look over your launch checklist, match it against ours in implementing a business venture.
5. Look into your domain names and trademarks….these should be among the first things you register, even before the name of the company.
6. What does your management structure look like? Have you looked over contract people versus hiring your own? Do the skills complement yours?
7. What’s been the competitive reaction to your launch, or what do you think it will be? (This is a commonly overlooked area of launch)
8. Where do you want the business to be, 12, 24 or 48 months out? This gets at business plan items, but you need to be thinking about these.
9. What’s your exit strategy? You might think it odd to be thinking about this now, at launch, but it goes to the core of why you started the business, or should.
10. Lastly, and possibly most important, is your family supportive of your entrepreneurial ventures? Entrepreneuring is tough enough, and it helps to have folks in your corner when the going gets tough, as it most assuredly will.
Now, go out and git ‘er done